From introducing new cycle lanes and reducing car traffic to improving the energy efficiency of homes, cities across Europe are taking action to tackle climate change and improve people’s quality of life.
With cities increasingly exposed to extreme heat and flooding, and facing growing pressure to reduce fossil fuel dependence, accelerating the green transition is becoming more urgent. For the past three years, climate action has been European mayors’ top priority in the Eurocities Pulse Mayors survey.
Yet climate measures can also spark disagreements. While some residents welcome cleaner air, safer streets and lower energy bills, others worry about affordability, accessibility and the impact on their daily lives.
These tensions are increasingly amplified by political polarisation, misinformation and social media, where opposing views can become entrenched and constructive debate more difficult.
As disagreements intensify, practical policy decisions can become conflicts between competing interests and identities. This can undermine trust in local authorities, weaken cooperation between communities and make it harder for cities to deliver climate action.
The challenge is not to eliminate disagreement, which is a natural part of democracy, but to help people with different perspectives find common ground. Could giving residents a greater say in climate decisions help overcome these divisions and rebuild trust?
From polarisation to participation
This is the challenge being addressed by PACT (Participatory Approaches for Cities in Transition), a new two-year project led by Eurocities in partnership with the E.ON Foundation, with the support of Coglobal.
Working with three pilot cities – Athens in Greece, Alba Iulia in Romania and Bristol in the UK – PACT will test how citizen participation can reduce divisions over climate and energy policies, strengthen trust and develop solutions that better reflect people’s needs.
As the level of government closest to residents, cities are particularly well placed to bring different communities together and ensure that climate policies reflect local needs.
The project recognises that opposition to specific measures is not necessarily opposition to climate action. People may share environmental ambitions while disagreeing about how policies are introduced, who benefits and who bears the costs.
When residents feel that decisions are imposed on them, mistrust and opposition can grow. By giving people a meaningful role in shaping policies, cities can develop fairer solutions, strengthen public support and build a greater sense of shared responsibility.
Through local pilots, the three cities will test different approaches to encouraging dialogue, compromise and more inclusive decision-making, with lessons shared across the Eurocities network.
Alba Iulia: Giving residents a say in greener mobility
In Romania, Alba Iulia will work with PACT to involve residents in shaping its Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan, which guides the city’s transport policies. The pilot will focus on cycling infrastructure, public transport, traffic congestion and the transition towards greener mobility.
The greatest tensions concern how public space is shared between cars, cyclists and pedestrians, alongside parking regulations and the costs of sustainable transport.
“These differences are driven by daily mobility needs, concerns about accessibility and business activity, and varying perceptions of the costs and benefits of climate action,” states Maria Seemann, Public Manager for Alba Iulia.
The city recognises that sustainable mobility measures must be affordable and accessible, particularly for lower-income households, if they are to gain wider public support.
Through PACT, Alba Iulia will work closely with residents, local businesses, public transport users, cycling associations and civil society organisations. The municipality will also develop an approach to include vulnerable residents, such as low-income groups and people with disabilities, in the conversation.
“We aim to develop a more inclusive and widely supported mobility policy while strengthening trust between residents and local authorities,” explains Seemann.
The ambition is to ensure that residents’ feedback influences mobility decisions and to establish an approach that can be applied to future climate policies. A positive outcome will mean broader participation, more constructive dialogue between groups with different interests and greater public acceptance of sustainable mobility measures.
Athens: Finding common ground for a greener city
In Athens, the city administration will focus on the proposed Goudi Metropolitan Park, an ambitious urban regeneration project that has been stalled for decades by fragmented ownership, competing priorities and disagreements between stakeholders.
The project aims to create more accessible green and public space, but parts of the proposed park area are currently used for through traffic and parking. Through traffic also disrupts the cohesion of the park, making it harder to create a connected public space.
These are particularly contentious issues in Athens, where limited public transport connections leave many residents dependent on private cars. A lack of designated parking spaces in residential buildings and larger garages also creates significant pressure for informal on-street parking.
Through PACT, the city hopes to overcome longstanding disagreements by bringing together major institutions, local communities and residents to develop a shared vision for the park.
Building on consultations already undertaken, Athens will map stakeholders, including vulnerable and marginalised groups, and develop targeted engagement activities to ensure their views are heard.
“Our goal is to reach a compromise with all stakeholders that meets key needs in the community, but is also rooted in reality on the ground,” says Phaedon Angelopoulos, Political Scientist and Urbanist for the City of Athens.
Success would mean making progress on the long-delayed park while demonstrating how meaningful participation can strengthen trust and help resolve disagreements over public space.
Bristol: Building trust through shared experiences
While Athens and Alba Iulia will focus on specific urban policies, Bristol will explore how citizen-led policymaking can shape their approach to home retrofit.
The UK city already has considerable experience of citizen participation, including citizens’ assemblies, community-based planning and participatory grant-making. However, PACT offers an opportunity to test how people can be encouraged to engage constructively when opposing views become closely tied to personal identity.
“Without the ability to compromise, it’s harder to create ways of making progress that people support,” says Alex Ivory, Climate Change Team Manager for Bristol City Council. “That’s why we are interested in bringing people together in conversation and deliberation to see whether it’s possible to form a collective view.”
Rather than immediately focusing citizen engagement on climate policy, Bristol is considering organising cultural or community events in two neighbourhoods. These could involve artistic activities or opportunities to develop practical skills, creating welcoming spaces where residents can share experiences, discuss their neighbourhoods and explore common concerns.
“Bristol is one city made up of many communities,” states Ivory. “It is often at the local community level where people feel the greatest sense of common identity.”
These events will inform the development of a neighbourhood-based approach to improving the energy efficiency of homes and replacing gas boilers with heat pumps. By working with residents in their communities, Bristol hopes to identify approaches that strengthen trust, encourage cooperation and can be continued beyond the pilot.
Turning local experiences into wider European action
Although the three pilots address different challenges, they share a common ambition: to make climate policymaking more inclusive by giving people a meaningful role in decisions that affect their lives.
Over the project’s two years, Eurocities will work with the cities to test and evaluate their approaches, identifying which methods can help build trust and reduce polarisation. The findings will inform practical tools, training resources and recommendations that other European cities can adapt to their own circumstances.
PACT aims to demonstrate that meaningful participation can create a positive cycle. When residents help shape climate policies, decisions are more likely to reflect their needs, strengthening trust in local authorities and encouraging greater cooperation.
By sharing lessons from Athens, Alba Iulia and Bristol, the project will help more cities to build the public support needed to accelerate the green transition while strengthening local democracy.
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The Participatory Approaches for Cities in Transition project, or PACT, aims to support European cities to build trust in climate action by putting citizens at the heart of policy-making. Eurocities and the E.ON Foundation, with the expert support of Coglobal, will deliver this project in three cities – Alba Iulia, Athens and Bristol – over a period of just under two years.
