Attractive Nordic Towns Group 4 Final Report 1st December 2019

1. DESCRIPTION AND PURPOSE OF THE PROJECT

The Attractive Nordic Towns ("The Nordic Countries in Transition". The presidency project "Attractive towns. Green redevelopment and competitiveness in Nordic urban regions. Towns that provide a good life for all") project was initiated by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2017. The project was led by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Care Services and the Ministry of Climate and Environment. The purpose of the project was to help small and medium-sized towns to become more livable and prepare a joint Nordic strategy for how towns and their surrounding areas can become more attractive through the development of vibrant and inclusive urban environments that are economically, environmentally and socially sustainable.

Municipalities in working group 4 come from , Finland and Iceland. As towns were encouraged to send in a joint application for participation in the project, both the Norwegian and Icelandic towns committed to that approach. This results in unusually many towns working together in this group. From Norway, the towns of , and applied together as cooperation of the Innherredsbyene in Trøndelag region. From Iceland, Mosfellsbær and Fljótsdalshérað sent in a joint application.

The participants in group 4 of the Attractive Nordic Towns project are therefor: o Levanger, Norway o Steinkjer, Norway o Verdal, Norway o Pori, Finland o Fljótsdalshérað, Iceland o Mosfellsbær, Iceland

Municipalities in working group 4 in the project have joint challenges which made them perfect partners for the project. The joint challenges were: • How to make town centers more livable and interesting for citizens • How to preserve natural and cultural heritage in sustainable urban development • How to increase public democracy and participation for decision making. • How to use public democracy and citizen involvement to make more attractive towns

The towns decided to adapt a joint action plan through increased participation of the citizens and the cooperation with stakeholders to create more attractive and sustainable towns. In order to achieve this goal, the partner towns decided to select an appropriate participatory method for small and medium-sized municipalities. This method should be flexible for the different partners by which the professionals of relevant municipal units working with municipal planning and area development can improve their skills and foster their capacity to apply an integrative and cross-sectoral approach in handling urban sustainability issues. By exchanging the experiences between the partners, it is aimed to benefit throughout the project time span a transnational learning process within grounded on a shared Nordic organizational culture.

Objectives: • Induce more collaboration across sectors (public-private-citizens-academia) • Exchange practice/experience with other towns through co-operation • Find an appropriate method for small and medium-sized towns • This method should be flexible and adaptable for each municipality • Allow for co-operation between towns and ability to evolve and change

2. SUMMARY OF ACTION PLAN

The Group 4 decided to adapt and develop the Small TownLAB method to the local context of municipalities by conducting experiments addressing the following common challenges: • Livable town center • Sustainable transport • Nature and cultural heritage in sustainable urban development

Besides utilization of the methodology the working group was interested in developing a Small TownLAB “Give and Share LIBRARY” for collecting experience, knowledge, ideas and questions and to ensure lasting cooperation to achieve sustainability goals.

The Small TownLAB work was realized in diverse way by the partner towns. The aim was to create partnership by engaging large range of stakeholders and use different tools for knowledge development and experimental design. Implementations are based on local needs of developing citizen involvement, co-creation and participatory planning. The means to conduct cross-sectoral cooperation and focus areas of the selected three topics that reflect the planning practices of each town and adopted strategies and policies for promoting urban sustainability.

A Small TownLAB can be: • a permanent place - a meeting place in one or more locations in the town, with information and knowledge exchange • a mobile "place" that moves around and meets people wherever they are, or a pop-up activity • a digital platform • a combination of the above

We wanted to meet stake holders on their terms, arenas and through communication channels they normally use. We therefore concentrated on establishing meeting places for citizens and making pop-up activities in a wide variety of locations, such a town centers, business meetings, schools, shopping centers, town fairs, research festival and universities

Goals for Small TownLAB • Increasing the participation of the citizens and the cooperation with stakeholders for creating more attractive and sustainable town centers. • Developing the Small TownLAB as an appropriate method and meeting places for small and medium-sized municipalities in municipal planning and development work. • Make our towns more attractive

The Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation gave support to Group 4 with 750 000 DKK. After a thorough discussion in the group decision was made to allocate equal amount of money to each town, regardless of their size and if they applied jointly or separately. Each town has allocated with 125 000 DKK and have already received the amount and committed it to their project.

