Citizen participation has become an important aspect in the design of smart cities. This paper investigates the frame and modality of citizen participation in a European Horizon2020 smart city project, +CityxChange, in Trondheim. +CityxChange aims at enabling citizen participation and co-creation in the transition to a positive energy city. The question is “what are the prevailing approaches and practices in relation to citizen participation amongst the key actors involved in +CityxChange? Which structures and processes have inhibited or fostered the participation mechanisms (e.g., for, by, and of people) and practices in Trondheim?” Through participatory observations and interviews with key local actors and citizens, we found that the focus of +CityxChange on efficiency and creating innovative solutions “for” people in partnership with the private sector has disturbed the “by” and “of” people mechanisms of participation. Citizens’ power and roles are not delegated to challenge or replace the project’s predetermined issue or plan. The anchorage of the project outside of the formal administrative structure has caused other functional barriers that inhibit citizen participation, rather than facilitate it. This paper discusses the causal relationships between these interconnected barriers and suggests how authorities can possibly overcome them.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test possibilities of real participation in FM field in response to the energy sustainable demand by using new technologies for better communication. It is acknowledged that the technological innovation is a necessary condition to make a city sustainable, though the challenge is not primarily on technology but on service transformation and improvement. Improving service quality requires the participatory and synergetic processes that attract an extra attention to the social and management aspects of urban planning. Design/methodology/approach This is an evidence-based research, which shows how FM can extent its impact on the build environment and society by bringing the socio-physiological aspect and the community in the central of the planning and design process. Findings An “urban” facility manager, through integration of multiple disciplines in a human-centre approach, can become the enabler and implementer of sustainable urban ecosystem, i.e. balancing social, economic and environmental pillars. This requires central involvement of FM in the planning and decision-making processes; therefore, its role and impact should be enlarged and better communicated. The enlargement of the FM's role initially requires an effective communication with people, whose behavioural change are prerequisite for the sustainability transition. The communication between FM and people should be interactive and iterative, in which they both define problems/needs and co-create the relevant solutions. Research limitations/implications This paper depicts an evidence-based FM practice, in which the website as an interactive tool is co-designed by the “facility management” students and the citizens to contribute to the real citizen participation in an effective communication process. Originality/value The high value for both, citizens and facility manager, is co-created information platform for upgrading the sustainability level and well-being in the communities. The tool is seen as an important starting contribution for the Paris climate agreement, and as a step toward human-centric-oriented urban sustainable regenerating project.

A pragmatic and polity-focused solution for governing a smart city in the direction of sustainability is still missing in theory and practice. A debate about whether a smart city is a pragmatic solution for modern challenges or just a technology-led urban utopia is entangled with the vexed issue of governance. While ‘smart governance’ has drawn unprecedented interest, the combination of its conceptual vagueness and broad applications couple with a lack of focus on its underlying international and local political paradigms have raised concerns about its utility. This study contributes to restoring attention to the original concept of governance, its differences with governing and government, and the potential challenges resulting from its functionality in its real, multi-layered, and complex contexts. This paper explores the intellectual connection between governance and smart cities, from both an empirical and a conceptual/analytical perspective. From the empirical side, we examine which actors, processes, and relational mechanisms at different levels that have had an impact on the initiation of smart cities in three Norwegian cities: Trondheim, Bergen, and Bodø. We illustrate how the structural sources of the interests, roles, and power in smart city initiatives have caused governance to emerge and change, but have also affected the goals designed by specific actors.

Positive Energy Districts (PED) are areas within cities that generate more renewable energy than they consume, contributing to cities’ energy system transformation toward carbon neutrality. Since PED is a novel concept, the implementation is very challenging. Within the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action, which offers an open space for collaboration among scientists across Europe (and beyond), this paper asks what the needs for supporting the implementation of PEDs are. To answer this, it draws on Delphi process (expert reviews) as the main method alongside the literature review and also uses surveys as supplementary methods to identify the main challenges for developing PEDs. Initial findings reveal seven interacting topics that later were ranked as highest to the lowest as the following: governance, incentive, social, process, market, technology and context. These are interrelated and interdependent, implying that none can be considered in isolation of the others and cannot be left out in order to ensure the successful development of PEDs. The resources that are needed to address these challenges are a common need for systematic understanding of the processes behind them, as well as cross-disciplinary models and protocols to manage the complexity of developing PEDs. The results can be the basis for devising the conceptual framework on the development of new PED guides and tools.

No abstract