Suchergebnisse

Knowledge about how marginalised citizens use urban spaces is hard to access and apply in urban planning and policy. Based on current debates around "smart cities" and "smart governance," the City of Odense, in Denmark, has tested the integration of "smart engagement" by means of GPS-tracking techniques into the municipality's cross-sectoral strategy for an "inclusive city." In a period of austerity, cities have the incentive to optimise public services. Hence, GPS-tracking data was produced by 64 marginalised citizens, resulting in a data inventory covering three weeks of spatial behaviour. First, this article shows how these GPS-tracking data were processed into maps without revealing person-sensitive spatial patterns. Secondly, the article explores whether such maps and the GPS-tracking techniques that underpin them are considered valid, relevant, and applicable to urban planning from the perspectives of marginalised citizens, their representatives, and municipal planners and professionals respectively. The GPS project showed shortcomings as regards the quality of the data inventory and the representativity of the mapped behaviour, which made them inapplicable for optimising dedicated public service. However, the article also finds that the GPS-based maps succeeded in being non-person sensitive and in providing a valuable platform for citizen-centric dialogues with marginalised citizens with the potential for raising awareness and increasing knowledge about this citizen group's living conditions and urban lives. An important derived effect of the project is that it has ensured ongoing cross-sectoral collaboration among a range of professional stakeholders, imperative for ensuring creating greater equity in urban planning.

Community planning has undergone changes in direction over time, from a traditional neighbourhood approach seeking to ensure well-functioning local communities to a newer focus on the feasibility of neighbourhood-based urban renewal for combating segregation. The latter initially concentrated on the internal social relations of disadvantaged neighbourhoods, but nowadays the focus for interventions is changing towards opening up such neighbourhoods to improve their external relations with more affluent surrounding districts. This article unfolds the visions related to a new urban planning strategy for constructing common meeting places inside disadvantaged neighbourhoods, which seem closely related to the political discourses about the need for opening these neighbourhoods up. Specifically, the article scrutinises the visions for two meeting places currently being constructed in two Danish neighbourhoods characterised as disadvantaged, and it examines which problems these meeting places seek to solve and how they are intended to provide for publicness. The study reveals that, despite being part of the same strategic funding programme and having similar problem framings, it is claimed that the two future meeting places will provide for publicness in distinct and context-specific ways. Furthermore, we show that the way problem representations entangled in specific political discourses are being manifested in specific local planning strategies may have contingent, yet potentially pervasive social and physical consequences for local neighbourhoods.

The purpose of Work Package 5 Deliverable 5.1., "Case study reports on energy efficiency and behaviour" is to present examples of behavioral interventions to promote energy efficiency in cities. The case studies were collected in January – June 2014, and they represent behavioural interventions from different sectors of energy efficiency from the following PLEEC partner countries: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the UK, the Netherlands, Estonia, Bulgaria and Spain. Each case is presented shortly with key details of budget, target group, and methods as well as a short assessment of main success factors. The main addressees of D5.1. are city officials, NGO representatives, private sector actors and any other relevant actors who plan and realize behavioural energy efficiency interventions in European cities. The WP5 team will also further apply results from D5.1. with a more general model on how to conduct behavioural interventions, to be presented in Deliverable 5.5., the final report. This report will also provide valuable information for the WP6 general model for an Energy-Smart City. Altogether 38 behavioural interventions are analysed in this report. Each collected and analysed case study represents one way of conducting an intervention to promote some energy saving measures in a specific context. Each case study has been evaluated in terms general success, effectiveness, cost-efficiency and relevance. The main purpose of evaluating the case studies was to establish as accurately as possible that the reviewed interventions have achieved their goals of promoting energy efficiency in different key fields. How well suited each intervention type is for other contexts and countries, will be analysed more deeply in the WP5 final report. Energy efficiency is high on the European agenda. One of the goals of the European Union's 20‐20‐20 plan is to improve energy efficiency by 20% in 2020. However, holistic knowledge about energy efficiency potentials in cities is far from complete. Currently, a WP4 location in PLEEC project page 3 variety of individual strategies and approaches by different stakeholders tackling separate key aspects hinders strategic energy efficiency planning. For this reason, the PLEEC project – "Planning for Energy Efficient Cities" – funded by the EU Seventh Framework Programme uses an integrative approach to achieve the sus‐ tainable, energy– efficient, smart city. By coordinating strategies and combining best practices,PLEEC will develop a general model for energy efficiency and sustainable city planning. By connecting scientific excellence and innovative enterprises in the energy sector with ambitious and well‐organized cities, the project aims to reduce energy use in Europe in the near future and will therefore be an important tool contributing to the EU's 20‐20‐20 targets.