Chapter 11: Civic engagement as the corner stone of symbiotic cities

Local governments, scientists and urban planners need to create a sensitivity to greening initiatives of local citizens and their networks and learn to co-create locally relevant strategies with them, combining communal practices with broader policies and legislation and scientific efforts. We focus on three pathways to enhance this social capital needed for greening cities: communal learning; new types of ownership for citizens’ initiatives; and making the impact of citizens’ activities and practices more explicit. Three cases demonstrate each of these pathways. First, Steenbreek Foundation, an initiative of universities, municipalities and urban ecologists, exemplifies communal learning through local actions. Steenbreek Foundation aims to engage citizens and local municipalities in greening public and private gardens by demonstrating the added value of greening. In 2021 over 140 municipalities and local initiatives joined Steenbreek Foundation. Second, communal ownership is exemplified by the Kaskantine in Amsterdam, an urban farm cafe, where residents of the neighbourhood of Nieuw-West take over management of urban land and water to develop nature-based technologies for off-grid living in the city. Third, communal impact is exemplified by the Doughnut Coalition in Amsterdam, an organisation of residents that develop their own bottom-up measurement technique to measure the social impact of their neighbourhood activities. The three case studies show diverse ways of including communities in urban greening initiatives. Whether through encouraging community learning, creating strategies for communal ownership and management of resources, or through measuring and tracking the impact of community action, these initiatives have demonstrated the potential of civic engagement. The chapter concludes with three principles that local governments and urban planners need to embrace in order to involve communities in their greening strategies.