Following the Citizens Review Panel held last month, on June 14, 2023 SDA and the ARC Fund gathered stakeholders from academia, NGOs, and city authorities in SofiaLab to debate on the scope and objectives of municipal policies for sustainable urban development, digital transition, youth employment, and support for innovations. The workshop completes the cycle of co-creation activities within the RRI-LEADERS project, which included focus groups, a Delphi study, interviews and working meetings with a wide variety of experts. Not surprisingly, stakeholders largely agreed with the policy priorities and actions proposed earlier by the citizens. Regardless of the (minor) differences, both groups see the future of Sofia as a modern, connected, digital, smart city, where all citizens enjoy equal access to public services and no one is left behind in the transition to an all-encompassing digital working and living environment. Both the citizens review panel and the stakeholder workshop illustrated important features of public engagement, as defined by RRI-LEADERS, namely, that citizens are increasingly involved in domains with a more meaningful impact on daily lives, such as in healthcare, mobility, and circularity challenges (such as waste management). Respectively, cities and city authorities seem well placed to call on citizens’ ideas and energy to design new initiatives in these fields.

At the end of June, SDA will host a policy learning workshop under RRI-LEADERS, with project partners and stakeholders from Greece, Spain, and Switzerland. We are looking forward to a fruitful exchange and discussions on the future of transformative policymaking and innovation-led transition. Follow SDA’s website and the website of the project for more insightful and inspiring ideas.

 RRI Leaders is funded by Horizon2020.