The Citizen's Voice

The following is an excerpt of statements taken from the answers to the questions “Why you want to apply ?” and “What is your perception of the city environment ? Do you have any idea on how to improve it ?” included in the RAISE application form.

“Thus in post transition countries like Estonia, the status question is to drive car, not public transport, to use plastic and not recyclable materials, to use single use items instead of qualitative long lasting goods, etc. etc. Thus the improvement in my mind is only in providing better environmental education in all levels and forms, formal and informal, for children and for adults, indoor and outdoor, theoretical and practical, global and local. And the best learning tool and method is through pilot, demonstration projects, very small, very concrete, very visible, very understandable to everybody. Once you made something by yourself, you will understand, remember and teach it further. These are my first ideas on this question.”

“I think it is important to influence your society, and this seems like a good way of doing it. Many of the policies proposed have little or no concept on change in the behaviour of citizens or companies. To meet the challenges we are faced with if we want to alter the current trend of global warming there have to be made large changes in the lives we live. But if you listen to the discussion you get the feeling that the motorists are glued to their cars, but that is not the case.”

“I would like to start by stating that I love living in a large city. It offers so much by the simple fact of gathering so many people together, and it gives me the feeling that I can learn new things every day from it. That is why all the things that go wrong bother me even more, the most ardent of which are: the bad distribution of cultural centers (theaters, cinemas, universities etc.), the increasing dropdown in the number of parks and green spaces, and of course the massive automobile congestion (due to the terrible lack of parking spaces and also to the poorly organized public transport service). This is to mention only a few major ones.”

“Europe - so called Old Continent. On such a small area there are so many countries. For a person out of here like American we don't differ much. However in our opinion that's not true at all. I was always very interested in discovering those differences. Sometimes I was really surprised with the way other nations solved some problems. City is very complicated organ. The way it works was always within my interests. I think each citizen of some city should pay attention cause each of us – like me – average Lodz inhabitant – can influence and have impact on changing approach of our politics.”

“To improve we need a a movement like the French or American "community building". Talk to each other, take care of your suburb, turn your TV off.”

“The daily life of citizens, especially in urban areas, is deeply influenced by the city visioning and by the planning process which is carried out mainly by the local, national and european decision-makers, as well as by the experts in this area. There is often, nevertheless, a substantial divorce between their vision and the one of the users of the city, sometimes less clear and concept-supported, but many times more practical. It is therefore essential, in my view, that citizens may be able to take part in the process of defining politics and pointing solutions in several areas.”

“By living in Copenhagen for four years, particularly in two areas under urban regeneration and going through a lot of changes, I have learned to realise what it means to be French in many ways – in terms of cultural identity, way of thinking, and approach towards life and community interest in general. Integrating the Danish society made me go through a sort of introspection process which, I believe, made me become more aware of the components of society, its challenges; especially in terms of sustainable urban development because of my immediate surroundings there. As the RAISE conference is about awareness, I assume the process designed for gathering the 25 European citizens will request as well being introspective (what a French person would say in such a case …?) and respectful of other nationalities’ approaches – whatever odd they may sound as we certainly keep difference in cultural identity.”

“I have the feeling that Brussels policy making is too much fragmented. City planning differs from commune to commune, thereby creating a patchy image and confusing scene. I think it is nonsense to arbitrarily divide a city up in different communes for the purpose of city planning. Maybe it works for other policy areas but in order to improve mobility and unity, it is necessary to have a coherent approach. As an example, it is silly that in one part of the city money is spent to establish bicycle paths, while nobody dares to cycle as in other parts nothing is done.”

“My perception is that our environment becomes each year better, but the average citizen in my country don't realise that. They are often claiming and pointing what doesn't work how it could, and don't see the gap between what we now have and what we only 15 years ago had. I travel quite often. I was often in Poland, the Czech Republic and other western European countries like Germany and Switzerland. I can see the difference between these countries and must say that when it goes better, it is Europe's result. And it goes always better! So Europe is really a chance, even if everything is not always OK.”

“There are so many innovative, creative ways we could improve our quality of life by improving our city environments. Injecting some fun into civic involvement would be a start. Improving our cities in ways which contribute towards a healthier environment and population could include things like: stimulating people to keep natural gardens (tarmacking for parking causes flooding and means a loss of habitats for plants and animals); providing funds for street party (it has been shown that people who feel part of a community are healthier - that'll save health costs; and people who talk can plan together).”

“Ordinary citizen's concerns seem to be rated very low in the agenda of both policy makers and organized special interest groups. I do believe it is unhealthy for any democratic process to drift apart from the simple aspirations of the citizens concerned. citizens are being imposed increasing limitations on their civil liberties, lifestyles and ultimately the quality of life itself, getting very little in return. My city is beautiful, the location and the gifts of nature are splendid. Even tough, most of the petty problems and big issues are man made, either for excess of regulation or absence of regulation; the paradox can be illustrated by how long it takes to get approval to refurbish one's house, legally and for the better, and the complete inadequacy of the response of city official's and courts to violations of environmental laws, destruction of nature and public space. On the other hand, housing and tax policies expel people to the suburbs, leaving the city centre deserted and unaffordable to middle class citizen's. In the specific case of my city, de-bureaucratization of the public services and a tax reform to privilege sustainable renovation of city core over tax revenues, would do a great deal for Lisbon citizens who have shrank in number by one third in the last twenty years, creating more pressure on the suburbs, wasted time on commuting and desertification of the city centre. This is evidence that something is very wrong. If ever the public voice is truly heard in the city councils, things can only improve.”

