Viennese youths work together to improve their neighborhoods

The City of Vienna aimed to enhance youth participation in public life by inviting young people to generate ideas for revitalizing the economy of the 14th district, one of the city’s most underserved areas. Aware of the advantages of digitalization, city officials decided to professionalize the technological and strategic aspects of the project. They followed their usual process of drafting a communication plan that included outreach efforts, training sessions, and in-person workshops. However, this time, they incorporated a participation website to expand the project’s reach. The final measures selected were presented at a closing event.

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Our client

Kuorum, with years of experience in this type of consultancy work, knows how vital it is to combine in-person activities with participation platforms to maximize the effectiveness of such initiatives.

After analyzing the situation, the Kuorum team collaborated with the City of Vienna to outline an action plan that served as a roadmap for the entire project. Once the working team, training dates, workshops, and online debate phase were established, communication efforts began to inform citizens about the launch of the initiative.

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"We wanted to enhance youth participation in public life."

Viennese youths work together to improve their neighborhoods

The training sessions for the steering group were key to introducing the project’s objectives and explaining how to use the new participation platform. With the support of this group, the workshop phase began in schools and civic centers in the 14th district. The workshops were conducted in two rounds. The first round focused on collecting ideas generated by attendees through creativity techniques, with all proposals uploaded directly to the online debate. In the second round of workshops, idea refinement techniques were used to strengthen the most promising proposals identified by the City of Vienna.

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At the end of the process, the Kuorum team prepared a report that enabled the City Council to select the proposals to be implemented. A final event was then organized, attended by press and citizens. The Youth Councillor presented the local government’s commitments and thanked everyone involved in the process. Additionally, it was announced that progress on these commitments could be tracked via the participation website.

Participatory processes like this, which combine online tools with training and in-person workshops, help achieve higher levels of participation while also improving the quality of the proposals collected. Other examples of collaborative efforts to improve urban living include projects in Toledo and Manchester.

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