Consultation
Consultation with citizens is fundamental in urban mobility planning efforts to establish inclusive approaches and solutions. Consultation with citizens, stakeholders and communities and their participation in the planning process enables solutions to be developed that are appropriate for their needs. Citizens, stakeholders and communities have the knowledge and experience of what works, what doesn’t, and how improvements can be made. This is especially important in marginalized low-income communities.
n
EU SUMP Guidelines Recommendations on Consultation
Consultation in the SUMP Planning "Cycle"
The EU Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan Guidelines recommend extensive consultation involving all relevant stakeholders throughout the Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning process in order to address their specific requirements. The Guidelines identify ten steps in the Planning Cycle where citizen engagement and involvement are recommended. The four most important steps are:
- the discussion of scenarios
- the development of visions
- the selection and validation of measure packages
- implementation.
Citizens and Stakeholders
The EU SUMP Guidelines consider Citizens as all people living and/or working in the functional urban area for which a SUMP is being prepared.
Stakeholders are all individuals, groups or organisations affected by and/or being able to affect the SUMP such as public authorities, political parties, citizen and community groups, business organisations, transport operators and research institutions.
Levels of Engagement
The EU SUMP Guidelines recommend four levels of citizen engagement:
- Inform: face-to-face meetings, print media and online posts.
- Consult: social media (surveys), questionnaires, surveys, interviews, crowdsourcing, walkability inspections.
- Collaborate: focus groups and workshops.
- Empower: citizen advisory committees.
n
Co-Creation
The principle of co-creation is the process of creating new public policies and services with people and not for them. Co-creation is a process of engaging citizens in the development of urban mobility solutions as co-designers. This is an essential element of the Urban Mobility and Spatial Planning process.
n
Community Engagement
Community engagement is the process of involving the people that live and interact in a city in its development, including anyone with an interest or influence in, or who is impacted by, a local plan, policy or action. A core responsibility of public engagement efforts is to make it as easy as possible for people to participate. This means providing frequent opportunities for people to ask questions and share their thoughts. It also means employing a wide variety of methods to give different people multiple opportunities to engage in ways that are comfortable, and easy with particular emphasis on incorporating marginalized communities.