“I think that it has been going worst every year looking backward from 1970 to 2000. I see many reasons to this situation: company's headquarters progressively invaded the  centres of the cities pushing people to the city periphery, suburban centres and new cities created from scratch. This situation has led to the collapse of the social link (family, neighbours, tradition, culture, etc.)”

“I suggest that some of our most serious problems stem from the desire by the authorities to ‘Rationalise/Centralise’.  Although on the face of it, it is cheaper and more efficient to concentrate your resources, training, administration, etc., etc. into centralised buildings / areas, but it does mean that all personnel have to travel too and from their places of work.  This is also aggravated by reducing the length of the working day and working week as more people are required to cover the hours and the work that needs to be done.  By having smaller schools, authority buildings, hospitals etc., better equally spaced, less people would need to commute the distances they do at present.  This would relieve our roads and transport system enormously.  There are also other ways the system could be improved.  At present, many of the elderly are cared for in their own home or in care homes.  By encouraging families to take care of their own elderly with perhaps grants for home extension and care allowance, would in turn reduce the need for perhaps long weekend journeys to visit.  This is just some of the possible logistic problems that could be researched.”

“The city in which I spend most time has a very high crime rate and high levels of congestion and pollution. There is a lot of violence and segregation between ethnic groups, and drug use is very high. I am by no means qualified to say how these problems could be solved, but some ideas I have are to increase police presence and CCTV, but I also think we need to get to the root of the problem of crime- what makes people commit crime? i.e. if there was a closer community/more jobs/nicer environment/more activities for young people would the crimes have been committed in the first place? Ideas in this line of thinking are to increase community integration-type projects, like community artwork and mentoring, and rehabilitation, but it would be important to have participation from all sections of society in order to find out what the problems really are and how we could best solve them.”

“It would be interesting to see how things work at the European level. In general I have the feeling that a lot is happening on the European level, but that there is a problem of communication towards the citizens. For most people 'Europe' is something very distant, where people earn a lot of money and where unfavourable rules are made. I know that Europe spends a lot of resources on research and indeed it would be interesting to see if these projects have any useful content. But I am wondering if this conference will make a difference (or will it be a waste of money? Nice in theory, but with no actual influence?).”

“The perception I have of my city environment is the lack of global thinking. Each actor in the city (citizen, business, public entity, …) acts according to its own interest or mission, leading to a certain anarchy going against the majority’s welfare. Most people seem to consider the current situation as natural and acceptable. I believe that it could be much improved, if the different actors started working together.”

“The city I live in is acceptable to live and work in but there is a big potential for things to get improved. The reason to my views is that today’s man is very much overtaken by his job, daily life and difficulties and has no interest and free time to think and judge the environment that he lives in. A first step to be taken for things to get improved is public awareness. People will then ask for things to get changed. Another big improvement would be some cleaner air and less noise by persuading people to leave their cars in the garage and finding alternate ways to move around.”

“Basically citizens and public officials have the same perceptions of what the major problems are and what should be improved. The ways of doing that can be different and this choose leads to the biggest controversies between the society and public officials as well as between different levels of public power. As a citizen I mostly focus on short term benefits - I want public transport to be cheaper and of better quality as soon as possible. Public officials have to develop all the field of infrastructure that is also the roads, flow of transportation, etc. This is only one example providing one of the most important perspectives of how I see the current situation of the city environment and forming the development policies. It can not be called good or bad, but it provides the problem that should be solved - poor communications and cooperation between the public authorities and citizens.”

“Indeed, to believe that a Citizen's conference could influence the EU policy-makers, you need to be very naive :-) ... or an utopist ! Any Idea? To be honest, most of the Europeans are lucky, compare to the millions who live in the favelas and shantytowns! However, our lifestyle is not sustainable. There is a lot of work to do in order to explain the problems and find the ingenious solutions … in the next 50 years! Some of «my» ideas: Give up GNP Increase! The GNP belongs to the unsustainable past! It should be replaced a mix between the« Quality of Life » indicators, the UN Human Development indicators and some new « sustainable development » indicators. If the indicators are simple to understand and distributed in the Medias, it could have a serious influence in people's mind.”

“The city where I currently live (because of their governments or their inhabitants) is more devoted to show off than to improve the real problems of citizens. On top housing is a huge problem and the debt of citizens when they decide to buy or rent a place to live (an ESSENTIAL need) is increasing every day. Rules to stop building land speculation are urgently needed. I think chain shops and malls are killing culture heritage. Cities and traditions must evolve but i think such evolution must be ruled by citizen tastes, opinions, or needs and not by other interests. And, city evolution SHOULD take care of the environment.”

