"Don't Forget the Locals"Coimbra's Strategic Exchange Mission in Copenhagen

The visit included meeting with the delegates of the European Urban Initiative project CULTIGEN (CULture, TourIsm, reGENeration through innovative digital solutions and governance platforms) and other local projects and initiatives such as The Copenhagen App and the Visitor Centre developed by the City of Copenhagen, Meet Copenhagen City, that assist professional international delegates plan their study programmes to Copenhagen within the area of sustainable urban development, and Wonderful Copenhagen, the official tourism organisation of the Capital Region of Denmark. This article offers a direct, primary-source insight into the project's evolution, using the partners' own reflections to frame their future actions. The following interviews are structured around the guiding philosophies the partners brought back and the strong elements of the Coimbra project that they hope to share in future for other knowledge exchanges.

«Sustainability on the way»

Insights from the University of Coimbra representative Cátia Rebelo

What specific methodology did you observe for the dialogue between the tourism sector, the municipality, and the residents, and how can the university of Coimbra help in ensuring a similar co-creation?

«The CULTIGEN project in Copenhagen has very interesting methodologies, very participatory focus. We already plan to have a participatory approach but I thought that the more qualitative methodology that they are using can bring more information and more data, to connect with the community and the experts. We don’t have the time to totally change our approach but I think it would be valuable after the use of the developed questionnaires, to have an assembly with locals to have their inputs and feedback on the results. In any case, these are methodologies that we can use for the future - having focus groups to support our initiatives. What was also impressive was the professional work on civic engagement done by We Do Democracy. After the end of the project, since we will have the physical space in the visitor centre I think we should do a lot more participatory activities, in partnership with the Labour Observatory and build on what we are doing during the project».

How do you think Copenhagen balances cultural sustainability and what can you take to Coimbra in this sense?

«They are really focused on local people and culture: it is the lifestyle that they are showing to visitors. In our project we are more focused on cultural assets and material heritage - we can bring the immaterial perspective with us. We could valorize and promote activities with traditional practices through workshops, on fado or ceramics for instance. When the visitor centre in Coimbra will be finalised we can have expositions and workshops there. It is also a way to show the benefits of tourism to local people, and involve them directly.

Also, Copenhagen is very strong in innovation and in showing this to other countries, to build new practices and share their culture. We could try to do the same and show assets in the touristic sector. Something to explore is the appeal for the specialists and experts that could visit our cities for this reason, also because of the reputation of our University».

«Don’t forget the locals»

Impressions from the the CEO of Present Technologies, Victor Batista

What would you like to incorporate to make the Coimbra LLM solution intuitive, engaging, and accessible to both tourists and local communities?

«The main key sentence I bring with me is: don’t forget the locals - they also need the tools. Especially for the digital tools we will have this as a pillar for the future activities. If we have the locals on board everything will work better. It is important to know how people move, where they go, who can tell local stories about the place. For instance the Copenhagen App is used by many locals because the municipality aims at creating a mixed presence of locals and tourists in spaces and in local initiatives. Also, within the CULTIGEN project, in collaboration with the University of Aalborg they are building on the Urban Listening Tool, which is helpful to have an idea on how the perception of the city changes. In general in Coimbra we are lacking these kinds of tools for the residents themselves, or even having a common agenda for everybody. We will try to bring this aspect in the web app we are developing in the Coimbra project. 

The visit to Copenhagen allows us to be in contact with the partners and share experiences on how to manage data coming from social media, and trying to have access to data. In the Copenhagen App they are using AI for semantic searching, which is common to our project. On top of this we also want to add documents which are not available, and stories that only stay in the head of a few people. We want to collaborate with museums and share contents in the app from the local guides and citizens. For us it is particularly important to grant the accessibility of the tools, allowing all the people to create itineraries and access information depending on who they are and what needs and preferences they have».

Starting from what you have seen in Copenhagen, do you have any must have action that you would prioritize for the future after the end of the SHIFT Coimbra project?

«We have observed that Copenhagen has a very structured data governance. They already have a centralised platform of point of interests from the government, which simplifies everything. So we are trying to push the municipality to have a similar approach. Coimbra SHIFT is going to be the starting point of a new partnership that has built an innovative governance model and must continue with future activities. We have a great opportunity to create a tool which should be the basis for the future, sharing a common agenda for the local people and visitors. At the end of the project is the day zero: we are creating the condition to be on the same page, and having data and information available to everybody».

«Balance is a key word here!»

Experiences from Jorge Pimenta, Innovation Director at the Instituto Pedro Nunes (IPN)

Have you detected any innovative solutions, business model, governance mechanism that Coimbra's could emulate? 

«Copenhagen is a different city than Coimbra, it is a capital with an international port where there are many movements of people, not only tourists. Although even if it is a larger area, I find very interesting the way that the city hall looks at the city: at the scale of neighbourhood units. They have a top down approach in order to re-routing the tourists to have a spread ratio of tourists, accompanied by sentiment analysis that can be beneficial to tourists and locals. I enjoyed this huge concern about balance: how economic activities related to tourism can coexist with people. When I am a tourist I try not to add to the chaos, but I am aware that in cities like Coimbra you need to handle the seasonality. In Copenhagen it seems that everything everywhere is balanced, and planned. On a more economic perspective I was surprised to find not as many “tourist traps”. An interesting aspect is how local businesses adapt to the city: they don’t seem highly touristic driven even if they are designed to cater tourists. Besides the food and beverage businesses offer, you do understand how society values taking advantage of the existing, connecting to the four dimensions of sustainability. I have perceived this as a social behaviour and not an imposition. For us in Coimbra this sustainable common behaviour is a great future opportunity».

Which are the common challenges that you share with the City of Copenhagen?

«Data collection wise, they still suffer to collect data as everywhere else. It is very hard to measure where people go, besides numbers of the nights, or museum visits. In this area gathering the habits of tourists is still a challenge, also because they are very sensitive data. Visits like this are very useful because you get ideas and inspiration, networking, pulling communities, but also common challenges, insolvable problems that we are all trying to solve. We have also observed that Copenhagen has a very good governance model, because all the members of the consortium of the project were aware of its criticality. It might seem very simple but when you need to share private public data that can have competitors it is very tricky. It is important to have this integrated model of governance, and the responsibility needs to be shared between all the partners and local actors. These common challenges can be very useful for many other cities».

The strategic learning mission to Copenhagen provided a great deal of useful information, primarily suggesting the Coimbra consortium to critically assess its own mechanisms for governance and data management. While the positive takeaways, such as the commitment to balancing economics with human well-being and the success of participatory methods, provide powerful inspiration, the visit also highlighted shared global challenges. Namely, the difficulty of obtaining nuanced tourist data and the complex task of securing multi-stakeholder agreement for shared data governance.

Crucially, the exchange was not one-sided. While Coimbra got inspiration on participatory models and design of the visitor centre and the digital tools, the Portuguese consortium brought its own unique perspective on deeply embedded immaterial heritage and localised social structures, offering a potential learning opportunity for Copenhagen in how to better leverage long-term social capital and cultural depth. Ultimately, the most significant outcome of the visit lies in the shared commitment to ongoing collaboration