2-GETHER

Final report group 2

Höfn – Narvik – Sonderborg - Ystad

Picture from Höfn

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Picture from Narvik

2-gether At the kick-off meeting in Oslo 2017 the four towns of Höfn on Iceland, Narvik in Norway, Sonderborg in Denmark and Ystad in Sweden were merged together into group #2. These are all small to medium sized towns with lots of similarities, shared opportunities and challenges, and the representatives agreed that the goal for the group should be “a vibrant sustainable town development”.

Although the four towns have a lot in common, it was a challenge to find a common ground to work on. Focus was set on increased livability and co-creation. Urban planning and youth development were identified as two needs to be covered, which resulted in two different single projects.

The two single projects are:

1. Implementing SDGs in urban planning in small towns; Ystad and Höfn.

2. Youth empowerment in sustainable urban development; Narvik and Sonderborg.

Co-creation has been a leading ambition throughout the project, both within the group and in the single projects. The projects have been evaluating each other throughout the process, at first with a Plan-Do-Check-Act scheme, but later in a more casual and agile manner as it was more beneficial for the matter. It has been of great value for both single projects to share input and reflections.

Results - mutual learning experience In the beginning the towns seemed quite similar with mutual challenges and opportunities. As the group worked more thorough with finding a common project it was clear that they needed different approaches on how to adress them. This was both good and bad in the way that it took a while to realize how to take on the project. In trying to find the common project topic the group performed an initial workshop which was quite a breaking point for the group, resulting in two separate projects. A lesson learned is that it is sometimes necessary to disagree before you come to a mutual conclusion.

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The project demanded continuous communication, both between the group members and towards our stakeholders, which challenged the participants to try out different ways of communicating. For the project as a whole, It turned out that sometimes people have different pictures of what the project should lead to, or actions to succeed, which can be difficult to realize if you don´t meet physically. Skype meetings are helpful when cooperating between countries, but they need to be complemented by physical meetings, although they are time consuming. In short, communication was a very important aspect of the project that led to enormous self reflection during the process. Although we are all from Nordic countries, we work in different contexts. Therefore it is necessary to experience each others towns and local circumstances in order to have a deeper understanding of these contexts. Hence, it has been useful to be able to travel around visiting each other's towns, thus getting some field work done. Communication in English is sometimes a barrier to overcome but necessary to realize when working in an international project.

It has been a bit frustrating to work in a project with such a loose framework and unclear picture of the final output and oiginal expectations. It would have been beneficial for the end goal to know from the start what was expected of us. However the freedom of being able to own the process and develop the project as we go has been motivating and educational.

For a project like this to work in a smooth way, it's preferable to have a core group of project members who knows eachother, the meaning and purpose of the project and what is expected from whom. It can have a positive side effect to invite different people to attend in order to get a broader understanding of the project within the participating organisations. It is also beneficial with a combination of group members with both mandate to be operative locally and with strategic abilities.

A project like this needs some time to find it´s way from test to performance, especially when working in a municipal context. This also means that the results and output might take a while.

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Picture from Höfn

Single project 1:

Implementation of UN sustainable development goals in local planning in smaller nordic towns.

Participants: Ystad and Höfn municipalities

Local governments define their future vision regarding land use, transportation and structure of various kinds through their planning process. That includes dealing with various aspects that are particularly important in the context of sustainable development. Certain assumptions are taken into consideration as part of the planning process and it is important that sustainable development goals (SDG´s) become a part of them. In this way significant steps towards sustainable development be taken.

In the beginning of the project both Ystad and Höfn were lacking long-term strategies that include holistic planning regarding traffic, green structure and recreation, and they faced sustainable urban planning as a common challenge. Although the challenges they faced were somewhat different, a mutual focus on sustainability in both cases was likely to lead to good results. Therefore the purpose of the project was on how the SDG´s could become one of the main driving forces in the process of sustainable urban planning.

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With co-creation as our common overall ambition, special emphasis was laid on including all the departments within the municipality and relevant stakeholders in order to create a common process and long term working method.

