Resilience By Design Edinburgh (2023)

Partners

Facilitators

EVOC

Charlie Wright

EVOC is a leader and catalyst of social change in Edinburgh supporting organisations within the City’s community and voluntary sector to develop/thrive. EVOC runs the Edinburgh Communities Climate Forum with supporting community groups and works to develop shared projects, establish collective actions, support third sector organisations and facilitate citywide climate transformation.

Architecture Sans Frontières - United Kingdom

Tamara Kahn, Simhika Rao, Dasha Moschonas

ASF-UK’s specialises in community-led design and planning which can tackle the deepest social and environmental challenges that communities face. They work closely with diverse people to have real influence on decision making, that will lead to creating cities that are socially and environmentally just.

Workshop Participants

20 participants (all Edinburgh residents) including Edinburgh councillors and leaders of community, voluntary, and social sector organisations.

Image 01 Credit Dasha Moschonas

Introduction

Purpose of Workshop

This report captures the process and findings of a day long workshop aimed to address the role that ‘Net Zero Community Planning’ could have in the production of inclusive, resilient and equitable city-making. The workshop explored this using ASF-UK’s Resilience by Design methodology to address how communities, local groups and city institutions could develop transformative neighbourhood scale plans.

The workshop was carried out as a partnership between EVOC and ASF-UK and took place on 15th January 2023. The workshop participants included groups from across the city, local residents and key institutional stakeholders including elected officials, local built environment professionals and researchers.

The workshop aimed to collect principles and methods for working with the civic sector on resilience projects and within the 2030 Climate Strategy Agenda.

The initial workshop was funded by EVOC with the ambition that ASF-UK and EVOC would seek funding opportunities for future project activities. EVOC envisages a wider project beginning with this initial catalytic first workshop which can be the driver of a wider ‘Net Zero Community Planning’ project.

Background & Context in Edinburgh

The City of Edinburgh has set an ambitious target for Edinburgh to become a net zero city by 2030: “this means that by 2030, we want to remove the same amount of greenhouse gases that we, as a city, put into the air.” In the coming months, the Council will select three areas to become the city’s first ‘net zero communities’. EVOC believes that this is an opportunity to strengthen existing grassroots initiatives across the city, and ensure that local communities have the agency to transform their own neighbourhoods. There is a genuine concern that the Net Zero Communities program might not engage communities effectively or give them the tools they need to lead the transformation of their own neighbourhoods and thus create an unhelpful top down model of dependency.

Policy Context

2030 Climate Strategy

Edinburgh’s aim for a net zero vision is that by 2030 Edinburgh will be a net zero and climate resilient city, with a transformed city centre connected to thriving local neighbourhoods, where their historic, natural and built environments are protected and valued for their significant contribution to people’s wellbeing They envisage people living in neighbourhoods with easy access to greenspaces and local services that meet their everyday needswhether that be for work, family or leisure time and reduce the need to travel. The strategy also wants all homes to be well-insulated, energy efficient and heated and powered by low cost, renewable energy, with a higher proportion of energy generated locally

Local Place Plans

Local Place Plans were introduced by the Planning (Scotland) Act 2019, which contains a new right for communities to produce their own plans as part of the new Scottish planning system. Local Place Plans contain the community’s proposals for the development and use of land, and provide a new opportunity for communities to feed into the planning system with ideas and proposals.

Climate Forum & EVOC

Edinburgh Communities Climate Forum is a strategic delivery platform set up by EVOC and their collaborators which brings together community, voluntary and social sector organisations alongside other key citywide organisations to initiate strategic and transformative climate change activities. The forum is an accelerator of transformative action in Edinburgh with the ambition of creating ‘thriving, fair, resilient, and climate regenerative communities across Edinburgh by 2030.

This workshop was intended to develop learnings to inform the Edinburgh Future Neighbourhoods project area and to progress thinking for the City of Edinburgh Council’s Net Zero Communities program.

What did we do?

Overview of the Day

The workshop took place at The Heart of Newhaven centre in Newhaven, Edinburgh. The workshop involved 20 participants taking part in 4 activities over the course of one day. The participants were split into groups of 3, each group representing a different scale; Home, Neighbourhood and City.

The first activity involved cards that represented topics from the ASF-UK Resilience Framework.

These topics encompassed social, environmental and built environment issues such as health and wellbeing, local economy, mobility and access, and issues related to land, air and water.

The participants selected topics that best represented activities they are currently involved in, what issues they would like to see change in as well as areas that they would like to collaborate on and shared this with the rest of the group. This activity allowed participants to introduce themselves to one another and understand the areas everyone is interested in.

The clusters included projects such as providing skills for the future, empowered streets, community energy and heat retrofit projects, harnessing community assets, increasing social and local enterprises.

The third activity allowed participants to imagine they were part of a community task force that have been asked to explore how an initiative (or a series of initiatives) can tackle the cluster they identified in the previous activity. They used a Project Cycle to identify strategies and specific actions that would allow them to move closer to their vision.

