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Air pollution has as significant impact on the health of European citizens, particularly in urban areas, and was responsible for more than 400,000 premature deaths in Europe in 2014. It is within our cities where this public health impact is most acute as high population densities and high ambient concentrations result in an increased risk of exposure. This health impact is further exacerbated as air pollution interacts with other social determinants of health creating a disproportionate risk and burden. Traditional top-down government policy development and consultation, married with a very technocentric view of air pollution sources and solutions, has resulted in a general apathy among citizens towards the problem of air pollution and subsequently a lack of ownership of the solutions. The ClairCity Project aims to create a major shift in public understanding towards the causes of poor air quality, inviting citizens to give their opinions on air pollution and carbon reduction policies to shape the cities of the future. By putting citizens' behaviour and activities at the heart of policy making for air quality and carbon management, ClairCity has utilised a suite of innovative toolkits for enhanced quantification and citizen engagement (such as surveys, workshops, online games and apps) to assess the public acceptability of specific policies and also to enable a bottom-up, citizen-led scenario creation process whereby citizens are empowered to visualise clean, low carbon, healthy futures for their city.

Technological approaches to carbon emission and air pollution data modelling consider where the issues are located and what is creating emissions. This paper argues that more focus should be paid to people—the drivers of vehicles or households burning fossil fuels (‘Who’) and the reasons for doing so at those times (‘Why’). We applied insights from social psychology (social identity theory and social cognitive theory) to better understand and communicate how people’s everyday activities are a cause of climate change and air pollution. A new method for citizen-focused source apportionment modelling and communication was developed in the ClairCity project and applied to travel data from Bristol, U.K. This approach enables understanding of the human dimension of vehicle use to improve policymaking, accounting for demographics (gender or age groups), socio-economic factors (income/car ownership) and motives for specific behaviours (e.g., commuting to work, leisure, shopping, etc.). Tailored communications for segmented in-groups were trialled, aiming to connect with group lived experiences and day-to-day behaviours. This citizen-centred approach aims to make groups more aware that ‘people like me’ create emissions, and equally, ‘people like me’ can take action to reduce emissions.

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