🌳 CLEVER Cities Project Summary: Co-designing Nature-Based Solutions for Social Inclusion
The CLEVER Cities project utilizes Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) to address urban challenges and promote social inclusion across cities in Europe, South America, and China. The project’s core innovation lies in the concept of co-creation, where local governments, civil society, universities, and businesses work directly with citizens to design, test, and implement NBS.
🎯 Overall Objectives and Approach
The project sought to position NBS as a means to improve public health, social cohesion, citizen security, and economic opportunities in often deprived urban areas lacking quality green spaces.
Core Objectives
- Increase and improve local knowledge of nature-based solutions.
- Demonstrate that greener cities work better for people and communities.
- Contribute data and information to EU policy-making.
- Promote and enable the global uptake of nature-based solutions in urban planning.
Implementation Strategy
- Front-runner (FR) Cities: Hamburg, London, and Milan established CLEVER Action Labs (CALs)—specific areas where NBS were implemented through intensive co-creation with local citizens (the “experts of their areas”).
- Follower (FE) Cities: Sfantu Gheorghe, Quito, Madrid, Belgrade, Larissa, and Malmö replicated and tailored the NBS solutions to their local needs, guided by roadmaps and governance/business/financial guidance co-created by the project team.
- Knowledge Transfer: The project established learning platforms and training opportunities to share best practices globally, raising the profile of EU leadership in the NBS market.
💡 Main Results and Innovation
The project focused on testing and proving an innovative, participatory methodology for NBS implementation.
1. Co-creation and Governance
- CLEVER Cities Guidance: The project launched comprehensive guidance and promotional materials detailing its co-creation approach.
- Co-design of NBS: FR cities built the basis of innovative NBS, investing significant effort in keeping Urban Innovation Partnerships (UIPs) engaged and active throughout the process.
- Replication Strategies: FE cities successfully established new urban governance schemes and developed robust plans and strategies for NBS replication and mainstreaming.
2. Monitoring and Economic Embedding
- Co-monitoring Activities: Significant effort was placed on involving local stakeholders in co-monitoring activities to customize Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the monitoring process to the specific expected outcomes of the CALs.
- Policy and Economic Impact: Strategies were developed to embed the implemented solutions into a broader economic perspective, gathering impact assessment results to directly influence policy-making.
3. Global Outreach and Scaling
- The project successfully scaled out the CLEVER Cities approach globally, using the UrbanByNature (UbN) hubs to accelerate global awareness of the benefits and co-benefits of urban NBS interventions.
- The project’s outcomes were disseminated at more than 100 events (academic, local, and political), maximizing the impact and fostering future uptake of NBS.
🚀 Progress Beyond State-of-the-Art and Impact
CLEVER Cities made substantial progress by testing a novel, “bottom-up” approach to urban regeneration.
- Testing Co-Design: The project went beyond the state-of-the-art by offering an opportunity to test the co-design of NBS with diverse stakeholders and citizen-based urban living labs. This practical, comparative assessment unlocked innovative ways to interact with traditional urban planning policies.
- Focus on Inclusiveness: The central inquiry—whether a co-creation, co-design, and co-management approach would successfully dictate social inclusiveness and positive impacts on citizen health, safety, and economic prosperity—is a key advancement in NBS research.
- Legacy: The project contributes valuable evidence to the field where little research was available at the time of its inception. The commitment by partners to continue monitoring the impacts of the implemented NBS in future years will serve as a vital long-term legacy for policy-makers and practitioners.