The aim of the project was to find and test relevant existing methods to consider the SDG´s and implement sustainability in the planning process in small to medium sized towns. The idea was to downscale solutions that originally fitted bigger cities to be applicable in smaller Nordic towns. Höfn tested the method of the Maptionnaire mapping tool, and Ystad looked into the use of and testing the «Citylab-method» by Sweden green building council. Both methods turned out as useful tools and our belief is that with this project the participating towns took important steps towards sustainability, as well as creating valuable knowledge useful for other Nordic towns.

Economy: The project was granted 374.000 Dkr

More detailed description of the project

Activity Planned Performance

Create lokal working groups

To ensure cross sectoral engagement in the project there should be, in both towns, established working groups with representatives from different sectors of the municipalities. Different stakeholders should be invited to participate in group meetings when found relevant. The groups should take part in the planning of local case studies and also participate in a seminar focusing on the first steps in the development of the working method that integrates the SDG´s into urban planning processes.

During the project, each town had a working group with municipal representatives and external stakeholders identified.

Ystad has been working with different constellations during the project with representatives from different municipal functions like urban planning, urban development, sustainable development, technical department (streets, parks, water and sewage and waste), culture, business and tourism. The working group has been engaged in the different activities during the project presented below.

In Höfn, the working group included representatives from different sectors in Hornafjörður Municipality; technical department, employment and tourism development, education and youth. In addition, we had representatives from Nýheimar Knowledge Center, Vatnajökull National Park, Southeast Iceland Nature Research Centre and University of Iceland Research Centre in Hornafjörður. The working group attended seminars and study trips, as well as added valuable review to the work.

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Common Kick off seminar

All participants should have a better understanding of how the SDGs can be used as a tool in the urban planning process to ensure a high sustainability standard and a greater understanding of the project and the specific challenges of the participating towns.

The kick off seminar was held in Ystad and had 30 participants in total. Six of them came from Höfn and the rest was from Ystad and surrounding municipalities.

Keynote speakers presenting::

- How can we put demands on developers regarding taking sustainable consideration and performance into account when assigning them.

- Citylab as a tool for implementing SDGs in urban development.

- Sociotope mapping as a tool to get an understanding of how public spaces are used by citizens and visitors.

The participants got information about the single project and specific challenges and opportunities that could be addressed within the project.

A workshop was held to find out how the two towns could use this project to work more with the SDG´s and integrate them in the municipal processes. The workshop also gave the working groups an idea of how to deliver a common working method to be able to compare results.

The participants appreciated the kick off seminar especially when it came to getting a better understanding of the project and of the different methods introduced.

Study visit

External input to a common local working method.

In Ystad a deeper understanding of City Lab as a method was desired and the project management concluded that it would give greater pay off at this moment to have a full day education for a larger amount of people, than to go on a study trip with just a few. This was approved by the Nordic Ministry. This resulted in a joint education in Citylab as a method and implementation of the SDGs, addressing the issues of a small town specifically, with 25 participants both politicians and officials from different administrations in the municipality.

In April 2019 a cross sectoral administrational group from Höfn went for a study visit to Utrecht in the

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Netherlands. The aim of the study visit was to learn about Utrecht´s ways and experience with integrating the SDG´s into the planning processes, the SDG´s Dashboard and co-creation between different stakeholders. Also, to get inspiration from their work for a better eco-friendly transportation system in towns/cities.

The group met with representatives of the City of Utrecht to discuss the use of SDG´s in the planning process and learnt that the work that Utrecht has pursued regarding implementing the SDG´s in the planning process is very ambitious and impressing, thus both educational and inspirational for us. After the meeting the group went on a guided biking tour as both an educational- and inspirational activity. In the tour the group visited some of Utrechts main public places and green areas.

The working groups from the two towns have shared their experiences with each other.

Drafting a working method

There are many methods of sustainable urban development, but they are primarily designed to work in larger cities. Instead of inventing a new method, we wanted to use an existing method that can be scaled down to the small town's perspective produced in co-creation with identified stakeholders.

Ystad has, based on City lab-method, adapted the method in order to improve the dialogue between different administrations during the planning process. A clear focus has been on creating consensus on priorities and generating a more resource-efficient process with greater participation and long-term sustainable results.

Ystad is proceeding its aim for a more cross-sectoral and integrated planning process with sustainability issues based on the global sustainability goals.