3. LOCAL ACTIVITIES AND EXPERIMENTS

The progress plan included to the Action Plan has been in main lines followed by the partner towns except that Give and Share Library, which was instead of creating a specific web based data bank was implemented by using a word press site (https://townlab.eu/). In addition the Group 4 enhanced the knowledge sharing using Facebook and Teams as communication tools. The group 4 considers that it is worth to maintain the word press site even after the ending of the project in order to provide a platform where the results of the collaboration of partner towns can be promoted for the wider public.

Further discussion was initiated with the program leaders and funding parties in order to transfer the future maintenance of the site to an appropriate organization representing Nordic cooperation.

In the initial phase of the project most of the partner towns had challenges to settle the Small TownLAB concept to their local context and policy environment, because the method was relatively new for the members of the local project teams. For example, in Iceland the municipal election took place in May 2018 and produced a delay and complications because new politicians had to be connected and involved of the initial planning phase. The Icelandic municipalities successfully tackled the challenges of the initial phase and moved pragmatic way to implementing their own TownLAB versions. Pori needed more time to be familiar with the Small TownLAB principle in order to figure out how to persuade other collaborative partners in the town and decided to realize diverse small TownLAB experiences. In some partner towns other ongoing projects working with citizen participation created fruitful conditions having a synergic boost for initiating new explorations for TownLABs. Municipalities of Innherredsbyene and especially Levanger succeeded to launch its activities in a most dynamic way and reached quickly the experimental phase. All partner towns managed to start their local experiments in the beginning of 2019, with the opportunity to review the outcome the end of 2019.

Levanger

Levanger´s activities included co-creation with and involvement of the inhabitants through workshops and arrangements, replacement of a public car park with popup activities, i.e. children´s street party and introduction of city bikes. Levanger gained synergic benefit from its various ongoing initiatives for a sustainable development (Levanger’s wooden got national protection as a cultural heritage area in 2018). Their demonstrated complex view on the sustainability approach combining different type of actions unbiased way serves as an example for other partners.

Levanger has established "Levanger by&bygdeLAB" in four different places in the municipality. A working group has been established with the local population where various meetings and activities have been arranged.

The work will continue after the project period and will eventually become a permanent solution for the municipality.

Co-creation and collaboration with the inhabitants take place through dialog and is based on trust.

Steinkjer

Steinkjer´s activities included meeting people in shopping market and at town markets, launching web-based surveys, planning how to contact retailers and building owners, redefining development tasks based on use surveys involving wide range of stakeholders and co-creating for transformation of new areas Steinkjer had four objectives when they first started the ANT TownLAB activities: - Induce more collaboration across sectors (public-private-citizens-academia) - Establish an experimental approach, in order to build practice-based knowledge - New policy development through broader/ more diverse decision basis - Exchange practice/ experience with other towns

They wanted to meet stake holders on their terms, arenas and through communication channels they normally use. They therefore did pop-up activities at business meetings, schools, shopping center, town fair, research festival and the university (I include some pictures from events and our logo). To plan, conduct and evaluate experiments they did surveys, a referendum and site inspections. Information on each experiment is gathered in a task matrix, to ensure openness and clarify roles and responsibilities. The matrix is updated as the experiment progresses. (I include a matrix example. It’s in Norwegian I’m afraid, but just so you see what it looks like. We call it “oppgavetabell”)

So far, they have acquired some experience, to build on. However, the collaboration across stake holders is still fragile. And the output in the form of new knowledge and policies is limited. More experience is needed to get an efficient work flow in our lab activities. They are already planning new actions in 2020 to take us further.

Verdal

Verdal´s activities for co-creation and citizen involvement included two areas in the town center: - The town square - The riverbank area

Through meetings with the citizens, businesses and volunteers, ideas for activities and physical design were generated and the town square was opened up for local activities and pop-up events – experiments. An outdoor opera event was also arranged by the local theatre group as an experiment on how well the square could work as an outdoor stage for larger events. The experiments done at the square gave valuable knowledge on how to develop the area further and try to recreate the square as livable meeting place in the town center.

The work on the riverbank followed the same pattern of citizen involvement as the town square. Open meetings were held, and ideas were generated. But when it came to conducting experiments it was harder to do, as many of the ideas generated a need for larger funding and investment and could therefore not me made temporary. Still, parts of the Small TownLAB method proved valuable to this activity also.

