Citizens and urban stakeholders engagement

On this page you can find the list of all NZC resources on citizen and urban stakeholder participation: 1) Overview, 2) An Introduction to the Need for a Participative Transition, 3) Collection of Articles, 3) Tools, 4) Case Studies & Methods, 5) NZC Deliverables on citizen and urban stakeholder participation, 6) groups on the portal, 7) related funded projects

Are you interested in additional topics? Check out the NetZeroCities interactive map of learning opportunities!

*** NEW *** Join the online planning lab for all cities for a live sessions on stakeholder engagment in September 2025!

1) Overview

Quick-read: https://netzerocities.app/QR-Citizen&Urban
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAT5OS41vQo

2) An Introduction to the Need for a Participative Transition: Why It Matters and How It Can Be Done

Democratic decision-making and agency are critical to achieve 100 climate-neutral cities in 2030 and a climate-neutral Europe in 2050. In this report, we make the case for cities to transform decision-making processes and engage citizens and urban stakeholders in meaningful participation to contribute towards this goal. Our aim is to challenge, inspire and support cities to reimagine the role of citizen engagement in their journeys to climate neutrality. Access the report here

3) Collection of Articles

Shaping Climate Narratives: 8 Tips for Building Trust and Driving Change - This article combines insights from academic research and real-world examples to outline eight actionable strategies for building a compelling climate narrative around policies and actions.

Bridging the Energy Transition: Energy Communities and Combating Energy Poverty in European Cities - This article explores the role of energy communities and municipal leadership in tackling energy poverty, offering actionable strategies to drive sustainable and inclusive change across European cities.

Beyond One-Off Participation: Building Long-Term Citizen Engagement for Climate Action - Many cities still approach participation on a project-by-project basis - each initiative starting from scratch, with lessons often lost when staff change or budgets end. This article introduces three approaches that help bring citizen participation to the next level.

4) Tools

We have designed several Tools to support cities to become the first 100 cities to reach climate-neutrality by 2030. If you seek more information or are interested in support to use one of these tools, please reach out!

Engagement Building Blocks - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4093
En route to achieving climate neutrality, you will need to engage with citizens and urban stakeholders across your city. The Engagement Building Blocks offer a visual, collaborative, and playful way to learn and implement frameworks for designing such an engagement process. It can be used to explore alternative ways forward, assess needs, and reach agreement on key aspects between different stakeholders before you start the detailed design.

Civic Enviroment Mapping Service - canvases & guide collection - https://netzerocities.app/resource-3334
Mapping civic environments is the first step to visualize various individuals, groups and organizations, their roles, relationships, influence and impact on the city’s climate neutrality transition journey. This collection, provides a synthesized NZC Civic Engagement Mapping Tool and an additional range of curated mapping canvases which Transition Teams in the Mission Cities can implement in both physical and online workshop settings. These tools are delivered as a package with a 'Civic Engagement Mapping approach', which provides the guidebook to select, implement and mainstream mapping in city climate neutrality planning processes.

Strategies for Designing Spaces for Encounter - https://netzerocities.eu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Design-of-the-Spaces-for-Encounter-Framework-Guide-230803.pdf
Spaces for Encounter enable citizens and stakeholders with different types and levels of power to interact in carefully facilitated ways which can have a powerful effect on bridging divides and creating impact. They are spaces where citizens can encounter various stakeholders and be included in the transition to climate neutrality, both within the framework of the spaces and more broadly in the city’s work towards climate neutrality. This framework provides a way for thinking about the values and process of engagement that are needed in the spaces. It is not necessarily a step-by-step guide on how to create these spaces, but a guide on what you need to consider and possess to create Spaces for Encounter.

Scaffolding Emergence Canvas - Tool for Building Distributed Networks for Urban Transformation - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4338
The Scaffolding Emergence Canvas is a tool that supports cities that aim to create a distributed network for change. It guides municipalities beyond one-off engagement, fostering a collaborative ecosystem where cities work closely with frontrunners to shape and maintain a dynamic network for urban transformation. The canvas guides participants through the Quintuple Helix, obliging them to choose to which helix any stakeholder is part of.

