December 2024
New Publication: Urban Doers Community Policy Paper
The Urban Doers Community publishes 12 policy recommendations for sustainable cities, such as a democracy label for public participation, a one-stop-shop online platform for energy sharing and more.
The Urban Doers Community now releases 12 actionable policy recommendations aimed at empowering city policymakers, national agencies and the EU Commission to drive effective urban transformation.
As part of the European Partnership programme Driving Urban Transition, the Urban Doers Community brings together local expertise from community groups, NGOs and small start-ups to address the unique challenges of sustainable urban development across Europe. Urban doers identified challenges cities face, highlighting actions authorities can take to address them and the expected benefits in the short and long term.
Four of the policy recommendations address mobility, energy, waste and participation challenges:
1. Public funding to engage civil society in local policy-making
When it comes to infrastructure design and traffic management, a challenge cities face is that local governance often falls short of aligning policies with the specific needs of residents. A proposed solution in the Policy recommendation 1 is to improve mobility in cities is that national or international authorities provide conditional funding or educational resources for municipalities to include civil society in policy decision-making. These incentives can help shifting the perception of public participation from a concession to a critical component of high-quality policymaking.
2. A one-stop shop for initiating electricity sharing projects
For the establishment of renewable energy in Europe, a challenge cities face is that some countries do not permit energy sharing, while in others, the process for initiating energy communities is overly complex.
In turn, this discourages participation and limits potential benefits energy sharing might bring. To overcome this, local initiatives propose three steps authorities such as Ministry of Energy and Distribution System Operators (DSOs) could take.
The first step is to
“Create a comprehensive online platform that acts as a one-stop shop for initiating electricity sharing projects. This platform should streamline the licensing process, provide clear information, and offer various flexible energy sharing models to users.” – Policy recommendation 8.
The expected impact of these measures is the emergence of energy communities and local electricity sharing projects, leading to a significant increase in renewable energy production.
3. Recycle and reuse – facilitate community driven waste management
Municipal waste management faces big challenges when it comes to recycling at the consumer level, especially because of its costs.
Many people do not know how to sort and recycle correctly, which leads to more waste contamination and higher processing fees. Taking three steps can make local, community-driven waste management systems work better and encourage people to reuse items whenever possible instead of just recycling them.
One of the proposed actions is to
“Facilitate collaboration between public and private sectors to enhance communication and dissemination efforts.” – Policy recommendation 4.
4. Democracy label for public participation
The quality of engagement of residents in decision-making processes is important for democracy. However, it is difficult to assess in how open is a participation process to co-creation and experimentation, not aiming to implement predefined results.
One of the recommedations to the EU is establishing ‘A democracy label for public participation’ across the EU. Criteria for the democracy label may include the extent of power transferred from government to residents, the creativity allowed within the participation format, the transparency of the process, its understandability, and its popularity among citizens.
An action recommended to the EU is to
“Allocate an independent budget for a dedicated team responsible for developing the criteria catalogue and issuing the democracy scores” – Policy recommendation 3.
As a result, the label would provide EU residents with information about the effectiveness and inclusivity of various participation formats, and make participatory formats comparable.
» Read more about the Urban Doers Community