Cities must be the “orchestra directors of the transitions symphony”
Considering that public services within a territory only account for 3 to 5 % of GHG emissions, it is crucial to engage the whole community into the transition if one aims at reaching climate- neutrality.
Key EU urban initiatives such as the Covenant of Mayors and or the more recent Mission for 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030 put a strong focus on the engagement of citizens and stakeholders by local authorities in their decarbonisation and resilience policy planning.
The TOMORROW project was therefore right in putting such importance into the engagement of the community for the development of the long-term climate-neutral roadmap of the 6 pilot cities involved, so that they become the “orchestra directors of the transition” of their territory.
Impact of the COVID crisis on those activities
The COVID pandemic, by paralysing Europe and beyond for several months just after the launch of our TOMORROW project, obviously had significant impact on the pilot cities’ capacities to organise engagement activities as originally foreseen.
This situation has forced our consortium to identify other forms of engagement which have been shared at the occasion of a specific webinar on engagement activities. Pilot cities, such as many other organisations, have deployed new forms of online participation. This was, according to them an opportunity to engage new stakeholders, less inclined to more classic form of citizens participation.
Key figures and highlights
Overall, Pilot Cities have organised more than 100 events to engage more than 3000 local stakeholders and citizens in the transition to climate-neutrality, in parallel to the regular meetings of the Transition Team set-up in all cities and to pure communication activities such as media visibility or social media presence.
This report gives an overview of all these activities in all 6 pilot cities, highlighting the most inspiring engagement ones in each city.