Day to Day Lifecycle: Infrastructuring democracy - Tool for Embedding Stakeholder Engagement in Urban Projects - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4339
A major challenge for cities is determining when and how to initiate stakeholder participation. Often, project teams feel they must have every detail finalized before engaging stakeholders and/or the wider public, leading to missed opportunities for meaningful collaboration. The "Infrastructuring Democracy" canvas helps cities recognize that participation can serve various purposes and methods, and it can be initiated at any stage of a project's lifecycle, ensuring a more inclusive and adaptive approach to urban development.

Shaping Climate Narratives & Activation (Canvas) - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4543
This 90-minute exercise helps teams craft compelling narratives and identify tailored key messages and communication formats to engage different stakeholders. It supports alignment, empathy, and strategic outreach by focusing on stakeholder needs, motivations, and the most effective channels to reach them.

5) CASE STUDIES 

Citizen Engagement Case Studies

• Antwerp's Participatory Budget – Antwerp’s Participatory Budget empowers citizens to directly allocate 10% of the city’s budget through consensus-based deliberation, fostering inclusive civic engagement and collaborative decision-making.
• Berlin Kiezblocks Similar to Living Streets, Berlin’s Kiezblocks are an initiative to limit traffic, improve road safety, and improve air quality at the neighbourhood level. However, they aim to establish both permanent and temporary spaces. They use participatory urban planning processes to divert traffic and plan, propose, and implement bike lanes and other communal spaces. They can be implemented by citizens, civil-society organizations, or governments.
• Bologna’s Citizen Collaboration Pacts – Citizen Collaboration Pacts in Bologna empower residents to co-design and prioritize neighborhood projects through participatory budgeting, fostering systemic urban change and civic engagement.
• CDMX’ Crowdsourced Constitution Through crowdsourcing, Mexico City granted a voice and autonomy to the citizens to generate a new constitution. Online petitions, surveys, kiosks, general assemblies and data collection centres served as spaces to acquire these opinions and recommendations. 
• Citizens' Climate Assembly in Barcelona – Barcelona’s Citizens’ Climate Assembly engages residents in deliberative climate policymaking, offering a scalable model for other cities and countries.
• Cloughjordan Ecovillage – Cloughjordan Ecovillage demonstrates community-driven, low-carbon living through sustainable housing, renewable energy, and local food production.
• EmpowerMed The EmpowerMed project aims to address energy poverty in the Mediterranean region, by empowering affected communities, especially women, through engagement, support and policy recommendations.
• Environmental monitoring committees in mining contexts An environmental monitoring committee based in Panama that works on water resources. The committee is made up of volunteers who help oversee the evaluation of water. The committee has helped the mining company take responsibility and change practices to reduce pollution of the water.
• Grenoble Alpes Métropole’s Citizen Convention for Climate – Grenoble Alpes Métropole engaged citizens in a participatory climate convention, leveraging strong political will, stakeholder engagement, and dedicated funding to co-develop climate mitigation strategies, while highlighting challenges in coordination, planning, and costs, and demonstrating lessons for replicable, legitimate, and impactful citizen assemblies.
• Guimarães – One Planet City – Guimarães advances its “one planet city” vision by measuring and reducing ecological footprints at both municipal and individual levels to guide sustainable actions and raise citizen awareness.
• Järva Dialog Järva Dialog, part of Stockholm City's Sustainable Järva initiative to improve energy efficiency of homes, enabled residents to have a say in deicision being made about renovations.   
• KLIK (Križevci Climate Innovation Laboratory) – KLIK in Križevci empowers local communities to collaboratively create and implement integrated, citizen-driven climate solutions.
• Living Streets of Ghent Living Streets is a series of real-life experiments whereby residents can temporarily turn their street into a place where people feel comfortable spending time once there are fewer cars and more social interaction. These experiments also help local administrations to ensure that new neighbourhoods are always designed to have ‘living streets’.
• Mannheim City Lab on Social Innovation in Energy Transitions (SONNET) – Mannheim’s City Lab engages diverse residents in energy transition through mobile participatory spaces, design thinking, and social innovation, creating replicable neighbourhood-level climate engagement.
• Paris’ Standing Citizens' Assembly The permanent Paris Citizens' Assembly is the first full-scale institutionalisation of a representative public deliberation, and it's composed of 100 residents of Paris selected by civic lottery.
• Participatory Budgeting: Local Voices in Resource Allocation – Dubrovnik uses participatory budgeting to involve citizens in transparent resource allocation, fostering civic engagement and local decision-making.
• People’s Policy on Child Wellbeing The case was a collaborative and deliberative process in South Australia which trialled a citizen-led approach to policymaking. Instead of politicians designing policy and presenting it to the public for approval, this case turned that process on its head by supporting citizens to develop policy themselves.
• Resilient BOTU 2028 - In Rotterdam, the Resilient Bospolder-Tussendijken 2028 initiative has been working with the local community since 2019 to leverage the energy transition as a means to build social cohesion and community capacity. The initiative applies the Asset Based Community Development approach and is working with local residents, informal social networks and bottom-up initiatives to (1) build an information and support network for the residents, (2) create technical capacity, local energy jobs and vocational training, and (3) address energy poverty and debt, and explore affordable energy options. 
• Scotland's Climate Assembly – Scotland’s Climate Assembly engaged randomly selected citizens in an entirely online deliberative process to develop recommendations for national climate policy, fostering inclusion, collective decision-making, and public dialogue on climate action.
• SONNET – The Bristol City Lab – Bristol’s Community Municipal Bonds initiative engages citizens in financing energy-efficient buildings through inclusive participation and low-threshold investments, with lessons on technical support and engagement.
• Tartu – Climate Assembly – Tartu engaged residents through its first Climate Assembly to co-create 66 actionable recommendations for sustainable mobility, biodiversity, and climate neutrality by 2030.
• Vision Workshop An innovative, inclusive workshop format, gathering Sztum's stakeholders, focusing on individual ideas about the Sztum future, related to the everyday life and environment of people taking part in the event to better understand the concept of climate neutrality and to co-create a common vision of Sztum in a climate-neutral future.
• Wisdom Council on Bio-based Economy – The Wisdom Council on Bio-based Economy in Nordrhein-Westfalen engaged citizens in expert-facilitated dialogues to co-develop policy recommendations for a sustainable, plant-based bioeconomy.

