A New Approach to Sustainable Development of Airport and Seaport Territory through Citizen Science: HubCities

Project Information

HubCities

Grant agreement ID: 101130751

DOI

10.3030/101130751

Project closed

EC signature date 28 September 2023

Start date 1 January 2024

End date 31 December 2025

Funded under

Widening participation and spreading excellence

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 171 399,36

Coordinated by

UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI
Slovenia

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HubCities (A New Approach to Sustainable Development of Airport and Seaport Territory through Citizen Science: HubCities)

Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-12-31

The HubCities project was situated within the contemporary European policy and strategic context that addressed the urgent need for sustainable, resilient, and inclusive urban development, particularly in areas shaped by large scale transport and logistics infrastructures. Airport and seaport territories represented critical hubs of mobility, economic activity, and resource consumption, yet they were frequently treated in spatial planning as purely functional or infrastructural zones rather than as integral parts of urban and regional systems. This approach contributed to spatial conflicts, environmental pressures, and social disconnection between infrastructure-driven territories and surrounding communities. Within EU political and strategic contexts such as the Driving Urban Transitions partnership, the European Green Deal, and broader strategies promoting inclusive governance and sustainability, there was increasing recognition that complex urban challenges required systemic, interdisciplinary, and participatory solutions. However, despite these policy ambitions, planning practices in airport and seaport areas remained largely top-down, with limited mechanisms for meaningful citizen involvement. The exclusion of local knowledge, everyday experience, and social perspectives from decision-making processes constituted a significant gap between identified problems and needs and existing planning practice. The overall objectives of HubCities were to address this gap by introducing a citizen science-based approach to spatial planning in airport and seaport territories. The project was motivated by the context of insufficient bottom-up approaches and aimed to integrate citizen knowledge into urban development processes. HubCities reconceptualized these territories as “HubCities”: socio-spatial systems that combined infrastructure, economic activity, environmental impact, and everyday life. In doing so, the project defined a clear pathway to impact that linked research, participation, and planning practice. The pathway to impact was structured around the development and application of participatory methodologies, digital tools, and empirical testing in selected testbed regions. HubCities combined citizen science methods, such as surveys, workshops, and stakeholder engagement, with a dedicated digital platform that enabled data collection, knowledge sharing, and communication between citizens, planners, and institutions. Through this pathway, the results of the project were expected to contribute to tackling identified problems and needs by embedding citizen-generated knowledge into planning and governance processes. The expected impacts of the project operated at multiple levels. At the scientific level, HubCities contributed to methodological innovation in participatory urban planning for infrastructure-dominated territories. At the societal level, it strengthened citizen engagement, inclusion, and trust in planning processes. At the policy and practice level, it provided transferable tools and evidence-based insights that supported alignment with European sustainability objectives. The scale and significance of the project’s expected impacts lay in the transferability of the HubCities methodology across diverse European airport and seaport contexts.
Projects under topics requiring the integration of social sciences and humanities were directly addressed in HubCities. Social sciences and humanities played a central role through the application of citizen science, qualitative research, and participatory design methods. Citizens were positioned as active contributors and knowledge holders, whose everyday experiences and social practices informed spatial analysis and decision-making. This integration ensured that technical, environmental, and infrastructural considerations were balanced with social, cultural, and ethical dimensions of urban development.Overall this section set the scene for the story of the project, demonstrating how HubCities responded to a clear societal and policy need and how its approach contributed to more inclusive, sustainable, and resilient urban development in airport and seaport territories across Europe.

The HubCities project carried out a set of interlinked technical and scientific activities aimed at developing and testing a citizen science-based approach for urban planning in airport and seaport territories. The work focused on methodological development, digital infrastructure, empirical data collection, and comparative analysis across multiple European contexts.
A central scientific activity was the development of a conceptual and analytical framework that defined airport and seaport territories as socio-spatial systems rather than purely infrastructural zones. This framework integrated spatial analysis, governance structures, and everyday practices of residents and workers, forming the theoretical foundation for the HubCities methodology. The framework was informed by extensive field research, site observations, and comparative visits to logistics and transport hubs in several European cities, ensuring scientific robustness and transferability. On a technical level, the project designed and implemented the HubCities digital platform as a core research and engagement infrastructure. The platform was developed as a multilingual, online system that enabled user registration, survey distribution, data collection, and content dissemination. Its technical functionality was tested and refined to support citizen science data gathering in multiple geographic and linguistic contexts. The platform represented a key technical achievement, providing a scalable digital environment for participatory planning research. Empirical research constituted a major component of the work performed. Multilingual surveys were designed using citizen science principles and were deployed in three testbed regions: Graz (Austria), Koper (Slovenia), and Trieste (Italy). The surveys collected quantitative and qualitative data on environmental perceptions, mobility patterns, work conditions, and daily life in airport- and seaport dominated areas. In parallel, stakeholder mapping and qualitative fieldwork were conducted to identify governance structures, institutional actors, and participation barriers specific to logistics-intensive environments. Participatory workshops were organised and implemented in the testbed regions as part of the methodological testing. These workshops provided qualitative insights into spatial challenges and local knowledge while also serving as experimental settings for evaluating participation formats. Based on observed participation constraints, the methodology was adaptively refined toward hybrid and online engagement formats, demonstrating methodological flexibility and responsiveness to empirical findings. Data management and analysis constituted another key technical activity. A structured data management framework was established in line with FAIR principles and GDPR requirements. Collected datasets were organized across regions to enable comparison and scientific analysis. This ensured consistency, traceability, and reproducibility of results, strengthening the scientific validity of the project outcomes. One of the main scientific achievements of the project was the demonstration that citizen science methodologies could be effectively applied in complex, infrastructure-driven urban territories. The results showed that citizen-generated knowledge provided valuable insights that were typically absent from conventional planning processes. The project also achieved a validated, transferable methodology combining digital tools, participatory methods, and spatial analysis tailored to airport and seaport contexts. Overall, the HubCities project successfully delivered its planned technical and scientific objectives by developing an original methodological framework, implementing a functional digital platform, generating empirical data across multiple regions, and demonstrating the feasibility and relevance of citizen science in spatial planning for transport and logistics hubs.

