FFaced with accelerating climate change and oppressive heat, cities today are called upon to change rapidly. But the challenge is daunting. To increase the pace of change without provoking resistance, to find creative solutions that are truly adapted to needs, it is necessary to involve citizens and local economic players, to place them at the heart of the ongoing metamorphosis.
The urban experimentation platforms, born in the Scandinavian countries, and which are now multiplying all over the world, can play a central role. The first French steps in this direction deserve to be supported proactively, with significant budgets.
The European project OrganiCity, carried out at the end of the 2010s in more than forty cities, from Brussels to London, via Lisbon, Copenhagen or Edinburgh, shows the crucial contribution of these new generation consultation tools which, by providing key information to citizens and all stakeholders, encourage them to get involved in municipal choices and to co-construct solutions with elected officials.
In Aarhus, Denmark, for example, inexpensive sensors have been installed to continuously monitor air pollution in every street of the city, with maps of this pollution being made available to the general public. Such a tool has helped cyclists optimize their routes by time, avoiding the most stale-looking lanes.
Fuel public debate
Above all, it has fueled public debate, with the inhabitants of polluted neighborhoods having factual elements to demand that measures be taken to protect their health. HAS Brusselsa team is working in a similar way to provide all residents with a map of noise pollution, street by street, at every hour of the day and night.
This policy of transparency is a way of combating distrust of politicians. Because many decisions taken in recent years, under the banner of limiting climate risk, have actually favored sub-sections of the population… already favored.
Self-service bicycles, for example, are used much more by city center dwellers than by lower-income suburbanites. Certain measures taken to reduce traffic in one district also sometimes lead to a deterioration of the situation in another, whose inhabitants have been less able to make themselves heard by elected officials.
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