Stakeholder Engagement Case Studies

• BESTGRID (stakeholder involvement) BESTGRID was a project with the aim to improve public acceptance for grids on a local level and bring together stakeholders from civil society, academia and the energy sector to understand concerns of new electricity grids being built in communities. BESTGRID acted as an exchange of best practice approaches of transparent stakeholder participation in power grid planning.
• Bridging Divides: Collaborating for Sustainable Development in São Paulo The work of a multi-stakeholder group to help progress sustainable development to create a better future in Sao Paolo’s North Zone.   
• Civic Design Lab Oakland – Civic Design Lab Oakland co-creates inclusive, human-centered, and equity-driven public services and policies through collaborative engagement with citizens, stakeholders, and government.
• Decarbonising apartment buildings in Helsinki – Helsinki decarbonises apartment buildings by empowering residents through energy-efficient renovations supported by economic incentives, legal frameworks, and collective housing ownership structures.
• Florianopolis, Brazil – Florianópolis, Brazil developed a collaborative digital platform to map, analyze, and connect actors within its social innovation ecosystem, fostering systemic change and stakeholder engagement.
• Landforce, Community wealth building Landforce is an organisation based in Pittsburgh, USA, that provides underserved community members training and employment in environmental work. It combines workforce development training with environmental stewardship employment. 
• Multi-stakeholder collaboration for a fair energy transition in Zagreb – Zagreb’s multi-stakeholder initiative combats energy poverty by combining student-led energy audits, low-cost efficiency measures, and cross-sector collaboration to support a fair and sustainable energy transition.
• Oslo: Building Climate Resilience through Zero-Emission Construction Sites – Oslo is advancing climate resilience by implementing zero-emission construction sites to reduce public works emissions and achieve carbon-negative goals.
• PentaHelix – PentaHelix promotes multi-stakeholder collaboration to develop and implement effective Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans across diverse European contexts.
• Programme of comprehensive renewal of the historical centre of Zagreb – Blok 19 – Blok 19 Renewal Program in Zagreb combines post-earthquake reconstruction with climate resilience and citizen participation to guide sustainable urban renewal.
• Renovation of public and private buildings, Brussels – Brussels’ ‘Renolution’ strategy decarbonises public and private buildings through regulatory measures, financial incentives, and broad stakeholder engagement while improving living standards and creating jobs.
• UPPER Project Hackathon in Mannheim -  Summary of the UPPER project, in which a series of Hackathons were held in the city of Mannheim asking innovators and entrepreneurs to come up with solutions to mobility challenges.

