Establish and Nurture Ownership

Make the transformation process tangible and visible

During the first long period of a transformation process, the transformation is exactly that: a process. Meetings, workshops, and conversations are all quite intangible and hard to visualise as results. Making the process as tangible and visual as possible is vital in keeping people connected to the process. What you see is what you get and can be difficult to grasp if there is nothing to show and engage with.

Visuals help remind people that a process is taking place. Making the process and progress visual and even something people can interact with, stimulates commitment and responsibility. Further, visuals create a common identity and a shared language.

Identify incentives for all people involved

Remember that motives and incentives are different. Creating and maintaining a sense of ownership relies heavily on people's motivation. To create and sustain a shared motivation, it is crucial to highlight individual motivations for the project and understand why different mechanisms are necessary.

Establish networks and aim to make them self-sustained

Empowering communities to become self-leading agents of change is essential for fostering meaningful and lasting urban transformation. Establishing a network should not only be done to build relationships and foster mutual understanding between people for the moment being but with a long-term aim of making the network self-sustained.

Finding a common space to meet supports mutual tolerance and understanding.

Initiate realisable activities created by citizens 

To foster citizen-ownership it is vital to support local citizens in creating and conducting activities themselves. When citizens feel proud and connected they are empowered.

Make initiatives realisable by creating low- or no-budget activities. When sustaining motivation for the movement it is pivotal to balance long-term dreams with realistic short-term output. Encouraging locally realistic actions with concrete short-term output is key – work with what you have.

• How do we turn a top-down decision to bottom-up motivation?
  
  

• How do we create and establish a scale that people can relate to?
  
  

• How can we visualise our process?
  
  

• What steps of your process are (or can be made) visible?
  
  

• Can people see, hear, or touch the results of what they have taken part in?
  
  

• What are the motivations and incentives of all people involved? How do they differ?
  
  

• What are the common denominators of motivations and incentives?
  
  

• Do we have a physical space to gather all stakeholders and actors?
  
  

• How can residents take the lead and ownership in the development of the neighbourhood?
  
  

• How can we support citizens in creating neighbourhood activities?

Below you will find tools and site cases that serve as good examples of how to establish and nurture ownership. 

On the Wildemanbuurt site, you can read about their use of “Design and Do groups,” which is a great example of fostering ownership among citizens. 

On the Kalundborg site, you can read about the Phoenix group, which exemplifies a citizen-driven action group. 

Read about the Green Star Network on the BTC city site as an example of a self-sustained network. 

You can also read about the MIND site and their yellow benches, which help mark a common identity for the site users. 

As for the tools, take a look at the Outdoor Space Mapping, Hackathons, and 1:1 Mobile Interventions, which are all applicable for creating ownership among citizens (from young to elderly people).