- listening, understanding and laying the foundations for action
Here, the Together for Helsingborg 2030 project explains what they have done and how it can contribute to a faster transition journey in other cities.
In connection with the development of Helsingborg's climate and energy plan for 2025-2030, a political decision was made to conduct climate dialogues with the city's residents in 2024. The purpose of the climate dialogues was to increase residents' commitment to the city's climate neutrality goals, and to find out what transitions residents are willing to make. The feasibility study focused on key actions that need to be implemented in order for Helsingborg to achieve climate neutrality:
Over the course of the project, Helsingborg's environmental administration held 25 climate dialogues, and the Helsingborg Climate Agreement Association, which was a project partner, held five additional dialogues. The dialogues were held in different forms and sizes.
Two-thirds of the dialogues were so-called broad dialogues. These interactions were shorter and aimed to reach out broadly to the community to gain an overall understanding of residents' awareness of the city's climate goals, general level of knowledge about climate issues, and their interest in various sustainability topics, such as transportation, private consumption, food, and more. The broad dialogues took place as part of larger events, where random event visitors were met by the project team and various dialogue tools. One of the more effective tools was the Future Race flyers, which had thought-provoking headlines such as "Now you can apply for a flight. Helsingborg allows 100 flights a year" and "Rare wild bees and butterflies appear over the city. Fewer hard surfaces led to biodiversity explosion". These quickly created an entry point for conversations about individuals' thoughts and feelings towards specific themes.
A third of the dialogues were more structured, so-called ' deep dialogues'. These dialogues were stand-alone events where invited participants were guided through visualization activities or experiences of a prototype of the future: The Factory of Coexistence (VFS), in order to have deeper group conversations about different visions, values, fears and hopes related to the role of the individual and society in the climate transition. The VFS is a result of the project's speculative design work, co-funded by Vinnova. The VFS invited participants to travel to 2040 and visit a fictional government agency. The authority, VFS, collects data on the climate footprint of citizens and ensures that everyone complies with future climate laws and regulations that promote a sustainable society.
As part of the Future Journey, participants had the opportunity to use a digital future artifact - the Habit Declaration - which showed their climate footprint in five different habit categories (transportation, energy, food, consumption, waste and aviation). The VFS as a whole created a different entry point for residents to talk about the possible consequences of what we as a society decide to do or not do.
An important part of the feasibility study was to strengthen the municipality as a learning organization. We created a learning network open to both internal and external actors in resident involvement and climate issues. During five meetings, we shared insights and challenges from the feasibility study with high transparency. The lessons learned were disseminated through the network, and through collaboration with Öppen academia (a regional knowledge platform) and during the Helsingborg Impact Innovation Summit.
One challenge we faced with the in-depth dialogues was engaging target groups with high climate footprints, as most participants who signed up were already interested in climate issues. Personal invitations via email or phone calls proved effective, although resource-intensive. Another challenge was to integrate different skills and levels of knowledge about methodologies in the project team. There were advantages to having a cross-sectoral group, but it created challenges between different business objectives and cultures. However, we realized our own paradigms in engagement work, where often internal structures and unspoken feelings guide the approach. This self-awareness led to a clearer citizen perspective in the climate dialogues.
The climate dialogues reached a total of around 700 residents, including around 200 people who responded to our climate survey.
Regarding the feasibility study, we have achieved our objectives:
''Speculative design unlocks a lot of things - not least creativity and having fun for both staff and residents. It evokes emotions in a completely different way.''
Olov Källgarn, Project Manager, Environmental Management
Olov Källgarn, Olov.Kallgarn@helsingborg.se
Four work packages were led by the above activities. The environmental administration and the association were responsible for the planning, implementation, evaluation and follow-up of the climate dialogues. The City Management Administration, with the support of external speculative design designers, coached the working group and provided operational support, including coordinating the future prototype, leading the in-depth dialogues and disseminating the project's lessons learned internally and externally.
We believe that the insights and lessons we generated from the feasibility study can be useful for other municipalities interested in working strategically with citizen engagement and/or exploring speculative design as a method to engage citizens in societal challenges.
To follow Helsingborg's work with the climate dialogues, contact Olov.Kallgarn@helsingborg.se or this link.
The initiative is part of the Viable Cities call #13.
