UrbanTestbeds.JR: Empowering Young Citizens to Shape a Sustainable Urban Future

Context and Challenge
UrbanTestbeds.JR emerged in response to a critical gap in urban development: the lack of meaningful engagement with young citizens in shaping the future of their cities. Across the Baltic Sea Region, communities face complex challenges such as climate change, urbanization, and sustainability. Yet, the voices of young people - those who will inherit these challenges - are often absent from decision-making processes.

The challenge: how can communities not only engage young citizens but also empower them to co-create solutions for a sustainable urban future? How can capacities be built in the community to engage young citizens? UrbanTestbeds.JR set out to tackle this by creating a framework that bridges the gap between young citizens, public authorities, and other stakeholders, ensuring that youth engagement becomes a cornerstone of urban development.

Solution
UrbanTestbeds.JR developed a comprehensive solution: the "Playbook - UrbanTestbeds.JR." This multi-perspective guide serves as a practical tool for engaging young citizens in urban co-creation processes. Designed for a diverse audience - including public authorities, educators, cultural institutions, and community organizations - the playbook provides actionable insights and methodologies to foster meaningful youth engagement.

The playbook is structured around key themes:

• Young Citizens Engagement: Exploring youth culture, ethics, and workshop design to create inclusive and impactful engagement processes.
• Urban Experimentation: Integrating climate action plans, urban data, and neighborhood-specific challenges into co-creation scenarios.
• Artificial Intelligence Applications: Leveraging AI for urban ideation, data analysis, and storytelling to make complex information accessible and actionable.
• Use Cases: Showcasing real-world young citizens engagement and target group capacity building examples from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Latvia, highlighting how local challenges were addressed through youth-driven engagements.

The playbook is not just a theoretical guide - it is a hands-on resource that equips users with tools to design workshops, analyse data, and create data-driven storytelling. It demonstrates how young citizens can be engaged in urban ideation, offering practical steps to ensure their voices are heard.

Impact
The project brought together a diverse coalition of stakeholders, including local public authorities, higher research institutions, cultural organizations, and community groups from Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Latvia. Workshops conducted as part of the project engaged young citizens in co-creating solutions for local challenges, from reimagining public spaces. Bootcamps focused on the capacity building of the target groups in the local ecosystems. By bridging the gap between data, storytelling, and co-creation, the playbook has laid the foundation for a new approach to co-creative urban development - one that is inclusive, participatory, and future-focused.

The playbook is a call to action for communities across the Baltic Sea Region and beyond. It invites public authorities, educators, and organizations to adopt its methodologies, adapt them to their local contexts, and continue the work of empowering young citizens.

UrbanTestbeds.JR was led by HafenCity University Hamburg, in partnership with Aarhus University, Luleå University of Technology, and, along with Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, municipalities and organizations such as the City of Hamburg, Aarhus Municipality, Luleå Municipality, Valmiera Municipality, Children’s Museum Hamburg, Code for Hamburg, ARIC Artificial Intelligence Center Hamburg, Central Library Hamburg, Coding Pirates Denmark, DOKK1 Central Library Aarhus, Teknikens Hus (Science Center) Luleå, and AI Sweden.