Höfn decided to use Maptionnaire, as presented by Vasa Municipality at the conference in Ystad, in the project. Maptionnaire, which aims at increasing co-creation through public participation, was well applicable for the purpose of the project in Höfn. That is, as a platform for an online, survey on public opinion regarding green areas, walking- and hiking paths.

With Maptionnaire an online survey was conducted, where residents were asked about their use of cycling and walking paths as well as recreational

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areas in the municipality. Also, the aim of the survey was to bring forth residents ideas and future vision regarding these same issues.

Based on the results of the survey a plan was drafted, covering cycling and walking paths as well as recreational areas in the municipality.

Case studies

Experience on different ways of working with Co-creation in urban development.

Test selected method and a working model supporting local strategic development issues. The model can be implemented and used in towns all over the nordic countries.

Ystad: A proposal for smart utilization when planning new public spaces in the new harbor area considering resilience, flooding capacity, accessibility and safety as some of the key elements. (SDG 11.7)

Höfn: A proposal to a SDG based Eco-friendly transportation plan for the municipality. Aimed at promoting the use of eco-friendly transportation and enhancing

In Ystad, a first step to test the Citylab method has been taken. In order to measure the level of sustainability in the urban development plan for the Harbor City (Hamnstaden), the plan was tested against the 17 focus areas of the Citylab Action Guide. The work was done jointly in a group with representation from different competencies. The focus areas are based on the SDG:s and is a way to secure that bigger urban development projects are sustainable in every aspect through the phases of planning, development and building. The test resulted in a new chapter in the urban development plan with recommendations on how to perform a higher sustainability standard in the Harbor City project. (See attachment)

Due to the delay of the harbor city which was the original plan in Ystad, we have investigated areas to use as a case to implement the integrated planning tools regarding public spaces. This resulted in a planning workshop concerning a new school yard in Ystad implementing co-utilization, i.e. how we can use the school yard as a shared public space were we consider the aspects of goal 11 and CityLab (resilience, climate adaptation, social sustainability, health etc.). The workshop was hosted by the architects performing the plan, with participants from a broad diversity of departments within the municipality. The participants found the working method as a useful tool to implement sustainability in the planning process.

The first steps in Höfn were to draft questions for the Maptionnaire survey based on the SDG´s and the focus of the case study. Höfn had a workshop with consultant Stefán Gíslason, specialist in

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opportunities for outdoor activities in natural surroundings in town.

environmental management and policy. At the workshop we discussed methods to implement the sustainable development goals in the planning process. The workshop was also attended by our working group. Together the group reviewed the questionnaire and worked on further developing the survey based on the SDGs. The project benefited greatly from that work, along with the knowledge from the Study Visit in Utrecht.

The Maptionnaire survey was launched with a public meeting May 15th. 2019 where the method and tool were explained to residents. The survey kick-off was very important to optimize public participation (co-creation). Extra help was offered to the ones who preferred, such as senior citizens. Before the kick-off the draft survey was discussed and accepted in all levels of administration in Hornafjörður Municipality.

Based on the results of the survey a plan was drafted, covering cycling and walking paths as well as recreational areas in the municipality. One green area has been selected to work on further with a landscape architect, based on the SDG´s and the survey results.

Knowledge exchange activity

Exchange knowledge and experience gained from the case studies and how to implement the results of the project.

The two working groups had two meetings to exchange knowledge. The kick off meeting in Ystad and a follow up meeting in Höfn, where the working groups from the two towns shared experiences.

In between, the participants of group 2 (2-gether) met and exchanged knowledge at the planned group meetings and plenary meetings within the bigger project Attractive Nordic Towns. The project administrations in Höfn and Ystad had regular reconciliation via Skype and email.

Result Professional

- The urban development plan for the Harbor City (Hamnstaden).- Recommendations for the planning of a new school yard in Ystad.

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- Recomendations from the City lab method adapted to the small town perspective.- Drafted plan for Höfn covering cycling and walking paths as a transportation system,

as well as recreational areas in the municipality.- A detailed plan for a green area that has been selected for further development of a

landscape architect. The development will be based on the SDG´s and the surveyresults.

Learning It has been an advantage to work with existing methods already tested and implemented. This has given the project the opportunity to focus on the challenges that the small town has to solve and still benefit from the experiences of others.