“The way to improve the situation could consist of improving and fostering the citizens' ownership of the development of their own living-environment. There is little done so far to raise the awareness of the citizen that their voice is counting, and citizen are mostly absent of the decisional process at local level apart from the usual local elections that, in many cases, face certain inertia problems (difficulty to introduce suited changes).”

“Living in Ireland after having lived considerable amounts of time in my native Germany, France, Sweden, Wales and the US, I am surprised by the lack of trans-national exchanges of experiences and expertise related to urban change.  The sub-urbanisation of Irish cities currently underway seems to repeat similar mistakes committed elsewhere about 30 years before. My hope is that the space provided by these conferences might become the nucleus for such an exchange.”

“My city environment is not bad, but there are lot of information I do not have, for instance: what chemical products are used on public gardens, are they toxic for children? How are the pollution levels in water and air? What is the smell coming from some factories? When creating gardens and parks promoting biodiversity is not taken into account. Sometimes I feel that in cities humans are being separated from humans and from nature and this is alienating.  I think this is why we feel we need to escape from cities. We shall make cities human and environmentally friendly, bringing in materials, facilities, products and services that care for humans and nature.”

“Open discussion in the local level very often is distorted -in Greece, at least- by political affiliation and lacks strategic view. Also, we often come to the point where public opinion is not intelligently informed and decision are taken on a mislead local population, that after a couple of years, turn out to be inappropriate. Therefore, I believe that a direct dialogue between the local level and the European Union can be very effective and prove that, although every city can be very different and face diverse conditions, the problems arising are very similar.”

“An important role will be played directly by the citizens but their experiences and proposals have to be linked constantly with points of view of the experts to face in efficient way technical and administrative problems. These links are relevant to obtain a really change and to avoid the risk to draw up a book of dreams. Experts and citizens have to elaborate together a new vision for our cities to carry out a new landscapes that must be at the same time beautiful, sustainable and efficient.”

“In my view, significant progress can be achieved through citizenship participation, supported by the urban authorities. For example, in my neighbourhood, the Falkplatz is a now favourite public place for local residents both young and old. Until recently, it was a run-down park. Through a Neighbourhood Management project launched by the city of Berlin, the local community was entrusted with a budget to develop its own neighbourhood. After much local consultation, the committee decided to back a project proposed by a local sculptor, costing €16,254. This sculptor and a local metallurgy shop planned the redesign of the park around “Urban Furniture” in the form of curved benches which are open to public use. The money was spent on purchasing the materials and the necessary metalwork. Today, the neighbourhood is proud of its park which is unique in Berlin because of its artistic but practical seat sculptures. Young people sit there to do their homework (including myself!), mothers use the curves as a natural support for their babies while they are changing nappies, and people of all ages are glad to be able to sit together and chat in small groups on this unusual furniture. Though small, the sum of money invested was used to promote employment for the local sculptor and his metal workers, who also gained an attractive project to include in their portfolio of works.”

“If defining sustainability includes living in a city with a strong economy, a healthy, caring and educated society with a safe and attractive environment and an improving quality of life, then we must keep an open mind to the above issues. A necessary step, in order for this and other issues, as regards the quality of the city, to become reality is to better understand  the measures and policies that determine the quality of life. That is also one of the reasons why I want to apply to this conference, because I want to educate myself in these areas. In order to achieve this goal I believe that the communication between citizen and the state must be better, in every possible way. We need to make the bridge shorter. By improving communication we can retain and enhance our competitive positions in the global economy, regardless of what country/city one lives in.”

“One thing which should change is the attitudes and proceedings of the city government when dealing with urban planning - the understanding that urban planning does not equal with increasing the city budget by selling every free space and old house in need of renovation to profit-seeking real-estate developers (corruption is still quite often in connection with public-private real-estate deals), but genuinely understanding that urban planning means active engagement of the city government itself (together with its inhabitants) in ethical, considerate,  future-oriented, and sustainable development of the city.”

“I imagine the city of tomorrow as a city without time and space borders for citizens all around European Community.”

“Universal way how to solve emerging problems is to change the way of how white-collar workers are thinking when making decisions in municipality. This is a striking challenge which should be addressed by long term process. The key drivers in this process are the locals, local initiatives and communities with strong single-voice based public opinions and policy alternatives.”

“As far as I see in Europe, social interaction is disappearing slowly as people come to town during the day(which cause an overwhelming concentration of office, shopping and entertainment activities) and leave it at night. Leaving the city as a ghost. Look at Brussels, how quite almost dead at night! Air pollution, density of traffic and noise is becoming a real problem which make the people feeling like going out of town. Nightlife in town should attack people for more than just a drink. Why not create some exclusives walking areas, more green spaces, not on the edges of the city or in the suburbs only... but in the city centre.”

“To my thinking E.U. is nothing more than a terrible bureaucracy system and I thing that form is an example
Do you normally follow European policies and initiatives? yes or no? I haven't know any except the day without cars but in the form I need to answer yes or no. It's my life dream for an answer little a bit more than yes or no.”