UrbanTestbeds.JR

In the project UrbanTestbeds.JR, public authorities use artificial intelligence and storytelling to co-create, together with the youth, climate and sustainability plans for urban spaces.

The project URBANTESTBEDS.JR intends to encourage experimentation as a significant means to build resilient communities. Focus is on inclusive spaces for tangible experiences in sustainability and climate mitigation action with and for young citizens. Aim is to strengthen the participatory capacity for young citizens whilst at the same time fostering perspective changes in urban planning with and for the new generations. This project views the participatory capacity as a prerequisite to be inclusive in regard to a resilient community, in our case: young citizens.

In 2021, the German Constitutional Court ruled that climate action plans need to be altered so that the burden of climate change adaptation would not be left to future generations. Municipalities and districts across Europe and the Baltic Sea Region are at various readiness levels to include young citizens in urban planning and experimentation. Our project wants to contribute to the enablement of young citizens to participate in planning and application by means of experimentation capacity building and the aforementioned perspective changes.

The encouragement of experimentation in the context of sustainability and climate mitigation includes urban testbed experimentation, service experimentation and experimental governance. The capacity building has three components: 1) AI supported understanding and deconstructing of climate plans and their transformational paths for a local perspective, relevant for experimentation, 2) scoping meaningful and tangible urban experimentation in testbeds, and 3) storytelling the impact and perspective of the experimentation by means of data-based storytelling with local relevance AND interregional transferability.