“Learning-by-doing” from Co-creation Processes: success factors, failures, and opportunities for improvement

Since 2018, the CLEVER Cities project has put into practice an inclusive co-creation processes that aims at involving stakeholders (particularly: citizens, civil society, public and private entities) in decision-making for the implementation of large-scale, urban Nature-based Solutions (NBS). The scope of this research is to highlight the importance of co-creation process as an added value beyond the benefits of the actual NBS implemented in the CLEVER Action Labs (CALs). To evaluate success factors and failures from the relative impacts generated in the project, a systematic approach was developed to gather lessons learned along the co-creation pathway. Six criteria of analysis were identified from the data gathered over the project lifetime which included: i) the shared governance of the co-creation process, ii) co-design experiences and openness to public participation, iii) stakeholders’ engagement practices, iv) policy-making and administrative contexts, v) political and economic resource as well as vi) communication and dissemination processes. Lastly, the lessons learned of the co-creation process were considered by looking at the overall impact of the process itself in achieving its common goals, objectives, and key results

Integrated Collaborative Governance Approaches towards Urban Transformation: Experiences from the CLEVER Cities Project

Within the framework of CLEVER Cities Horizon 2020, London, Milan, and Hamburg are putting in place nine Urban Living Labs in order to implement Nature-based Solutions that address urban challenges in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods. In this article, the means by which co-creation processes and pathways may lead to innovation in governance structures are considered. Through a comparative case study analysis, this research aims to identify integrated, collaborative governance frameworks that are complex and adaptive, as well as reflect the actual changes in governance in cities. Herein, ULLs are intended not just as a vehicle for place-based urban regeneration but also as a starting point for collaborative governance. In this article, it is considered how co-creation pathways may lead to innovation in current local governance structures and achieve transformational change. This paper analyzes the collaborative governance dynamic models at three points in time in the three cities. It is also considered how co-creation pathways may lead to innovation in current local governance structures and achieve transformational change

Making cities circular: Experiences from the living lab Hamburg-Altona

The article argues that to reach circular economy goals urban regions need to identify and understand the challenges and opportunities originating from the differences in spatial settings, and to develop place-based solutions by adequately involving (local) stakeholders. Based on the case study that was conducted in Hamburg within the Horizon2020 project REPAiR, spatial specificities in five different urban areas shall be analysed and strategies that were developed in a co-creative process shall be explored. The results show that the spatial organisation of CE strategies depends on urban structures and stakeholders’ interest and needs to be embedded in the (local) governance setting and a spatial planning system

Urban Regions Shifting to Circular Economy: Understanding Challenges for New Ways of Governance

Urban areas account for around 50% of global solid waste generation. In the last decade, the European Union has supported numerous initiatives aiming at reducing waste generation by promoting shifts towards Circular Economy (CE) approaches. Governing this process has become imperative. This article focuses on the results of a governance analysis of six urban regions in Europe involved in the Horizon 2020 project REPAiR. By means of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and workshops with local stakeholders, for each urban area a list of governance challenges which hinder the necessary shift to circularity was drafted. In order to compare the six cases, the various challenges have been categorized using the PESTEL-O method. Results highlight a significant variation in policy contexts and the need for these to evolve by adapting stakeholders’ and policy-makers’ engagement and diffusing knowledge on CE. Common challenges among the six regions include a lack of an integrated guiding framework (both political and legal), limited awareness among citizens, and technological barriers. All these elements call for a multi-faceted governance approach able to embrace the complexity of the process and comprehensively address the various challenges to completing the shift towards circularity in cities

Guidelines for Co-Creation and Co-Governance of Nature-based Solutions: Insights from EU-funded Projects

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are essential instruments in our toolkit to tackle major societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. But they also have the potential to contribute to and accelerate the transformative change that will bring about a climate-neutral, sustainable, and equitable future as imagined by the European Green Deal. However, the success of NBS interventions lies in their ability to consider local culture and conditions, to respond to the needs of the community where they are embedded and to distribute benefits fairly across population segments. It also depends on the buy-in of that community. That is why the design, implementation, maintenance, and monitoring of NBS need to involve and empower that community, ensure ownership and stewardship, which in turn translate into long-term environmental, economic and social viability of the intervention. In this context, co-creation, and co-governance — the two cornerstones of this publication — become central to the effective deployment of NBS in different settings. Evidence suggests that co-creation is a key catalyst for social change, which also underscores the relevance of NBS processes and interventions in changing our relationship with nature while bringing it back into our lives. The European Commission has also made the role of co-creation essential in its guidelines and toolkit for Urban Greening Plans1 to which some of the authors of this report contributed as well. This report offers practitioners, decision makers, researchers and other experts’ guidelines and approaches to co-designing, co-developing, co-implementing and co-monitoring NBS for environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable NBS. The guidelines added value lies in proposing co-creation and co-governance pathways built on the experience of tailoring them to different contexts, spatial scales and timelines in several EU-funded research and innovation projects. The document gives valuable insights in specific cases and success stories, for instance, how some cities have overcome, with co-governance, the most challenging aspects of governance silos and ensured extensive citizen engagement