● Looking into the planning process and using City lab has put light on strengths andweaknesses in Ystad and the small town perspective. For example there has beendifficulties to get people to be engaged in the project because of a slimmedorganization, but the slim organization also means shorter decision paths.

● In order to change working structure and shared responsibility there is a need for anoverall process leader assigned for the task. To change structures takes time and toimplement new methods requires stubbornness and consistency to succeed.

● Co-creation in the planning process can create a conflict of interests and thereforeprioritizing and compromising might be necessary d.

● The project has put further emphasis on the need of a long term strategy in order toprioritize and coordinate efforts and budgets within the municipality.

● By introducing and using Maptionnaire as a tool in the planning process,Hornafjörður Municipality was able to reach more people than through classic publicmeetings. It was also a way to retrieve feedback from a much broader audience.

● Being a small town in the first stages of implementing the SDGs into all policies theImportance and need for relevant expertise becomes obvious. This also applies tothe work of implementing the SDGs in the planning process.

● Political willingness is very important for the progress of the project.● Authentic communication between authorities and the public.

Communication and cooperation Results of the project will be communicated on the municipal official websites, local paper and in social media. The project has been regularly presented to local committees and final results are still to be presented to all committees. In Höfn the results of the project will also be presented on a public meeting.

Höfn and Ystad sgl. project – Web summary

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Group number two „to-gether“ in the ANT project, decided early on in the project to work towards „a vibrant, sustainable town center“, with co-creation as the leading ambition throughout the project. Höfn and Ystad set their focus on creating long-term strategies that include holistic planning regarding traffic, green structure and recreation, as they faced sustainable urban planning as a common challenge. The aim of the project was to find and test relevant methods regarding the use of the SDG´s and implementing sustainability in the planning process in small to medium sized towns. The idea was to down scale solutions that originally fitted bigger cities to be applicable in smaller Nordic towns.

During the project the towns tried and tested two different methods as a way to implement the SDG´s in urban planning, where the sustainability goals would serve as the main driving force in the process of sustainable urban planning.

Höfn decided to use the Maptionnaire tool as a platform for an online survey, which was well applicable as it aims at increasing co-creation through public participation. The design of the Maptionnaire questionnaire was based on SDG 11 and SDG 3, where residents were asked about their use of cycling and walking paths as well as recreational areas in the municipality. Additionally, the aim of the survey was to collect residents ideas and future vision regarding these same issues for drafting a long term plan based on the results.

Ystad worked with the City lab-method from the Sweden green building council, elaborating on using the method to improve the dialogue between different administrations during the planning process. A clear focus was on creating consensus on priorities and generating a more resource-efficient process with greater participation and long-term sustainable results. Ystad is proceeding its aim for a more cross-sectoral and integrated planning process with sustainability issues based on the global sustainability goals.

Both methods turned out as usefull tools from the smaller town perspective and our belief is that with this project the participating towns took important steps towards sustainability, as well as creating valuable knowledge for Nordic towns.

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Picture from Sonderborg.

Attractive Nordic Towns – Group 2, subgroup 2

YOUTH co-creation and participation Background Narvik and Sonderborg Municipality has collaborated on strengthening the town's attractiveness and sustainability of the two towns by focusing on co-creation, youth involvement and empowerment, in fx. urban planning. The goal is "a vibrant sustainable urban development" for the towns, focusing on co-creation and in this case youth as a target group.

In order to secure valid and sustainable youth empowerment and co-creation with youth, we have worked on developing a Methodology and guideline for youth-empowerment and participation. We are expecting this methodology and guideline to contribute to a more proactive youth empowerment approach. The goal is that empowerment of youth will lead to improvement of attractiveness and thereby sustainability of the towns.

By engaging youth to take action and providing them with tools to express themselves, fx knowledge of processes in political decision-making. Through this youth will learn that their knowledge and voice is valuable in for instance planning processes and political debates in the municipal councils.

By being towns that focus on empowerment and co-creation with youth, we expect youth to find it more appealing to live in our towns after having finished studies or when searching for jobs or new places to live.

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In order to achieve our goal of developing a valid methodology and guideline we have been cooperating with youth councils in both Narvik and Sonderborg. We have also cooperated with local young entrepreneurs, local business communities, politicians and young people in generel between 15 and 25 years old.

