Participation and financing concepts

Tight public budgets on local and regional level lead to scant budget made available for adaptation measures. The Future Cities partners as public local and regional bodies are experiencing this problem intensely: New activities in 2014 aimed at activating stakeholders in order to jointly finance adaptation measures with private and public budgets. New participation processes were developed and carried out in the Dutch cities Arnhem and Tiel. These processes included financing and insurance institutions and empowered inhabitants and entrepreneurs to take action.

"Social Innovation" in Arnhem

Arnhem- Coehoorn  is a mixed living and working quarter with 5000 inhabitants, schools, hotels and cafes. The Municipality aims at activating the stakeholders in the area to develop their own adaptation and mitigation measures they want to implement. This will be done by communicating the goals of the process, e.g. more green, energy efficiency or substitution of energy, while the measures are developed by the actors themselves. Municipality, European funding and stakeholders will share financing the measures.

The stakeholders living and working in the area were triggered successfully to take the future into their own hands. The neighbourhood proved to be a very effective area to reach individual stakeholders. Together, residents and local entrepreneurs turned a parking lot into a park. In a second step, in September 2014, a water playground was realised with financial support of the waterboard, the drinking water company and again the residents. In the eyes of the municipality of Arnhem and its partner Alliander (regional energy network organisation in the Netherlands), focussing on the neighbourhood level could be a very effective level to ‘reach’ the individual stakeholder. In a first step residents were asked what they would like to change in their own direct environment. Many residents responded that they wanted more green and preferably a small park in their quite stony living environment. In April 2014 the first phase of the construction of the Coehoorn park was realised on a former parking lot with help of sponsors and participation by the neighbourhood. In September 2014 the second phase, adding a water playground, was realised with additional financing by the waterboard, the drinking water company and again the residents. Friday November 2014 was the official opening of the completion of the park.


Link public and private action in an industrial area

In the industrial area Tiel-Kellen (217 ha, 300 companies, 5000 employees) infrastructure managers and industry shall take actions on their ground. The participation process will use a tool which is derived from the Future Cities water game. The communication will be based on the game and architects will work out visualisations of the solutions (measures); the goal is to convince the management of the companies to take measures on their properties.


Financing redevelopment in a retail area of Tiel

The retail and leisure area near the centre of Tiel comprises the harbour, shops and public parking space. One idea is to redevelop a large parking area along the river by developing a substitute parking area and to finance the redevelopment through selling ground to businesses etc.