Five dimensions of climate governance: a framework for empirical research based on polycentric and multi‐level governance perspectives

Governance of climate mitigation and adaptation has been discussed within polycentric and multi‐level governance perspectives. Both perspectives on climate governance are intimately related but yet in some regards are distinctly different ‐ as one perspective has evolved from empirical research within the United States and the other in the European Union. Within an increasingly global discourse on climate governance, there is a need in the literature to bring both discourses together. The findings are based on a systematic literature review of 42 climate governance papers published since 2000. This paper discusses how multi‐level and polycentric climate governance perspectives converge and diverge along five dimensions. The five dimensions provide insights for applying a multi‐level or polycentric governance perspective to empirical research

A general framework for the assessment of planning, implementing and monitoring Nature-based Solution projects

The impacts of cities on global climate and ecological systems are very well-known worldwide. Nevertheless, the efforts ofthelast decades focused on reducing the effects of human activities on the environment. Only lately, the idea of mimicking nature as model ofaperfect cycle made its way intothe scientific community and beyond. Hence, the concept of Nature-based Solutions (NbS) has been introduced in the scientific debate in 2009 and since 2015 asacore theme in research and innovation programmes of the European Union. These are defined as living solutions inspired by nature with the aim of addressing societal problems. Implementation of such solutions requires not only a specific expertise, but also many other contextual conditions, such as political will and economic feasibility. Challenges are still present, mainly related to the capacity gap, funding gap, and the lack of a sound accountability framework. The aim of this paper is to focus on the third challenge, i.e. to delineate a possible framework for evaluating the implementation of Nature-based Solutions.This is done by looking at the case study of Hamburg, Germany, which is going to develop NbSintheNeugraben-Fischbek neighbourhood in the frame of the Horizon 2020 Research Project CLEVER Cities. Here,NbSare aimingto re-introducegreen intothe built environment while focusing on the alleviation of both social differences (integration and inclusion of the weaker populationgroups) and technical barriers (big infrastructure caesuras,etc.). These results are reached through a process of co-creation,which seeks the inclusionof local stakeholders and experts in the design and decision on the single interventions to be implemented in the project lifespanThe resulting framework encompassesthe process from the definition of problems and goals in the area of study, through co-creation and the identification of the type of intervention to implement, concluding with the actual realisation of the project.Each of these steps present guidelines and suggestionsfor the determination of indicators through which it is possible to assess both the process and outcomes of the single steps. The article offers an overview of the entire framework,specifying the methodology to build a sound set of indicators as well as reflecting on possible limitations and its future development

Urban Living Labs as an instrument for co-creating sustainable cities? – Reflections on Hamburg and Milan in the CLEVER Cities project