The work will continue to develop the Small TownLAB further and especially how to work more on digital platforms and to include the rural areas of Verdal more into the Small TownLAB.

Pori

Pori´s activities included organizing pop-up events in the market square and in the premises of the former bus station, organizing a city game workshop on the city center development with focus on sustainability approach, designing a kiosk for outdoor events, being engaged in creation of the PORIS temporary Urban LAB space in an empty retail space of the pedestrian street, organizing a city bike system and organizing citizen meetings.

Pori succeeded to keep active the project group and extending it to new units of the City Organization (Communication and Cultural unit is involved). Combining the Group 4 Meeting organized in Pori in September 2018 with the live demonstration of the Pori Small Town LAB facility (reused mobile container) was challenging, but it provided an opportunity to get direct feedback from partner towns.

As for the TownLAB idea Pori was interested to explore the potential of the underused indoor spaces for organizing pop-up events and inviting citizen to comment city center development plans and come up with their own suggestions. In the last phase of the project implementation (September 2019) Pori’s Nordic project became an integral part of the very successful Pop-Up PORIS city center development space established by the leadership of URBCultural project (InterReg). As part of a collaboration of several local projects the Nordic collaboration succeeded to give efficiently its own input to the City’s clear engagement to develop the TownLAB as a tool to improve citizen involvement.

An important finding of the project activity of Pori was that art activity is an excellent catalyst for raising the interest to valuable but underused built environments and makes visible the potential of their alternative use. The building of the former bus station as the landmark of the target area was converted to temporary art exhibition hall (Matka, September 2019) and was selected as the main venue of a spectacular light festival (Light Station, November 2019).

The impact of the Nordic collaboration for the local policy making related to the Global SDGs was important. Pori learned about the local implementation of Citylab Guide in the redevelopment project of the Västerbro area in Lund during the Group 4 study visit to Copenhagen region in spring 2019. This example along the Idea Handbook of Public Spaces convinced Pori to use the target area as a test environment to promote the SDGs.

Fljótsdalshérað

Fljótsdalshérað´s activities included creation of a physical Small TownLAB (Samfélagssmiðja) in a vacant green house to reach out to citizens for more detailed discussion on how to make the town center more attractive, make it open for meetings and social gatherings, including popup activities e.g. a flea market and a bicycle workshop. The TownLAB is also supposed to facilitate better access to politicians and administration. The initial phase was started by finding a suitable place for establishing a permanent place for the TownLAB. Considerable time has been invested in meetings with politicians and leading officers. Their straightforward approach is demonstrated by the fact that the architectural design of the TownLABs was finished in the spring of 2019 and the TownLAB opened in June. Since then several excellent ideas and projects have been brought to the attention of both the staff and politicians. A number of them have been approved and implemented e.g. an ice rink and many more are still being processed.

Mosfellsbær

Mosfellsbær´s activities included establishing an attractive physical meeting place in indoor town center to provide better services and get better access to citizens. Mosfellsbær created an information square (UPPMOS) for residents and tourists alike. The aim is to provide better information about the town and local administration and increase public participation and citizen involvement. We also wanted to make Sustainable Development Goals more visible as their importance is increasing in Mosfellsbær´s administration and policies. Mosfellsbær opened up a separate space for meetings and social gatherings in an adjacent room. Mosfellsbær plans further development of the square in co-operation with citizens through an e-democracy project called ”Okkar Moso” or ”Our Mosfellsbær” . Initial phase was started by finding a suitable place for establishing a permanent place for the Town LAB. Considerable time has been invested in meetings with politicians and leading officers. Practical things, like questions regarding architectural design and supervision of the area have also taken a lot of time. A cozy meeting place with chairs, tables and vegetation is now up and running with a large areal map of Mosfellsbær on the floor for people to find their house and get a good perspective of the town. Brochures and information about the town and administration are available in stands. Planning documents are being displayed on a large screen and special projects are being introduced on site, where citizens can express their opinion and make suggestions, facilitating citizen involvement. Citizens also have an opportunity to send general suggestions to the administration regarding the town´s services by writing their recommendations on a special glass wall. Mosfellsbær´s work with the Sustainable Development Goals are clearly visible for all passer-by. A free internet is available on site. All the actions have already resulted in better interactions with citizens and brought more life to the town square.

