European project · Participatory governance

Greengage

Promoting the green and digital transition towards carbon-neutral cities.

About the project

GREENGAGE raises public awareness of environmental challenges (climate change, poor air quality, healthy living) by showing the urban environment ‘as it is’, highlighting information and other gaps in the reliable data held by public authorities.

Greengage is a citizen science project that aims to promote the green and digital transition towards carbon-neutral cities. To do this, it brings together two dimensions.

First, it seeks to improve the intelligence behind cities’ decision-making and governance by drawing on citizen observations combined with existing technologies such as Copernicus, GEOSS and in-situ data, among others, all brought together through innovative governance models.

Second, Greengage makes the most of social and cultural opportunities to encourage citizens to take an active part, through Citizen Observatories, in collecting and using data for decision-making, following the ‘Smart Urban Governance’ model.

The project is built around 5 pilots in different regions of Europe: Bristol, Turano, Noord-Brabant, Copenhagen and Gerace.

Project objectives

Increase public awareness of, interest in and engagement with urban environmental issues.

Provide scientifically sound and rigorous methods for understanding environmental data.

Promote and secure wider acceptance and use of citizen-generated data in environmental policy-making and decision-making, moving towards citizen-centred urban governance, by validating and demonstrating its added value through the GREENGAGE Citizen Observatories and pilots.

Promote the co-creation of data solutions for the urban environment to support environmental observation and validation through the GREENGAGE pilots.

Build synergies between partners, citizen observatory networks and initiatives, and environmental agencies, to share best practice and ensure that successful Citizen Observatory experiences can be transferred, adopted and replicated in different contexts across Europe and with different groups, so that society is properly represented.

The role of Ibercivis

– Developing methodologies for setting up citizen observatories, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches and ensuring meaningful citizen participation at every stage, right from the start

– Creating resources to ensure public engagement and participation throughout the project

– Communicating and disseminating project milestones and results

– Building an international community of citizen observatories

– Impact maximisation activities