This research focuses on the role that Urban Living Labs can play in facilitating urban transformation through co-production, and asks how far these ULLs can deliver policy changes and transition of the urban governance setting. As a basis for this research, the authors analyse co-creative transdisciplinary research pro-cesses in the CLEVER Cities project (Horizon 2020). Co-production and co-creation are terms that are lately populating the academia with the intent to define the active engagement of citizens in shaping public ser-vices (Brandsen & Honingh 2018). Beyond the discussion on the actual signifi-cance of the two terms, such engagement approaches have been extensively deployed for implementing urban transformations in spatial planning (Davis & An-drew 2017; Puerari et al. 2018; Loorbach et al. (eds.) 2016). On this theme, en-gagement can occur through different formats and scales, of which the most com-mon are Urban Living Labs (ULL). The ULL concept is currently reaching its peak of glory as a tool for commonly advancing urban regeneration projects (Fran-tzeskaki & Kabisch 2016; Chronéer et al. 2021). ULLs are often used for fostering participation of various stakeholders in a complete co-creation process towards the achievement of a shared consensus and a more open transparent decision-making, thus advancing urban resilience wherein an important role is reserved to citizens and local groups of interest. The plethora of interests and expertise sum-moned in ULLs is expected to bring to the fore high levels of social innovation, while generating a sense of belonging and empowerment among the participants (Rizzo et al. 2021; AMS 2021). Given the specificity of such an environment, the complexity of governing the process of a ULL is enormous and steering its’ development requires mostly a relevant effort. Furthermore, the challenges addressed within ULLs are often re-lated to localised conditions and are therefore directed to generate extremely place-based social and/or physical transformations. However, it can be argued that this specificity could limit the transposition of lessons learned of the urban governance process and its outcomes towards the up-take of such practices 20 (Bisschops & Beunen 2019; cf. Arlati et al. 2021). In fact, scholars are still inves-tigating the pros and cons of conducting co-creation in ULLs versus a more clas-sic participation process (Arnstein 1969). On one hand, resources and time hori-zons dedicated to the ULLs often limit the effectiveness of the same, restricting ‘de facto’ their impacts on a localised specific context. On the other hand, it is still not clear how far ULLs could be adopted as a common practice within the local urban governance settings (Veeckman & Temmerman 2021). Further, the trans-lation of such lessons are dependent on the degree of openness and resilience of the governance structure to accept modifications and adapt to new structural changes demanded from an ULL (Frantzeskaki & Rok 2018). In this article we consider ULL as a container of change, wherein different stake-holders actively engaged themselves with the common objective of reaching a just sustainable urban regeneration. This research article aims to focus on these urban transformation dynamics, in particular to which extent the results from ULLs can deliver policy changes, which implies systematic governance structure changes as well. The analysis is to be done through an ex-post evaluation for the co-creation processes within the ULLs formats that occurred within the Horizon 2020 project CLEVER Cities. Within the project framework, a co-creation path-way tailored-made for integrating Nature-based Solutions in urban regeneration processes was implemented and is used for improving inclusivity (Mahmoud & Morello 2021; Arlati et al. 2021). Through a comparative case study, the evalua-tion will include: 1) the analysis of stakeholders engaged in the co-creation pro-cess and their relationships based on the stakeholder network theory; 2) the shared governance model and degree of co-creation openness and flexibility; and 3) the co-benefits expected to be generated from the collaborative process with regard to social impact (e.g. emerging social bonds and cohesion, and placemak-ing). Against this background, results will reflect in how far ULLs offer a well-grounded instrument for urban transition processes, and which restrictions and limitations have to be considered under the lenses of a social justice discourse (Curran and Hamilton 2012). Finally, conclusions will be drawn from the CLEVER Cities ULLs experience with respect to urban governance settings, introducing e.g. newly originated policies and procedures, and facilitation structures

Stakeholder Participation in the Planning and Design of Nature-Based Solutions. Insights from CLEVER Cities Project in Hamburg

Cities are essential players in responding to the present complex environmental and social challenges, such as climate change. The nature-based solution (NbS) concept is identified in the scientific discourse and further recognized by the European Commission as a part of the solution to address such challenges. Deploying NbS in urban contexts requires the cooperation of different public and private stakeholders to manage those processes. In this paper, the experiences of establishing and managing NbS-related processes following a co-creation approach in the city of Hamburg within the framework of an EU-funded research project (CLEVER Cities) are described and analyzed. The paper identifies and discusses the main emerging factors and challenges from (1) a procedural and methodological perspective and (2) concerning the different roles of the diverse stakeholders involved. This discussion is grounded in the context of existing regulations and novel concepts for citizens’ participation in urban decision-making processes. As research results, the article defines the leading players involved in the process and their roles and interrelationships, along with recommendations for future policy agendas in cities when dealing with NbS planning

Stakeholder Participation in the Planning and Design of Nature-Based Solutions. Insights from CLEVER Cities Project in Hamburg

Cities are essential players in responding to the present complex environmental and social challenges, such as climate change. The nature-based solution (NbS) concept is identified in the scientific discourse and further recognized by the European Commission as a part of the solution to address such challenges. Deploying NbS in urban contexts requires the cooperation of different public and private stakeholders to manage those processes. In this paper, the experiences of establishing and managing NbS-related processes following a co-creation approach in the city of Hamburg within the framework of an EU-funded research project (CLEVER Cities) are described and analyzed. The paper identifies and discusses the main emerging factors and challenges from (1) a procedural and methodological perspective and (2) concerning the different roles of the diverse stakeholders involved. This discussion is grounded in the context of existing regulations and novel concepts for citizens’ participation in urban decision-making processes. As research results, the article defines the leading players involved in the process and their roles and interrelationships, along with recommendations for future policy agendas in cities when dealing with NbS planning