For the project Narvik and Sonderborg was granted 187.000 dk kr. The grant should be spent on local workshops, unexpected costs, meetings and travel costs and external consultants.

In our action plan, we planned to introduce the two local youth councils to each other, create a Facebook platform for them and to have them meet each other in Narvik.

We also planned to host a youth and stakeholder workshop in both Narvik and Sonderborg. Furthermore, Sonderborg would be hosting a youth summit, with a high level of youth involvement and empowerment. Parallel with these activities, we planned to develop a methodology framework in cooperation with consultants, which would be tested on the youth summit in Sonderborg. At the end of the project, we would have a well worked through methodology for empowering youth through co-creation and participation.

We will make sure that the methodology and guideline will be anchored in the two towns.

Detailed description of the project To start our project, we decided to introduce the two youth councils from Narvik and Sonderborg to each other. In order to create a stable foundation of the project we found it important that the target group of the project was involved in the project early on and introduced to each other. This way the council representatives would feel ownership of the project and the cooperation with the target group would be strengthened.

We also created a Facebook group, in which it would be possible to communicate with and inspire each other. We choose Facebook as a tool, because the two councils are located so far from each other and it would be the most convenient and informal way to communicate.

As we had decided to find out how to empower and involve youth in municipal decision-making processes, we found it important to cooperate with an external consultant. We invited several consultants to give an offer on the tasks, and found the offer from Ungdomsbureaet most aligned with the project.

The reasoning behind working with an external consultant is, that we ourselves are very involved in the way we work in the two municipalities, and we needed “new eyes” to assess how to involve and cooperate with youth in a fruitful way.

At the group meeting in Narvik, we also planned for a meeting between the youth representatives and Sonderborg brought 3 youth representatives to Narvik for the meeting. The youth had meetings where they discussed the content for the Youth Summit 2019 in Sonderborg in august. This led to a deeper involvement of the youth in the project.

In December 2018 Narvik held a Innovation camp Narvik, where 750 pupils from four different municipalities participated. The purpose of the innovation camp was to increase knowledge

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related to important issues to which the municipality wants answers. Exercise in devising creative solutions for future needs. Increase students' awareness, knowledge and attitudes related to issues and topics through the use of innovation camp as a method.

During the camp, students received challenges and assignments that they should solve within four different themes:

1. Climate and environment

2. Transport and mobility

3. Urban development

4. Welfare and technology

The assignments themselves have been prepared in collaboration with the municipality and the students had a defined problem that they would find solutions to during the Innovation Camp. They worked in groups and presented the solutions to a jury, which selects a winner based on given criteria. In the jury, dozens of people from the municipality and the local business community lined up. These came from UIT Campus Narvik, Futurum, several representatives from political parties, HRS and many more. The input will be used in Narvik's new municipal plan. Narvik has recived many new ideas for new meeting places, business ideas and seen the youth's involvement in climate and environmental issues.

Two consultants from Ungdomsbureaet interviewed youth and stakeholders from both Sonderborg and Narvik, and participated in the group meeting in Sonderborg.

The consultants from Ungdomsbureaet had several interviews for the guideline and had a workshop in correlation with the group meeting in Sonderborg. Here the consultants participated, as did the project leader of the Youth Summit 2019, from Sonderborg Municipality, which was held in Sonderborg in august 2019.

This means that Sonderborg has deviated a little from the original plan and has changed the form of the “YOUTH and local stakeholder” workshop in Sonderborg. The expected outcome is still the same. Instead of the workshop, the consultants from Ungdomsbureaet had focus group interviews with stakeholders; youth, municipal workers, politicians, business owners and those wishing to engage and empower young people. These interviews focused on synergies between youth and the local community and on how to improve empowerment and participation among youth. During the project both towns has implemented the discoveries made along the way and had a great focus on involving youth where possible.

In august 2019 Sonderborg hosted a Nordic Youth Summit 2019.

The purpose of the summit was to empower youth via different workshops and activities and to test the guideline and methodology, developed by Ungdomsbureaet. Based on the findings during the project and the development of the guideline, we learned that writing a charter, was not an outcome that would matter to the youth. Therefore, we decided to focus on the outcome for the youth, competencies, empowerment, tools, confidence and skills, instead of a charter.

