Chania hosts its first co-creation workshop with local stakeholders in June 2021. The event was part of the first series of VARCITIES Co-creation workshops, taking place in June in all the eight Pilot Cities. The goal of the first series of workshops was to introduce the visionary solutions to the local stakeholders to validate and refine them collectively, before starting the co-design process. 

The purpose of this round of multi-stakeholder workshops is to introduce the Visionary Solutions complementing the city’s actions towards the “Creation of a mobile urban living room in open public spaces”. 

The multi-stakeholder workshop took place online with 20 participants and introduced 2 Visionary Solutions that will be implemented in Chania. The pilot site is located along the coastal area of the city.  

Key Learnings from Participants and Local Stakeholders: 

The workshop began with a productive exchange of perspectives and experiences from a wide range of participants where a positive relationship was drawn between the visionary solutions and various dimensions of the project site.  

When discussing the main drivers and challenges concerning the visionary solutions, a variety of ideas arose pertaining to safety, accessibility to public transportation and leisure, strengthening the public realm, and emphasizing human-friendly mobility.  

The majority of the participants voted that the visionary solutions would be effective if they would implement through the consideration of feedback and perspectives discussed during the workshop.  

Additionally, the participants proposed the aspects of monitoring and support, and the usage of the living room would be ideal criteria to assess the visionary solutions.  

The images below demonstrate promising community engagement and a diverse range of perspectives:

Chania proposes a mobile urban living room in open public spaces with the objectives to: 

1) To increase the environmental awareness of citizens ,  

2) To integrate green spaces into the everyday life of citizens ,  

3) To increase the sense of respect for public spaces ,  

4) To develop a healthy green mindset for children  

5) To improve economic opportunities through green-digital strategies learning,  

6) To increase urban interaction. 

In doing so, 2 Visionary Solutions on the masterplan are presented:   

VS1: Mobile urban living rooms 

VS2: Sensors on bikes and bike stations 

#PeopleOfVARCITIES: the reflections of workshop participants, citizens and local stakeholders

We hope that it will be implemented and we really wish for it to be utilised, so that our city will get more beautiful and citizens, children and adults will benefit as well.  

The topic was very interesting and participants were quite active. The project is very promising. I think it can further evolve and give a lot more than it seems at first. 

We really enjoyed the meeting and the idea. It would be great to see it actually implemented and to watch in future workshops how these original ideas will become reality here in the city.