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Short Abstract

Co-Creating Our City engaged youth, local politicians, and municipal staff as citizen scientists in Düsseldorf and Charlotte to address gaps in local participation policy. Findings highlight safe spaces and schools as key for democratic engagement, with lessons on enabling policy influence.

Abstract

The Citizen Science project Co-Creating Our City (Düsseldorf, Germany and Charlotte, USA, May 2024 – October 2025) explored how youth and local decision-makers can collaboratively address gaps in municipal participation structures—transforming local governance through participatory knowledge production. Responding to the broader issue of limited direct dialogue between young people and policy actors, the project focused on a concrete municipal policy challenge in each city: the mismatch between existing engagement opportunities and the actual needs of youth at the local level.

Young people, local politicians, and municipal staff acted as citizen scientists alongside academic researchers, jointly designing and implementing interviews, observations, and online surveys. This collaborative process not only generated actionable knowledge but also fostered new forms of policy-relevant interaction between administrative staff, elected officials, and the young citizens they serve.

Findings in Düsseldorf revealed the critical role of “safe spaces” for youth participation—settings that enable open discourse and trust-building—and underscored schools as key arenas for democratic learning. Both have direct relevance for municipal policy, informing strategies for inclusive youth engagement and the institutional frameworks that support it.

In line with the panel’s focus, this contribution reflects on enabling conditions and barriers to policy influence from a citizen science approach, with particular attention to how decentralised, locally rooted collaboration can shift epistemic authority. It will also compare outcomes between the two cities, highlighting what facilitated—or hindered—the translation of citizen-generated insights into actionable municipal policy change.