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Conversations on Smart Heritage Cities: Engaging citizens and lessons on legal and regulatory restrictions

Written by Adrià Aguado - Project Officer Intern

 

When speaking about Smart Heritage city renewal, strategies can be implemented in which the role of citizen engagement can be viewed as crucial to ensure their success. For this reason, in the framework of the H2020 POCITYF project, we are organizing two working group meetings with experts in the field of 1) citizen engagement and 2) legal and regulatory restrictions, new technological solutions and digitalisation to dive deeper into the key issues of these topics.

On one hand, the 6th working group meeting entitled “Theoretical and practical discussions on Citizen Engagement” will take place on 9 June 2022 from 12:00 to 13:00 CET. This first meeting will focus on the topic of Citizen Engagement. After defining the concept of Citizen Engagement, the group will learn about the various levels of citizen engagement and how this affects initiatives of a territory. Best practices and practical examples in the field will also be showcased. Presentations made by Bianca Banica and Manuel Aires de Matos, experts on the field, will help connect related questions and topics around citizen engagement.

On the other hand, the 7th working group meeting entitled “Heritage cities’ energy transformation: lessons and experiences on legal and regulatory restrictions, new technological solutions and digitalisation” will take place as an in-person/hybrid event in the framework of the Smart and Sustainable Planning for Cities and Regions Conference on 21 July from 9:00 to 13:00 CET. This meeting will dig into the challenging issues that heritage cities face in transforming and adapting their historic and protected sites to carve a positive energy future. This event will be divided into 2 main parts:

  • A roundtable that will feature keynote speakers like Ceciel Nieuwenhout and Laia Guitart Caritg who will further explain the legal/regulatory framework for sustainable cities and positive energy districts and Niels Sijpheer who will focus on the process of the social, legislative and technical preparation in the Dutch context.
  • A world café section that will have the presence of Andreas Jaeger (ICLEI) who will first provide an overview of common neighbourhood-level scheme features, identifying successes as well as challenges encountered and highlighting good replicable practices across Europe. Afterwards, participants will have the choice to join a table moderated by either Andreas or other POCITYF ogranisers to elaborate more on sub-questions related to the topic.

These two events are poised to keep on tracing the future of Smart Heritage policies engaging all involved actors into an efficient, responsible and fair transition towards the cities of the future but making sure to protect their historical past.