ULL WORKSHOPS 1 – The visioning process

In 2019, the three first big Urban Living Lab (ULL) workshops with citizens and local stakeholders were carried out in the framework of the Creating Interfaces project in three cities Wilmington/USA in April 2019, Slupsk/Poland in May 2019 and Tulcea/Romania in July 2019.

Urban Living Lab Workshop 1 in Wilmington, DE/USA

The thematic focus for the Wilmington ULL1 was on community energy and resilience. Wilmington was assigned the Energy system as its starting point within the FEW nexus. Desk research for WP1 revealed significant vulnerabilities to the city’s Energy system due to climate change impacts of rising temperatures and coastal flooding, driven by sea level rise. Desk research also failed to uncover existing community conversations about strategies to address Energy vulnerabilities within the city. The community energy focus was then chosen by the project team in discussion with local stakeholders as an entry point for the Wilmington ULL1 given existence of the problem and lack of conversations on the topic.

All workshops had the same basic structure as exemplified for the Workshop in Wilmington:

Urban Living Lab Workshop 1 in Slupsk/Poland

In Slupsk, the local thematic focal point is food supply, especially in public institutions such as nurseries, kindergartens and primary schools. This focus was chosen in exchange with local stakeholders because of their earlier experience with food program in public kindergartens “Fashion for healthy food”. The food supply and food quality is also an issue in the Slupsk’s strategic programs for example local development strategy.

The workshop participants were kindergarten staff and parents as well as representatives of the city administration.

Urban Living Lab Workshop 1 in Tulcea/Romania

The local thematic focal points in Tulcea concern Zaghen Lake , an area of 2.2 km2 were water has different usages: environmental, gardening and farming. More specifically the participants discussed irrigation of local gardens. The total number of participants to the workshop was 43. Among them were local stakeholders, mostly representatives of different administrative units like the deputy Mayor of Tulcea, 2 representatives of the prefecture, national health authority as well as from utilities and local farmers.