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We engaged Ungdomsbureaet to carry through the workshop etc. on the summit and therefore it was easy to go through adjustments for the methodology, based on the findings from the summit, with the consultants.

This has resulted in a very well worked through methodology and guideline, which is easy to implement and work with across the Nordic countries.

Results Professional results we have received during the project is the methodology and guideline.

This tool can be used in a professional context and for both professional and volunteer work, youth, politicians etc.

Other towns and municipalities can benefit greatly from using the guideline and methodology, as it is easy to implement and work with. It will be beneficial when working on projects and processes where different target groups and stakeholders are considered. Especially when dealing with youth as a target group.

There is no introduction needed to the guideline, it is written so that it will be accessible for all. However, Sonderborg is aware that there might be a language barrier, which is why Sonderborg has chosen to have the guideline translated into Danish.

In general, it is clear that there is a language barrier in the project, which is why we find that it would be beneficial for the countries to translate the guideline. The guideline can be used without getting into the theoretical work of the methodology. We estimate that people who are interested in the methodology would be able to read it in English.

Narvik Municipality will be using the methodology in the planning process for a sustainability conference for youth, involving youth from the region.

The goal is to use the SDGs on local challenges and opportunities, which affect the youth, where the youth must make suggestions on how to interact and solve the tasks. Local youth must also rank which SDGs are most important to them. The result is presented to the political leadership and will be used as input for Narvik's new municipal plan.

We have also learned that although Sonderborg and Narvik are very similar, we are also very different. It has been very clear, that the communication, the way each municipality works and the way each municipality engages in a project like this, is different. This is food for thought when participating in future projects. Even though we are similar across the Nordic countries, we are also very different and this can make the communication flow and cooperation rather difficult.

Communication and cooperation In Sonderborg, we have started a process of spreading the Methodology for youth engagement and empowerment to firstly Sonderborg Municipality and thereafter external cooperation partners and other who might have an interest. We are determined to introduce our colleagues that does not naturally cooperate with youth, to the methodology and guideline. We believe that this will benefit and work towards a better and easier way of incorporating youth in decision-making processes and other activities where it would be relevant.

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We will start the introduction at management level, to ensure that the entire organization is aware of this and hereby it will be possible to distribute the guideline and methodology broadly in the municipality and introduce employees and colleagues to the methodology and guideline.

Narvik Municipality’s goal is to implement the methodology as a tool for participation in the municipality of Narvik and in the rest of Norway, as well as the other Nordic countries we have collaborated with in the project.

This can be done by publishing the methodology on the municipalities' websites, on the websites of the Ministries and the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Narvik also find that the methodology is most user-friendly, if it would be translated into all the five Nordic languages.

We have finalized the project and now have a guideline and methodology, which is conveying new knowledge to us and gives us new competencies in our everyday work. Furthermore, we have learned a lot about the process of involving youth and are now able to make our experiences clear to our colleagues and cooperation partners via the Methodology for youth engagement and empowerment.

We are excited to distribute the methodology and guideline and hope it will contribute to an enhanced focus on youth empowerment, involvement and participation all over the Nordic countries, as it has in Sonderborg and Narvik.

The Methodology for youth participation and empowerment (full version) will be accessible on the webpage of the Attractive Nordic Towns.

Web presentation: Narvik and Sonderborg Municipality has collaborated on strengthening the town's attractiveness and sustainability of the two towns by focusing on co-creation, youth involvement and empowerment, in fx. urban planning. The goal is "a vibrant sustainable urban development" for the towns, focusing on co-creation and in this case youth as a target group.

In order to secure valid and sustainable youth empowerment and co-creation with youth, we have worked on developing a Methodology and guideline for youth-empowerment and participation.

We are expecting this methodology and guideline to contribute to a more proactive youth empowerment approach. The goal is that empowerment of youth will lead to improvement of attractiveness and thereby sustainability of the towns.

By engaging youth to take action and providing them with tools to express themselves, fx knowledge of processes in political decision-making. Through this youth will learn that their knowledge and voice is valuable in for instance planning processes and political debates in the municipal councils.

By being towns that focus on empowerment and co-creation with youth, we expect youth to find it more appealing to live in our towns after having finished studies or when searching for jobs or new places to live.