Schiehaven Citizens

With the announcement of urban development Schiehaven Noord as a "Paris Proof laboratorium" the question rises: what is a Paris Proof urban development?

Schiehaven Citizens is an action research exploring the perspective of a Paris Proof development, with a focus on CO₂ reduction in the usage phase. This emphasizes the collective strength that users can represent as active citizens in the development process. Central questions are: what strategies are essential to enable and encourage sustainable living, and how can the collective strength of future citizens play an active role in the development process?

The starting point is shifting the rationale of urban development. Traditionally, developments start with the built environment (hardware), based on a predefined organisational model (orgware), of which the users and their lifestyle are a result (software). We propose to reverse this rationale: starting with the software, how citizens can live a Paris Proof life, we investigate what organisations and citizenships are promising, and lastly what urban environment is needed for that.

Through collaborative system mapping, we started by analysing what a Paris Proof development, and lifestyle entails. With expert sessions and think tank workshops we collected bottom-up feedback on this model, and identified not only the biggest impact categories of lifestyle emissions, also promising "levers of change" that can enable a sustainable lifestyle in Schiehaven Noord.

By investigating what themes and mechanisms are part of Paris Proof developments, and how the citizens and various processes can be organised, Schiehaven Citizens provides the essential components of a true Paris Proof development.