The strategy cycle explored a collective vision, what the entry points for change were, who the major stakeholders were and who holds the power, influence knowledge and responsibility. It also explored who might currently be excluded from these discussions and how the initiative could have an impact globally. The participants explored what the risks involved would be and looked at what actions could be taken towards the project goal.

The final activity explored what a set of parameters and principles that would enable this project and similar projects to flourish would be. This was done by scale, and then presented to the whole group of participants. They were asked to finish this sentence: “For residents and community groups to contribute to a transformative, resilient, and fair shift to Net Zero Edinburgh, there needs to be…”

The group then tagged the principles that most resonated with them, or felt were most important. These cross scale principles are detailed in section ; ‘What can we take forward?”

The next activity encompassed finding connections between the topics selected. These connections included ones that were people/ organisation based, place-based, deep systemic connections, sector based connection etc and spanned between topics from the framework. This allowed the opportunity for participants to unite around topics and focus the group on issues they were most passionate about. The group then brainstormed potential possibilities that could arise from the interconnections and agreed on a particular grouping that identified an initiative that the team could explore further.

“Stimulating event - I had some interesting conversations with new people”

“Visual card exercise helped me articulate my thoughts + react to others”

What was said?

The benefit of projects is not just about how much carbon they are saving, it’s about the wellbeing of the community and tackling poverty, but they are fuelled by the goodwill of volunteers. These roles need to be financially supported.

If we have more community resilience and a self-sufficient community, we have more time to spend together and foster mutual support within the community.

I am worried that the 20 minute neighbourhood plan will not allow me to travel by bus to care for my family outside of my neighbourhood, or that I will be charged for doing so.

'We need to rethink our economic activity in a way that also improves people’s lives”

Image 02 Credit Simhika Rao

Image 03 Credit Simhika Rao

What was said?

There is still a big gap between the public sector discussions and the community discussions. Finding ways to bring those two together through resources and empowering communities to do things themselves. Not having climate action in a silo is a key thing.

There is a huge mistrust in the State, it is not always clear whose interests are being served.

There is probably a better phase, such as ‘ClimateReady Communities’, ‘Communities that can flourish’.

Image 04 Credit Simhika Rao

Image 05 Credit Simhika Rao

What can we take forward?

For residents and community groups to contribute to

transformative, resilient, and fair shift to Net Zero Edinburgh, there needs to be…

1. A link to everyday concerns, health and wellbeing

This responds to the need for policy and engagement to be more holistic and consider the issues that affect people regularly

2. Trust between households and the council

There is a need to bring the gap between councils and households together. Fostering trust, kindness and solidarity is key.

3. A Safe Space for Experimentation

We need to be less afraid of failing in the way we try to tackle net zero.

4. Less Jargon

Participants highlighted the need for more simple information being disseminated to the communities with less technical dialogue.

5. Easier pathways to community led action

This responds to the need for ease of entry points for communities to engage with activities that they want to lead or be involved in.

6. A commitment from Local Authorities to Support Communities

Local authorities need to prove they are committed to supporting communities. This can be through long term funding and incentives,

legislation that supports communities which would also allow job opportunities within the communities.

7. A distinction between what should be

community-led vs -owned

There is a need for clarity around what should be community led and what should be community owned. This needs to be explored further between communities and the council.

8. Fun approaches and activities built into engagement

Participants highlighted a great need for all engagements with communities to be fun and enjoyable. The process needs to be rewarding on a personal and collective basis.

9. Inclusivity

We need to recognise variance in the community and the capacity for self organisation that ranges in wealth, class education, density, transience, language, ability etc

10. Realistic timescales

There needs to be realistic timescales for change, recognising that actions could be short, medium or long term.

11. What is missing...?

Whilst the above principles were ones that crossed over scales, there were many other suggestions within the groups such as clarity on the relationship between owners and non owners, a greater need to understand equity, creating space and time for people to think and respond individually, an agreed definition of net zero by council and communities, learning from best practices of other cities.

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Next Steps...

Workshop Outputs

This report outlines the process and findings from the collaborative day long workshop. The key workshop outputs include:

- A set of principles which can be used to engage with communities around the Climate Strategy 2030 agenda.

- Engagement material for future workshops which can be tailored to specific communities and areas. This is in the form of card sets and templates for possible projects and activities.

- A list of key contacts and organisations that would like to be involved in future workshops in a variety of capacities. This list will be stored with EVOC.

- Documentation of key concerns and ideas from a range of community organisers in Edinburgh.

The next phase of the wider partnership will involve identifying a community for further engagement and explore further how community led design can inform a just transition to net zero.

The team would like to thank all the participants for engaging in such a rich and open discussion and providing their thoughts, ideas and critical voices to the process.

Useful Links:

Organisations:

www.asf-uk.org

www.evoc.org.uk

www.asfparticipate.org

Context and Policy: www.edinburgh.gov.uk/climate-2/2030-climatestrategy

www.gov.scot/publications/circular-1-2022local-place-plans

Tools:

www.ourplace.scot/Place-Standard-Climate https://doughnuteconomics.org/tools