Introduction
Public spaces are vital to the quality of life in any community, yet making them climate-resilient poses challenges for local authorities. Citizen involvement in planning such spaces fosters transparency, accountability, and trust, but municipalities often need simple, practical support to design effective participation processes. To address this, the MitBestimmt Klimafit project developed an online guide that leads municipalities step by step through preparing, planning, and implementing participatory climate-resilience measures for public spaces. Drawing on literature and municipal expertise, the guide outlines a framework of four phases and ten key steps for successful participation. By combining theory and practice, it offers accessible knowledge, recommendations, and examples to help municipalities engage citizens effectively in climate-adaptation projects—while its methods are also applicable to other areas such as energy efficiency and mobility initiatives. The project run from October 2023 until February 2025.
Case study profile
Project details
The MitBestimmt Klimafit project, funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund within its Research & Development Services programme, aims to generate new public-interest knowledge through scientific methods. Its main target group is municipalities, providing them with an online guide to plan and implement citizen participation processes efficiently in climate adaptation projects for (re)designing public spaces. By encouraging citizen involvement, the guide benefits both municipal employees—by simplifying complex participatory planning—and citizens, who gain opportunities to contribute ideas and express their needs in local climate projects.
Developed jointly by the Austrian Energy Agency and Rosinak & Partner, the online guide offers step-by-step support to help municipalities navigate the challenges of participation and recognize its benefits. Rosinak & Partner conducted the literature review, while the Austrian Energy Agency carried out expert interviews with municipal and regional representatives experienced in citizen participation. Together, the findings from both organizations formed the content and structure of the guide.
Behavioural insights
The project focuses on supporting municipalities in integrating citizen participation into the development of public space projects. Employees responsible for redeveloping public spaces are encouraged to make citizen involvement a central element of their work. The practical, easy-to-use guide motivates and assists municipal staff in putting participation into practice, fostering greater acceptance of redevelopment and climate adaptation measures while reducing public hesitation toward climate protection efforts.
To make participation more accessible, the guide simplifies the complex process of planning and implementation through a clear, step-by-step framework. It outlines ten essential steps, each divided into detailed sub-steps with explanations, helpful links, and practical examples. Every step concludes with a checklist, allowing users to track progress and ensure all necessary actions are completed.
Outcomes and impacts
The most important impact is that municipalities that do not have the budget to hire an external consultant for participation are able to implement participatory process of different scopes in their municipality by following the online guide. This way citizen participation becomes more accessible also in smaller municipalities which might not have experience with participation.
The guide focuses on participation with regards to climate adaptation measures and strategies, the steps guiding through developing and planning a participatory process can also be applied to other topics such as energy efficiency measures or mobility projects within local contexts.