Project description
Citizen participation for sustainable airport and seaport development
Airport and seaport territories play a vital role in logistics, trade, and economies, facilitating growth, globalisation, and enhanced access to distant goods and services. These territories are crucial to achieving national objectives and the goals outlined in the European Green Deal. Despite recognising the potential for citizen participation, akin to initiatives like the Driving Urban Transitions Partnership, challenges impede progress. The EU-funded HubCities project addresses these challenges by training innovative urban planners who leverage citizen science to enhance citizen participation in urban planning and sustainability efforts. Additionally, the project will develop a platform for improved communication and data sharing, establish a citizen engagement lab, and create a planning toolkit.
Objective
Airport and seaport territories are special types of areas. They are hubs, centers of transport or transshipment activities, and centers of territories and networks that consume resources (land, water, and air). In Europe, there are 347 airports and 3,024 seaports. The challenges they face are at the heart of the EU’s policy frame of reference—confirmed, for example, by the Driving Urban Transitions partnership, which guides much-needed urban change toward a sustainable future. These challenges are addressed by a novel approach. The main aim of the project is to train a new profile of urban planner that is able to use citizen science in such difficult urban planning situations. Engaging residents in co-design, citizen participation, and citizen science is a bottom-up approach that is still underused. In applying a bottom-up approach, any further spatial development of these territories would include the perspectives of their inhabitants. Thus, an important step would be taken toward a long-term spatial future strategy. To be better understood, these territories need to be named as HubCities and decoded as an urban resource. Three supporting instruments will make it possible to develop a methodology: HubCities platform (as a communication instrument), HubCities labs (as an event engaging citizens), and HubCities toolkit (as a planning tool for citizens). The paradigm shift caused by such an approach would be applicable in practice, research, and education. Three selected HubCity regions will serve as a testbed: the airport and logistics center of Graz (Austria), networked passenger airport at the Koper seaport (Slovenia), regional passenger airport of Trieste port city (Italy). As a result of the project, my career prospects as a researcher will grow decisively: I will become the leading figure in adapting urban planning procedures with citizen science, approached by colleagues and actors for transfer of the skills acquired and high-quality planning solutions.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia