2gether
Co-creation as a tool to reach a vibrant and sustainable town development
Höfn - Narvik – Sönderborg - Ystad
What makes a
town sustainable, attractive and
vibrant?
Co-creation and awareness rising by - Integrating sustainability in the town
planning process
- Youth engagement and empowerment
Implementation of UN SDG:s in local planning in smaller nordic
towns.
Actions, results and recommendations
Actions taken in Ystad
Actions taken in Höfn
Maptionnaire - communication tool for urban planning.
- Inspiration and education
- Developing the Maptionnaire Survey
- Enhance public participation
- Work with the findings
- Next up!
Results & Recommendations
Sunrise over Höfn harbour Sun setting over Ystad harbour
Youth Empowerment Metodology
Narvik Municipality & Sonderborg Municipality
Youth Empowerment Metodology
Young people are moving away from Narvik and Sonderborg. Not enough people are moving back.
In order to create sustainable towns, we need young people to live in them How can we make young people choose to live in our towns?
By making sure they feel like a part of their local community.
How do we do that?
Empowerment
• By making young people aware that they are wanted and needed in our local communities
• By involving young people in local decision making processes
• By showing young people how to take action
• By doing co-creation with young people
• By empowering young people
“The task is to create an openness, and a belief that we can do something, create something. Get things done. And the task is for
everybody: We need to believe that we can do it, and the people working in the municipality or elsewhere… If they think we are just some stupid kids who don’t know how to do anything, well, then we
will be those stupid kids who don’t get things done”
(High School Student and a member of the Student Council)
How to…?
Narvik and Sonderborg in cooperation with Ungdomsbureaet
• Ungdomsbureaet has a lot of experience with involving youth, co- creation and empowerment
• Empirical foundation based on 24 individual interviews with youth and stakeholders from Sonderborg and Narvik
• Workshop with youth from both cities and 10 Vox pop interviews with students
• Based on the findings:
Youth Empowerment Metodology
Metodology Part 1 – Best Practice Guideline
Metodology Part 1 – Check List
Metodology Part 1 - Tools
Metodology Part 2 - Analysis
"That is sometimes the problem.
They say "well, here is a project and we want to include young people".
If we said "now we want to include the municipality" then the municipality would feel like they had to do something extra…
Like "oh wow, do we have to be a part of that? How do we get the resources to do that? How can we finance it?"
It is the same with young people. Now the municipality have an extra assignment and:
"wow, do we have to be a part of that?"
Some might find it interesting, but you have to consider what the young people actually want. Give us boundaries and support us in what we want to do"
(Member of the Youth Council)
The metodology + guideline will be available for you to use
Youth Summit 2019
Sonderborg tested the guideline on YS19
• 45 participant (30 from Sonderborg, 15 from Finland, Norway and Sweden)
• Youth takes ownership, when they are invovled
• They found strength in discussing challenges and actions with likeminded youth
• No changes to the guideline
Youth's Sustainability Conference
• Narvik Municipality will use the methodology in planning a new youth's sustainability conference in November 2019.
• The goal is to use SDG on local challenges and opportunities, which affect the
youth, where the youth must make suggestions, on how to interact and solve the task.
• They must also rank which SDGs are most important to them
• The result is presented to the political leadership and to input into Narvik's new municipal plan
