Citizen and Participatory Science

The City Researches Itself: From Citizen Science to a Global Action-Research Ecosystem for Living Cities (Abstract) Cities generate unprecedented quantities of data, yet often lack the capacity to understand themselves as living social, cultural and ecological systems. Citizen science has significantly expanded public participation in knowledge production, but citizens are still frequently positioned primarily as contributors of observations or data. What becomes possible when citizens become co-researchers of their places - and when we can assess whether participation itself changes how people relate to their communities, territories and wider social systems?

The Living Cities Action Research Ecosystem (LCARE) is developing a distributed international action-research architecture through which citizens, researchers, civic institutions, businesses and community actors collectively investigate their cities and territories. Its Soul of the City inquiry explores dimensions of urban life that conventional indicators frequently overlook: belonging, memory, identity, relationships with place, lived wellbeing, civic agency, cultural continuity, collective aspirations and perceived possibilities for change.

Locally rooted Bioregional Action Research Clusters (BARCs) bring diverse stakeholders into iterative cycles of inquiry, collective sensemaking, experimentation and reflection. Locally generated knowledge can then be connected across an international learning ecosystem, enabling cities to learn from one another without reducing their distinctive cultural and ecological contexts to a universal model.

LCARE integrates an additional measurement layer within this architecture. The INNER KEY© methodology provides a structured diagnostic approach to assessing internal and relational dimensions of human development, including wellbeing, resilience, developmental orientations and how individuals perceive themselves in relation to wider social systems.

Integrated into longitudinal action-research cycles, it offers the possibility of examining changes before and after sustained citizen engagement: not only what participants learn about their city, but whether their sense of belonging, agency, responsibility and readiness to contribute to place-based development changes through participation.

This creates a complementary approach to citizen-science impact assessment. Alongside observable environmental, social and policy outcomes, it becomes possible to investigate the less visible human conditions that may enable - or constrain - collective transformation.

LCARE therefore proposes a shift from citizens as sensors towards citizens as co-researchers and co-creators, and from measuring only changes observed by citizens towards also examining changes within citizens and their relationships with place.

The presentation will introduce LCARE’s emerging international action-research ecosystem, illustrate its application through current place-based inquiries, and invite collaboration on developing and validating an integrated framework connecting participatory knowledge production, measurable shifts in civic consciousness and agency, and regenerative action in cities.

Participatory research and project-based learning are often approached primarily as educational methods designed to develop young people’s knowledge and skills. Yet their potential goes further. When young people participate directly in research projects, investigate real-world issues, collect and analyse data, and contribute to the development of solutions, they can become genuine contributors to knowledge production and sustainable development.

This presentation will explore how international organizations can better recognize and support this dual role: education through participation, and participation as a means of producing knowledge and contributing to action. It will also examine how the results of youth-led and youth-inclusive projects can be better connected to institutional and policy processes, allowing young people to move from being beneficiaries of education to active contributors to research, decision-making and sustainable development.