Mechelen's citizens’ assembly in action: Co-creating for and with nature

It is a beautiful Saturday late autumn morning in Mechelen and the city is alive with activity. The café’s terraces are filled with breakfasters, joggers find their way through the weekend shoppers. By placing the River Dijle at the heart of its morning programme, the Construct Europe Festival continues where it ended the night before.

Inside the Lamot Conference Centre, overlooking the River Dijle, 35 residents of Mechelen who formed the WATSUPS Citizens’ Assembly working on the future of the River Dijle have gathered once again. Together with Mechelen’s Mayor Bart Somers, other political officials and the WATSUPS team, they are exchanging on a key achievement of their work: 15 basic principles developed by the WATSUPS Citizens’ Assembly. Over the next two hours, the city officials share how the 15 Basic Principles will reshape the public spaces and inform different activities along the Dijle. This is a milestone moment for WATSUPS, but to understand its significance, let’s start at the beginning….

Until 2027, the WATSUPS projects will reconnect the City of Mechelen with the River Dijle that runs through the medieval heart of the city. The project will create accessible public spaces that invite inhabitants to experience the water and its ecosystem directly. Besides bridging the physical divides between natural ecosystems and urban life, the aim is to generate an environment which invites residents to build mental and emotional connections to nature and the river. For that reason, embedding biodiversity, nature-based solutions and ecological awareness into the city’s fabric is key for WATSUPS (you can read more about the project here).

In most urban transformation projects of that magnitude, discussions about ‘nature’ rarely consider the interests, needs and perspectives of the animals and plants. Generally, the impacts of urban development on animals and plants are considered in an environmental impact study. WATSUPS, however, is breaking new ground by experimenting with innovative approaches that respect the interests of nature in the planning process while fostering deep connections and empathy with the city’s non-human inhabitants. Nature, therefore, becomes an active actor and stakeholder in the transformation process.

Watch a video about the WATSUPS Citizen Assemble here (subtitles in English). 

Central to the ambition of including the voices of nature in the first phase of the revival of the River Dijle is the WATSUPS Citizens’ Assembly.

Citizens’ assemblies have gained attention in recent years as a democratic method to empower residents to bring their opinions, needs, and creativity to co-create ideas and approaches to design futures together. Citizens’ assemblies with a randomly selected and stratified sample of society typically consist of a diverse group of the public reflecting the diversity in demographics of the local community (for more: RSA - How to run a Citizens’ Assembly).

In Mechelen, the city administration carefully curated the composition of the citizens’ assembly following a structured process which aimed to include the voices of different groups of society in the process:

• Step 1: 5000 residents of Mechelen were selected randomly and received an invitation to express their interest in being part of the citizens’ assembly.
• Step 2: Interested residents were asked to fill in a questionnaire to gain insights into socio-demographic aspects including age, gender, place of residence, origin and education level.
• Step 3: Based on the results, interested people were divided into subgroups and a randomly selected
• Step 4: Those selected received an invitation to join the citizens’ assembly.

The final group of the citizens’ assembly consisted of 35 people from various educational backgrounds and neighbourhoods with the youngest being 16 and the oldest 91. The group met and worked together for 5 days in total.

What makes the WATSUPS Citizens’ Assembly so innovative is that participants were asked to represent, besides their wishes, perspectives and creative ideas, the voices of nature in the co-creation process. But how do you prepare a randomly selected group of residents to take on perspectives of the animals and plants?

The answer is careful planning and ensuring that participants can easily follow the process, develop a feeling of trust with each other, have fun together and feel like their contributions have a meaningful impact. To achieve these standards, the City of Mechelen organised the work of the citizens’ assembly in different phases:

Information phase: Participants were introduced to the topic and project in the first phase. Experts from various fields explained the ecosystem and discussed the animals and plants living in and along the Dijle. Participants gathered information about the water quality in Flanders, nature in the city, current flora and fauna and sustainable and inclusive urban design.
On a boat tour through the river, participants could see the connection between urban life and the biodiversity living along the river themselves. Participants were also invited to share their knowledge, memories and stories about their connections and experiences with the river and water. It allowed participants to build connections, and create a shared experience and empathy for the ecosystem which formed a strong foundation for the collaborative and co-creative phase of the citizens’ assembly’s work.