4. IMPLEMENTATION

The main project management and planning was done by the municipality employees. Each town has a project team or steering group consisting of professionals of diverse departments. The municipalities of Innherredsbyene has organized regularly meetings to harmonize their activity and getting benefit their joint projects. External experts were involved for providing specific data for planning or facilitating events.

There were only minor deviations from the action plan: • Implementation of the “Give and Share Library” at this point is kept simply by creating a word press site and using existing communication and collaboration channels. • In some local projects (Pori, Verdal and Steinkjer) the data collection was extended over the beginning of 2019. • Pori and Steinkjer decided not strictly to bind its TownLAB activity to the target area indicated in the Action Plan and left open the final selection of the specific development project based on the feedback of involved stakeholders. Different stakeholder group requires well adapted tailored approaches when it comes to genuine co-creation. Often being acquainted with new methods need more effort and time from the municipality both what comes to organizational capacity and professionally on personal level. • Fljótsdalshérað and Mosfellsbær concentrated mainly on establishing a physical Small TownLAB place and decided to put more effort on planning proper stakeholder interaction after the opening of their TownLABs. In the case of the Icelandic towns the main experiments were to test how the TownLAB places could be run in real life.

Conferences and meetings to other towns included in the project, i.e. to Viborg and Ystad have been a necessary part of the education process. Group meetings and visits to the partner towns have been important to increase cooperation and communication in the project. Study visits to in Norway and to Denmark and (Roskilde, Kalundborg, Lund and Malmö) to explore different types of city labs have proved vital in giving good insight into possible implementation of Small TownLABs in our municipalities. A great number of skype-meetings and e-mail communications have been an important communication channel throughout the project.

5. RESULT

During the project the towns have experienced many challenges which they had to overcome. None of the towns had a wide knowledge of international projects or cooperation and lacked experience in the field. Study trips have proved important and inspiring. The towns all experienced some resistance from stakeholders and municipal employees/politicians that had to be conquered through guidance and further collaboration. This is a long-term work with building dialogue and trust between stakeholders and all participants.

Working with a new concept like the TownLAB provided lot of information for the towns of Group 4 both on cross-sectoral work within the municipality organization and as well on how to reach and involve different stakeholders, including politicians.

Established meeting places have been successful with many citizens utilizing their potential as a platform for enhanced communication and co-creation with different stakeholders and town administration. TownLAB has proven to be an important framing of the collaboration.

The experiments have resulted in more engagement from stakeholders and politicians and more active participation from citizens, who have taken more responsibility for solutions. People talk positive instead of negatively about town development and local resources.

This methodology has proven successful in reaching out to citizens, increasing their involvement and therefore increasing public democracy, hopefully resulting in more attractive towns and increased co-operation.

This project has also increased our knowledge of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and how they can be used to promote sustainable town development.

Despite the project is nearing its end, we feel that our experiments are still in their initial phases and more experience needed to be able to evaluate the result, so this experiment will continue beyond the span of this project.

6. EXPERIENCES AND LEARNINGS

The municipalities in group 4 consider that both the working group and the executive committee has gained a lot of information about how to include citizens even more in decision making. They realized how important it is to take into an account also such practical questions in implementation like how to prevent vandalism in an open public (indoor) area. One important learning so far is understanding how demanding task it is to communicate the concrete benefit of transnational collaboration made on group and network level to other working units in the municipality petrified in their mainly silo-based structure. The towns experienced that through citizen involvement actions the interest is clearly increases and produces more creative ideas. All towns showed the effort to meet up and talk about the project as often as possible and realized how time consuming this involvement work is. From the point of policy level, we invested work to have allocations in the economy plan for further work on the sub-projects and on the methodology after the project period.

7. COMMUNICATION AND COOPERATION

The towns (or Some of the towns, Levanger and Verdal in Norway have made separate videos) have made a joint video material showing examples of Small TownLAB projects in our municipalities with pop-up events and implementation of permanent meeting places. The video is available online and can provide a good insight into the methodology and projects in each of the towns.

The towns think it is important to continue experimenting with the Small TownLAB methodology and co-operation and sharing experience between towns. Developing a Small TownLAB Give and share library (wordpress site: https://townlab.eu) for collecting experience, knowledge, ideas and questions and to ensure lasting co-operation to achieve sustainability goals might be a good idea. In general, our cooperation should continue with “SUSTAINABLE TEAMS”

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