Green Digital Charter
Currently viewing the tag: "Reykjavik"
On Tuesday 30 January 2018, two GIS experts from the city of Bratislava were crossing the corridors of different buildings of the municipality of Reykjavik. Their presence in the premises of the Icelandic capital’s administration was related to a peer-learning visit organised under the Green Digital Charter initiative.
Focus of this second GDC work-shadowing visit was on citizen participation in local decision-making and how ICT can support democratic deliberation and participatory budgeting.
Reykjavik was awarded runner-up for the GDC 2016 Award in the category ‘citizen participation & impact on society’ [more info].
The project has also been presented in the course of a webinar [watch the recording here].
On the agenda
In the morning, visitors were welcomed with an introduction and overview of public participation projects in Reykjavik, followed by a detailed presentation of the processes, design and executions of projects under the umbrella of ‘My Neighbourhood‘ participatory budgeting project, managed by the non-for-profit Citizens Foundation. The afternoon was dedicated to the implementation of projects with citizens, service centres, neighbourhood councils. An additional meeting was organised on the following day to deepen some topics.
Spotted by Bratislava in the 2016 edition of GDC case-studies, ‘Better Reykjavik‘ is an online consultation platform connecting the city administration with its citizens. Learning from Reykjavik’s participatory budgeting tool was seen as an opportunity for Bratislava to better connect with its citizens, in particular when managing green areas and transportations, road services and city planning.
More information on GDC/GuiDanCe training activities at http://bit.ly/GDC-training-activities.
On 30 and 31 May, Edinburgh hosted the first ‘work-shadowing visit’ organised under the Green Digital Charter/GuiDanCe umbrella. Delegates from the cities of Oulu and Reykjavik had the chance to discover Edinburgh’s sustainable policy and objectives, in which ICT play a central role.
Get insights from the visit in our storify timeline here!
Extract from Storify (bit.ly/2r8EGi5)
Day 1 : In-site visits
After a first meet-up in the historical City Chambers, participants headed to the University of Edinburgh, a pioneer in terms of IT research.
To achieve its ‘smart transformation’, the City Council relies on strong relationships with research partners. Edinburgh Living Lab (ELL) also established within the University, plays the essential role of ‘experimentalist’ in the field of social innovation.
By organising a visit to ‘Transport for Edinburgh’ in the afternoon, the host meets its Oulu delegates’ own priority in terms of urban development: the implementation of a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP).
Day 2: Sustainable Edinburgh 2020 [watch the video]
On the second day, participants were invited in the Council’s main offices to discuss over Edinburgh’s sustainable development policy and objectives.
ICT play there an important role : from reporting energy consumption and improving energy efficiency in public buildings to supporting the ‘open space strategy‘ developed by the Council to enhance citizens’ interaction and ownership with their environment.
Particularly innovative is Edinburgh’s use of ICT in its sustainable urban food policy. From interactive maps to food apps, how can ICT drive change in citizens’ eating habits and attitudes toward food in the city?
Your city has signed the Green Digital Charter and is interested in visiting one of its peers?
Contact Rebecca Portail (project support officer) at rebecca.portail@eurocities.eu
At 14:00 CET on 14 March, EUROCITIES hosted a public webinar on citizen participation and co-creation in smart cities, where the experiences gathered from the Sharing Cities and Green Digital Charter projects were shared with the participants.
WATCH THE WEBINAR
Reykjavik
Reykjavik
Magnus Y. Josefsson presented the Better Reykjavik collaborative online platform, through which citizens can submit policy proposals to the municipal government. ‘Better Reykjavik‘ was among the shortlisted projects in the “Citizen participation & impact on society” category of the 2016 edition of the GDC Awards.
Find out more about Reykjavik’s SMART projects and priorities here.
Milan
Milan
During a recent peer-learning visit organised in Milan in the frame of the Sharing Cities project, ‘fellow’ city representatives heard a presentation about the host city’s civic crowdfunding practices.
Find out more about Milan’s SMART projects and priorities here.
