C-Newtral Workshop: Citizen Participation in Research and Urban Planning

Why should urban planners bother with participation? And how can academic research profit from citizen engagement? In January 2025, Ulrike Gerhard, Caroline Walter and C-Newtral doctoral candidate Alireza Aboutalebi travelled to Girona to explore these questions. For one week, PhD students of the C-Newtral doctoral network participated in a workshop on citizen engagement while academics and practitioners provided valuable input and practical experiences on the subject. The workshop was funded by the European Commission through Horizon Europe MSCA.

Ulrike Gerhard and Caroline Walter organized a workshop day for the group of international doctoral candidates and professors, currently based in Bologna, Belfast, Dublin, Helsinki, Heidelberg and Girona. They elaborated why citizen participation is a central pillar of urban governance and the democratic distribution of resources. Participants explored the risks and challenges of participation while discussing real-world examples, like Heidelberg’s Collegium Academicum or the Mittendrinnenstadt project, its stakeholders and engagement techniques and applied their newly formed knowledge on their own dissertation projects.

Since all doctoral candidates have a PhD thesis ahead, qualitative research methods conducted with citizens were of particular interest to them. Caroline Walter presented her Master’s thesis where she conducted research with parents and children on their everyday mobility, adjusting her methods according to the age and needs of her participants. She made a particular effort of making the knowledge she gained available and accessible to the local residents, e.g. through public events and a children’s magazine on neighborhood mobility.
After a packed workshop day all researchers headed into Girona to apply their insights on citizen engagement on a case study, Las Pedreres Parc in Girona where they practiced active observation and brainstormed first ideas how to improve the parc before continuing their workshop week with impulses by Wissenschaftsladen Bonn and GeoDesignHub.