The HubCities project delivered results that went beyond the state of the art by introducing citizen science methodology as an innovative and operational approach to the spatial planning of airport and seaport territories. These territories had traditionally been designed through predominantly top-down planning methods, with limited consideration of citizen perspectives and everyday practices. HubCities demonstrated that citizen-generated knowledge could be systematically integrated into planning processes, thereby expanding existing planning paradigms and addressing long-standing structural gaps between infrastructure development and social realities. An overview of the results showed that the project successfully developed and applied an integrated framework combining participatory methodologies, qualitative and quantitative data collection, and a dedicated digital platform for engagement and knowledge exchange. These results were empirically tested and validated in testbed regions in Graz (Austria), Koper (Slovenia), and Trieste (Italy). The platform and participatory tools enabled the collection of citizen perspectives on environmental conditions, mobility, work environments, and daily life in airport- and seaport-driven territories, demonstrating the feasibility and robustness of the HubCities approach in real-world contexts. The potential impacts of the project were significant at scientific, societal, and policy levels. Scientifically, HubCities contributed a transferable methodological model for participatory planning in complex, infrastructure-dominated urban areas. Societally, the project supported increased transparency, social acceptance, and trust in planning processes by enabling meaningful citizen participation. By incorporating citizen-generated knowledge into spatial decision-making, HubCities promoted more inclusive and sustainable urban development and aligned planning outcomes more closely with local needs and lived experiences. In terms of policy and practice, the HubCities results demonstrated strong relevance for municipalities, regional planning authorities, and infrastructure operators. The project provided evidence-based tools and processes that could support the implementation of European sustainability objectives and participatory governance principles in airport and seaport territories. The potential impacts therefore extended beyond the immediate testbed regions and contributed to broader European discussions on sustainable mobility, land use, and democratic participation in urban planning. To ensure further uptake and success, the project identified several key needs. These included further research to assess the long-term impacts of citizen science-based planning approaches and to evaluate how such methods influenced governance structures and planning outcomes over time. Additional demonstration activities in other geographic and institutional contexts were required to strengthen evidence of transferability and scalability across diverse European hub territories. Access to markets and finance represented another key need for uptake. While HubCities had been developed as an open and transferable framework, future success depended on the availability of sustainable funding models that supported platform maintenance, training activities, and implementation in planning practice. This could include public funding, institutional support, or hybrid models combining public-sector adoption with service-based offerings. Regarding commercialisation, the HubCities approach was particularly suited to service oriented models, such as consultancy, training, capacity building, and digital participation services for municipalities and planning authorities. These models could support wider adoption while maintaining the open and inclusive character of the methodology. Finally, successful uptake benefited from a supportive regulatory and standardisation framework that recognised and encouraged participatory and citizen science-based approaches in spatial planning. Alignment with planning regulations, policy guidelines, and institutional procedures at local, national, and European levels was crucial for embedding the HubCities methodology into urban planning practice. Internationalisation through European research networks and policy platforms could further strengthen visibility, knowledge exchange, and adoption beyond the initial project scope.
Overall, the HubCities project delivered robust and transferable results with clear potential impacts, while clearly identifying the key needs required to ensure long-term uptake, sustainability, and success in citizen science-oriented planning for airport and seaport territories across Europe.

Project presentation and workshop (cs) in Graz (AT).

Field observation and survey distribution (cs) in Graz (AT).

Implementation of citizen science (cs) in Graz (AT).

Project workshop (cs) in Trieste (IT).

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - HubCities (A New Approach to Sustainable Development of Airport and Seaport Territory through Citizen Science: HubCities)

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