A sustainable urban planning in the changing Climate : a survey of citizen participation for Climate Adaptation

There are many studies about citizen participation in urban planning, but there are almost no studies about citizen participation in relation to climate change adaptation. This study was conducted in order to understand how Swedish municipalities work with citizen participation in this area. To fulfill this purpose, a caste study was built on the Swedish municipality Norrköping. Specifically, the study seeked the answers to the following four questions: How does the municipality work with citizen participation in their planning process? Does the work with citizen participation in any way touch upon issues regarding climate adaptation in the municipality? Are there any challenges with integrating citizens in the planning process when it comes to climate adaptation? What can the municipality do in order to overcome these challenges? These questions were answered using data from semi-structured interviews with municipality officers and two focus groups consisting of citizens from a residential area in Norrköping. The results indicate that no concrete work is made on citizen participation in relation to climate change adaptation in Norrköping. However, the municipality showed large potential for developing both effective and meaningful citizen participation in this area, for instance by using visualization technology and their exhibition arena. To make a good use of these tools, the municipality should define how citizen opinions are to be used and what they would like to achieve by integrating citizens in planning related to climate change adaptation.