City-internal Engagement Case Studies (Municipal staff and inter-department collaboration)

• Climate Democracy Model in Amsterdam  The project focused on what is needed to achieve a decarbonised future in Amsterdam based on key principles of deeper and wider civic engagement for climate action, including collaboration amongst diverse actors, peer learning, and experimentation for new forms of governance.   

Multt-level Engagement Case Studies (Citizens + Stakeholders + City)

• Climate and energy model region An initiative to develop large-scale solutions for affordable and reliable energy systems in Austria while focusing on bottom-up approaches where regions develop their own ways of enhancing renewable energies. 
• Community Forest in Nepal, Social Equity in Community – This case explores the use of Community Forests to address social equity in forest management in Nepal, namely in the distribution of benefits from the forest resources, good governance in decision making processes and the inclusion of marginalised groups.
• Co-Producing a new Air Quality Plan for the Małopolska Region – Krakow Technology Park (KTP) – Krakow Technology Park co-created the Małopolska Air Quality Plan with citizens and stakeholders, combining workshops, consultations, and a hackathon to develop legally binding emission-reduction measures and a transparent digital platform for public access.
• Democratic energy transition in Amsterdam – The Democratic energy transition in Amsterdam engaged citizens and energy communities through the Climate Democracy Model to co-design policies and governance for a decarbonised, equitable, and climate-resilient energy future
• Espoo waste heat from data centres – Espoo reduces emissions and advances carbon neutrality by capturing waste heat from data centres and other sources for its district heating network through multi-stakeholder collaboration.
• Kicking off a goal for sustainability in Valladolid – Valladolid promotes climate neutrality by partnering with Real Valladolid to engage citizens through sustainable mobility campaigns, match-day activities, and interactive incentives like bike programs and raffles.
• Local groups collaborate for climate neutral zones - Local groups in Ioannina, Greece, bring together citizens, municipal staff, and technical experts to co-create climate neutral zones through tailored strategies in urban planning, mobility, building retrofits, and nature-based solutions, while enhancing social participation and protecting cultural heritage.
• Rzeszów – Urban Innovation Lab – Urban Lab Rzeszów provides an open, collaborative platform where citizens, city officials, and stakeholders co-create innovative solutions to advance the city’s climate neutrality and urban development goals.
• SynAthina - SynAthina is Athens’ online platform that empowers citizens to co-create urban solutions by connecting them with government, NGOs, and private partners to implement innovative ideas and shape city policies.
• TransformTO: Multisolving in Toronto A climate action strategy to reduce Toronto’s greenhouse gas emission by 80% by 2050 with the collaboration of experts and people living in Toronto.  
• Unified Citizen Engagement Approach The UCEA combines the perspectives of the three most prominent actors in the energy transition process: individual citizens, local initiatives/cooperatives and the municipality. The approach consists of five phases, on which tools and methods are mapped, that can facilitate the process and collaboration between the different actors. 
• Wards Corner, London (Public-Commons Partnerships) Wards Corner uses Public Commons Partnerships to establish a community-controlled asset to revitalise the surrounding area. PCPs are radical democratic models that encourages councils and other public bodies to work with communities to design, manage and expand the commons.   