About Sharing Cities
Sharing Cities (www.sharingcities.eu) ‘lighthouse’ programme is a proving ground for a better, common approach to making smart cities a reality. By foestering international collaboration between industry and cities, the project seeks to develop affordable, integrated, commercial-scale smart city solutions with a high market potential. The project partners work in close cooperation with the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities (EIP-SCC) and with other ‘lighthouse’ consortia. Sharing Cities offers a framework for citizen engagement and collaboration at local level, thereby strenghtening trust between cities and citizens. The project draws on €24 million in EU funding. It aims to trigger €500 million in investment and to engage over 100 municipalities across Europe.
Since there cannot be a smart city without smart citizens, the award winner in the first category will be a project that has successfully involved citizens and/or other civil society stakeholders; has adopted a bottom-up approach; and is expected to tackle, or has already tackled, local societal challenges.
Of the 14 projects nominated in this category, three stand a good chance of winning the award:
- Reykjavik’s Better Reykjavik and My Neighbourhood e-participation projects
- Utrecht’s Traffic lights hotline
- Zaragoza’s Citizen Card
‘Better Reykjavik’ and ‘My Neighbourhood’ online consultation tools
Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, aims to enhance citizen participation by developing two dedicated online platforms.
Better Reykjavik is an online consultation forum where the locals can submit, discuss, and prioritise ideas about the municipality’s public services and administration. Each month, the top-rated ideas are processed by the council ‘s standing committees.
Once the feasibility and costs of each project have been assessed, citizens are invited to vote on them in My Neighbourhood, another tool that enables them to participate in the annual budgeting process.
Since its launch in 2010, Better Reykjavik has inspired more than 70,000 people to propose and discuss over 4,500 ideas. To date, 420 ideas have been approved by citizens via My Neighbourhood.
The city of Reykjavik operates these websites jointly with the Citizens Foundation (www.citizens.is), a non-profit organisation dedicated to encouraging citizen participation in governance.
Further information about Reykjavik’s cooperative initiative is available at http://reykjavik.is/en/better-reykjavik-0.
Contact person: Kristinn Jon Olafsson, project manager, Reykjavik smart city: Kristin.jon.olafsson[at]reykjavik.is
Utrecht’s smart mobility project: ‘Traffic lights hotline’
Utrecht, the fourth largest city in the Netherlands, is often referred to as a cyclist’s paradise. This rapidly growing city faces new and unexpected challenges directly linked to its bike-friendly policies. Every day, upwards of 100,000 cyclists ride across the city, sometimes even causing traffic congestion … for their fellow cyclists! Many of them feel that the city’s traffic lights could be better configured, and that some are actually not necessary at all.
Pursuing a smart approach to mobility, Utrecht municipality launched, in February 2015, Traffic Lights Hotline, an online service asking residents to report traffic lights that could be deactivated (for part of the day) or reprogrammed. Nearly 5,000 reports have been received.
The hotline has since become a permanent service, enabling intelligent traffic flow management and improving traffic safety.
The hotline is available at http://mobiliteitsdata-utrecht.nl/verkeer/vri/ (in Dutch only).
Contact person: Muriel Pels, advisor international cooperation and EU funding affairs; m.pels[at]utrecht.nl
‘Zaragoza Citizen Card’
Zaragoza, capital of the Spanish region of Aragon, is located halfway between Barcelona and Madrid. It counts among Europe’s first open-source cities. Zaragoza Citizen Card is a multi-service smart card that can be used for accessing public services and facilities, including payment processing services.
To date, over half of Zaragoza’s a
dult population have already applied for such an ’all-in-one’ digital key to more than twenty municipal services, including public transport, parking, public libraries, swimming pools, and wifi.
This card is only one example for Zaragoza’s collaborative approach to smart city transformation. In addition to saving costs and making citizens’ life easier, the card comes complete with an open public API (application programming interface), which can be used by citizens to ask questions, and which generates data that can be fed into the city’s innovation ecosystem.
Contact person: Daniel Sarasa Funes, smart city programme manager: dsarasa[at]zaragoza.es