Co-creation phase: Following the information phase, the citizens’ assembly started working on the main question:

How do we ensure that the Dijle is a place that everyone (human, plant and animal) can easily reach and is a place where everyone enjoys staying with respect for each other (human, plant and animal)?

In thematic groups, they addressed the question from different angles and were encouraged to adopt the perspectives of the more-than-human inhabitants (animals and plants) and the ecosystems of the River Dijle.

At first I was concerned whether the approach in the citizens’ assembly would work as envisioned, as our citizens have a no-nonsense attitude. But in the end, the process fostered a deeper understanding and empathy for nature, shifting the focus beyond functional design to a broader understanding of our connection to the environment." 

- Mark Van der Veken, participation and co-creation advisor, City of Mechelen

Combining a broad information phase, spread out over 3 weekends, with a co-creative phase empowered the residents to think out of the box and contribute meaningfully by considering the perspectives of other actors in the ecosystem along the Dijle. This combined approach ensured that the urban transformation along the river respects and harmonises human needs with natural processes.

The citizens’ assembly’s work resulted in 122 recommendations. These 122 recommendations were grouped into 15 basic principles for the design of the public spaces along the River Dijle (summarised in the illustration below). Each principle highlights a specific aspect which in the view of the citizens’ assembly needs to be considered in the design to ensure that all inhabitants (humans, animals and plants) of Mechelen benefit from reconnecting the river with the city.

By learning about the properties and life of plants and animals along the river including their specific needs and interests when planning to renovate or rebuild the quays, walls and banks and adopting a natural persona in the advisory process, the participants of the citizens’ assembly could imagine what it is like for the animals and plants to share the urban spaces with humans. It cultivated an empathy for the ecosystem around them. The 15 principles reflect these perspectives as they combine the wishes and requirements for a good life along the river of different groups of people in Mechelen (including the elderly, children and youth and socio-economic disadvantaged groups) with the needs of animals and plants.

Although citizens’ assemblies aim to include people with the broadest possible stratification of backgrounds, it might be difficult to include some of the most vulnerable groups directly in the debates. For that reason, the City of Mechelen, in addition to the citizens’ assembly, organised another boat tour for people experiencing homelessness living in vulnerable situations, with the ambition to include their stories, wishes and needs for the redevelopment along the river. The boat trip which resulted in a lively discussion is a prime example of how to involve vulnerable groups in co-creation processes and to ensure their needs are taken up in the process.

The work of the citizens’ assembly will significantly shape the future of the WATSUPS project, and thus the design of the public spaces along the Dijle. The design phase will start in the spring of 2025 and be accompanied by intensive site-specific co-creation and public participation processes. In the design phase, the 15 basic principles will be used as a baseline.

Furthermore, the City of Mechelen is considering using the principles for all future projects throughout the city making the voices of nature heard beyond WATSUPS. The work of the citizens’ assembly has the potential to set a new standard for integrating nature’s perspectives into urban planning, far beyond the immediate scope of the WATSUPS project.

Returning to the room of the Lamot Conference Centre in Mechelen on this pleasant September morning where Mayor Somers entered a vivid and detailed exchange with the participants it becomes very clear: The WATSUPS Citizens’ Assembly is one of the most path-leading innovations in public participation of the last years. It shows how participatory governance processes taking into account the voices of nature can lead to robust outcomes. The citizens’ assembly, invited the residents to participate to an experimental practice that broadened their awareness of nature in the city, recognizing that humans are part of a larger ecosystem/biosphere.

Additionally, the experience from WATSUPS highlights how important careful and detailed planning of citizens’ assemblies is to achieve innovative results and ensure that participants recognise that their efforts are taken up meaningfully.

The experiences of Mechelen offer a blueprint for cities everywhere. They demonstrate that ecological democracy is not only an academic and philosophical concept but also one that can be applied to achieve environmentally robust and liveable urban areas, harmoniously integrating human and natural needs into urban development.

If you would like to find out more about WATSUPS, consider...

… listening to the two dedicated episodes on the Cities Reimagined Podcast here.

... reading into the Masterplan Binnendijle on the City of Mechelen's website here (in Dutch).

... finding out more about the citizen panel here (in dutch).

Bibliography:

RSA et al. (2020) How to run a citizens’ assembly: A handbook for local authorities based on the Innovation in Democracy Programme. Link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5efb166bd3bf7f768fdcdfac/IiDP_handbook_-_How_to_run_a_citizen_assembly.pdf