Companion guide for Civic environment mapping

In order to accelerate their transition to climate neutrality, cities need to cooperate with their full local ecosystem of actors - including citizens, civic groups and stakeholders from the private and public sector – who need to be positively engaged in the challenge as a broad coalition of actors joining their forces. Together, they will need to build new governance models, reect on and co-create new solutions, co-decide upon and embrace climate actions for change, as a whole community and in a systemic civic environment. One of the starting points for achieving such a transformation in governance models is to take a fresh look at the actors in the community in order to identify them more broadly, including vulnerable groups or the ones that are usually left out of the conversation, and to understand better their needs, resources and motivations, as well as how they interact together, including which dynamics enable or block change in the city journey towards climate neutrality. This guidebook describes how the use of simple and intuitive civic environment mapping tools, as well as a better understanding of mapping approaches and key principles, will help cities and Transition Teams develop the necessary system thinking skills to navigate the richness and complexity of their local ecosystem.