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Short Abstract

The ‘BuurtKennis' project is taking a citizen-led bottom-up approach to identifying and implementing local CS investigations for a healthy & sustainable living environment in response to the topics that neighbourhood residents indicate as most important to them.

Abstract

Given the urgency and complexity of urban issues such as climate change impacts, the energy transition, and the need for a healthy living environment, paired with the need to act collaboratively across all sectors of society to tackle these effectively, the 'BuurtKennis' project (initiated by the Citizen Science Lab at Leiden University) is establishing a bottom-up partnership between public, civil and scientific actors that: (A) engages with residents on the issues they find most locally relevant, (B) deepens this engagement into more active participation in local dialogue, and data and insight gathering via Citizen Science activities (C) aligns aggregated data with policy-making and urban planning processes such that these data and insights can lead to data-informed actions, (D) and establishes a sustained collaborative partnership between residents, citizens’ initiatives, civil society organisations, the municipality, and knowledge institutes in Leiden.

In this presentation we will describe the BuurtKennis approach and share (1) the emerging picture of which topics are most relevant in which neighbourhoods, (2) our experience of partnering with existing local grassroots initiatives for a green, sustainable and biodiverse city, and with the relevant policy and data departments of the city, (3) the neighbourhood-led approach to selecting and launching CS initiatives that can provide data and insights to inform policy, planning and local actions, and (4) our vision for embedding the resulting CS within the ‘Leiden City of Knowledge’ partnership (Leiden Kennisstad) between the Municipality and the Leiden Knowledge Institutes (and their students).