6) METHODS 

• Asset-based Community Development ABCD is a method which puts at the forefront, the development of a community’s assets and potentials in a sustainable manner. It involves building capacity and empowering individuals, associations and informal networks to come together and leverage their strengths to mobilise action in their communities. 
• Challenge Map (Canvas) – Challenge Mapping is a tool used to break down complex issues into manageable challenges. In the climate context, it supports collaborative planning by aligning diverse perspectives and clarifying systemic barriers to climate action and interventions.
• Challenge-based Systems Mapping Systems Practice helps make sense and bring about clarity of complex environments to make substantial social impact on a community or global scale. A method to push beyond the immediate problems to see the underlying patterns and how to learn and adapt the system to change. 
• Citizens Asset Program Citizens Asset is the transfer of public assets’ use and management to non-profit collectives. Based on the logic that public things (municipal property) can become communal (citizen patrimony) through shared management. This is a reinvention of public properties which also provides tools and training to the communities responsible for the management. Citizen assets can be premises, buildings, facilities or public spaces.
• Citizens Science Citizen science (CS) engages people in research and monitoring and helps expand peoples' knowledge of the subject. Citizen science is often used in studies of biodiversity and the environment, in which people voluntarily collect environmental data, monitor the samples and interpret the data.
• Citizens’ Assembly A citizens’ assembly is a participatory process where a randomly selected group of citizens learn about and deliberate upon a specific issue or policy, and collectively come up with recommendations for decisionmakers.
• Citizens’ Jury A citizens’ jury are tasked to address a topic/issue through deliberation and present their recommendations or decisions regarding the topic. Jurors are citizens selected through random stratified selection, to ensure representation of the affected community. The report is also available for the public to read. Citizens’ juries are advisory in nature, and work on a policy issue. 
• Civic Labs Civic labs is a method for bottom-up, local innovation that creates platforms wherein citizens together with other citizens, private and government stakeholders define common challenges and co-create solutions together. The application of civic labs is versatile and be initiated by governments, universities, non-profits, private companies, citizens or partnerships between stakeholders.
• Climate Democracy Model The Climate Democracy Model consists of practical, interconnected tools for a city or region to assess and analyse its progress towards climate resilience through democratic means, focusing on diversity of actors and knowledge, participatory culture, resourcing and competencies for climate democracy.    
• Climate Fresk Online/face to face collaborative workshops to understand the implications of climate change and make action
• Collective Advisory Assemblies  Collective Advisory Assemblies (CAA) bring together communities affected by an issue, such as energy poverty, to receive ongoing support from activists and others affected by the same issue. It is a horizontal approach to participation, meaning that its focused is engaging affected communities engaging with each other. 
• Community Wealth Building An economic development model that transform local economies based on communities having ownership and control of their assets. It aims to restructure the economy to make it more democratic.   
• Co-production Co-production is a collaborative approach to decision-making and service design where providers, users and all relevant stakeholders work together to reach a collective outcome. The approach is value-driven and built on the principle that those who are affected by a service are best placed to help design it. In practice, it means that service beneficiaries are not only consulted, but are part of the conception, steering and management of services. 
• Crowdfunding as a Tool to Raise Capital – A participatory financing approach engaging communities to fund local projects, increasing public ownership and involvement.
• Ecosystem Map The system map is a visual representation of the system of elements, actors and connections. It allows to take on a systemic view on an environment or a specific solution and see connections between the different actors that might otherwise not have been perceived. It also maps out the flow of materials, energy, information and money throughout the system. This allows the understanding where possible opportunities might lie to increase value, efficiency and/or efficacy. 
• Energetic Municipality The energetic municipality helps municipal employees who have little time and/or resources to do so by providing concrete guidelines for involving residents and for creating internal support for this topic within the municipality.  
