Become a candidate for the Liveable Cities Label!

The partnership of the Liveability project invites you to get involved in designing a better future for Baltic Sea Region cities and making them more liveable.

What is the Liveable Cities Network about?

Two years ago, a group of cities in the Baltic Sea Region started on their journey towards becoming (more) liveable by using design principles in public service delivery and urban planning.

Together with academic and civil society organisations, they developed the “Charter for Designing Liveable Cities”, a document that outlines shared values and objectives that can be summarised under the term “public interest design”. The charter’s six principles are meant as an inspiration for cities to rethink policy and programme planning to be better able to cope with current and future transformative challenges and to become closer to citizens.

In 2025, the Liveability project partnership intends to establish a Network of Liveable Cities to facilitate cooperation and exchange among likeminded representatives of local public administration and civil society and to start awarding the “Liveable City” label to cities that make a conscious and substantial effort to implement design principles in the domains of public administration and citizen engagement.

Who can join, and how?

Any local public authority can become a candidate city for the label and engage in exchange and collaboration with other cities in the Baltic Sea Region for one year to better get to know the Liveability Design Approach. At a conference that is planned for the end of 2025, all cities that have signed the “Charter for Designing Liveable Cities” will be the first to receive the “Liveable City” label and become the core group of the Liveable Cities Network that will serve as a Baltic Sea wide centre of excellence on public interest design for the years to come.

What is the Liveability Design Approach and how can cities benefit from it?

The “Charter for Designing Liveable Cities” is a proposition for strategically anchoring design principles in decision-making and to create a forward-thinking mindset at all levels of public administration. But how to put design principles into concrete practice in the city and its neighbourhoods for the benefit of residents and local businesses? To provide answers to these questions the Liveability project is also developing a practice guide and a training programme that candidate cities may use to build capacity for public interest design in different departments of local administration. Both the practice guide and training programme will be published in this webspace soon!

Start your own journey towards Liveability by implementing a pilot project!

The journey towards liveability is not a short one. Look at those cities that are considered as particularly liveable today – it took them years and sometimes decades to change structures and processes and implement design-driven approaches that have a visible and sustainable impact! We recommend that each city starts with a locally rooted pilot project in one of its neighbourhoods to try out the Liveability Design Approach. This pilot can be focused on any current urban challenge, be it inner city development and revitalisation, integration of migrants, citizen engagement or innovative ways of delivering public services that are accessible for everyone.

Check out the pilots implemented by the Liveability partner cities to learn more!

Our city is interested. How can we learn more?

Send us an e-mail (mailto: info@liveable-cities.net) and we will get in touch with you to provide more information, invite you to webinars and events and bring you in touch with peers from other Baltic Sea Region cities! 

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