Liveability

What makes a city liveable? – How can a city design and provide positive environments to make it more liveable? – How can cities enable people to help shape the transformation process?

Answers to these questions are being explored in the new Interreg project “Liveability – Designing Public Services for Resilient Neighbourhoods”. DCI is assisting 10 other organizations, including six municipalities in the Baltic Sea Region (Kiel, Gdynia, Guldborgsund, Kolding, Pori and Riga), on jointly developing a user-centered approach that will be tested in a neighbourhood in each partner city.

The project Liveability trains public administrations in innovative ways to engage people; to create liveable and attractive city environments that adapt to people’s needs.

Even before the COVID 19 crisis, many cities were facing complex social, environmental, and economic challenges, including social inequalities, impacts of climate change and demographic changes. However, changing work and life patterns are also a chance: medium-sized and smaller cities can attract residents and businesses by being liveable – i.e. by following an integrated and balanced approach for the built environment, innovation culture, public services and socio-cultural life and by evoking a strong sense of active citizenship.

To be more liveable, cities must become „closer”, “more public” and “more agile”. The Liveability partnership prepares, pilots and transfers a capacity building programme for public interest design, addressing both the city-wide (leadership level) and civil servants. The project will invite candidate cities to transfer the programme to also be awarded the label of a liveable city.

DCI has been working in the fields of culture and sustainability for the past 15 years, and is well-connected with organisations and networks relevant to these topics at BSR, European, and global scales. DCI will act as facilitator of knowledge transfer in Liveability. With a strong focus on the role of culture and cultural institutions in societal transformation DCI aims to contribute to the development of the network of “liveable cities”.

This brochure futhermore presents the essence of the Liveability project:

Project partners:

• Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Schleswig-Holstein e.V. (DE)
• City of Kiel (DE)
• Danish Cultural Institute (DK)
• Business Kolding (DK)
• Guldborgsund Municipality (DK)
• City of Pori (FI)
• Riga City Council (LV)
• City of Gdynia (PL)
• Gdansk University of Technology (PL)
• Nextlearning e.V. (DE)
• Estonian Academy of Arts (EST)

Read more about the project.