• Energy Communities Energy communities refer to a wide range of collective energy actions that involve citizens’ participation in the energy system. They can be understood as a way to organise collective energy actions around open, democratic participation and governance, and the provision of benefits for the members or the local community. 
• Futures Thinking Futures Thinking is a broad umbrella of approaches that support people to think about, cope with, and imagine what is likely to happen, and what could happen, in the future. 
• Levers of a Sustainable City – Levers of a Sustainable City is a scaling model to accelerate the adoption of good sustainable practices in municipalities. The model emphasises the importance of learning from one’s peers as well as the need to highlight the added value that adoption of new practices brings about.
• Living Labs A cycle of activities comprised of co-design, exploration, experimentation and evaluation that are repeated throughout the stages of an innovative process. They are in real-life environments based on user co-creation, placing citizens at the centre of innovation. Living Labs act as intermediaries among citizens, companies and government agencies.  
• Natural Gas-Free Homes Residents go through several steps towards a natural gas-free home. We call this the customer journey to gas-free living. 
• Oasis Game The Oasis Game is a community challenge for the realization of collective dreams. A group of players and a community make a dream come true by only using materials, resources and skills that are available in the community itself. It is a fast-paced and intense game that raises energy level and empowerment in the community. It was developed in Brasil and has been used in different contexts around the world.
• Outcome Harvesting – A participatory evaluation method that collects evidence of what has changed and how, focusing on outcomes rather than pre-defined objectives. Useful for complex social innovation projects.
• Participatory Budgeting Participatory budgeting (PB) processes empower communities to make decisions on a city’s budget and spending. PB can be combined with deliberation to ensure a robust, inclusive process.  
• People’s Policy People’s Policy is a method of citizen-led policy development, designed to generate long-term solutions to complex problems in a non-partisan, collaborative way. 
• Philanthropic Funds – Leveraging donations from private foundations or philanthropists to support social innovation and climate-neutral projects.
• Public-Commons Partnership Public-Commons Partnerships are collective associations of state, community and private interests that manage and develop assets and investments in a local community, with that community’s interests and voice driving economic development. 
• Sponsorships – A method to mobilize resources and engage private stakeholders in supporting social or climate initiatives, complementing public funding.
• System Mapping – A participatory and iterative method to visually map the actors, flows, and interactions within a system, including internal and external stakeholders. It uses diagrams to represent relationships, dependencies, and flows (information, resources, labor), helping to identify system boundaries, core activities, and leverage points.
• Systemic Design Toolkit – The systemic design toolkit is for change-makers willing to trigger a process of systemic transformation. The tools are meant to be used during collaborative co-creation sessions.
• Tactical Urbanism Tactical urbanism is an approach to community engagement and place-making. Tactical urbanism projects are physical urban interventions that are often interim and pop-up in nature, to catalyze long-term change for more liveable streets and spaces. 
• The Co-Creation Toolkit – A toolkit created by the city of Espoo supporting cross-sector collaboration in complex urban development, helping navigate conflicting goals, emerging tensions, and low inter-project learning.
• Transition Street Groups of friends and neighbours meet every few weeks with a practical workbook to make easy changes in how they use energy, water, food, packaging and transport. 
• Vision Workshop Toolbox The idea behind Vision Workshops is to bring together representatives of different groups (the general public, city administration, and/or schools) in their local context to make the concept of climate neutrality accessible to the population and to develop a shared vision for a future that is climate neutral.  

* You can explore the case studies and methods grouped along the Transition Map

• Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: BUILD A STRONG MANDATE - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2899  
• Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: UNDERSTAND THE SYSTEM https://netzerocities.app/resource-4880
• Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: CO-CREATE THE PORTFOLIO - https://netzerocities.app/resource-4881
• Citizen and urban stakeholder collection TAKE ACTION - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2902   
• Citizen and urban stakeholder collection: LEARN AND REFLECT - https://netzerocities.app/resource-2905    

7) NZC Deliverables on citizen and urban stakeholder participation