1st Year of UrbCitizenPower: Guldborgsund’s Perspective
In Guldborgsund Municipality, we have spent the first year as partners in UrbCitizenPower familiarizing ourselves with the project's means and logic, understanding the unique characteristics of each partner, and addressing key challenges in citizen participation. This year has also been an intense developmental process, laying the groundwork for activating the agency of young citizens.
Our knowledge and understanding of our fellow partners have grown significantly since the first digital Kick-off meeting in March 2024, culminating in the first Urban Living Lab in beautiful Braga. Thank you, Braga, for an inspiring event that provided much to reflect on!
In Guldborgsund, the City Council prioritizes cooperation, co-creation, and dialogue with citizens and citizen associations regarding public hearings and local development. This focus stems from our ambition to foster a living democracy in daily matters and our belief that citizen involvement is crucial for advancing the Guldborgsund development agenda. A key challenge remains involving young people and youth groups in municipal planning and decision-making.
Learning by Doing
As our first Good Practice example, we selected the decision-making process for Sundparken, a new youth space on the quay in Nykøbing Falster, near Markedshallen (an old Market Hall). In 2023, we engaged sixteen young people aged 13 to 26, recruited through social media, educational institutions, and leisure interests, to collaborate with architects in creating designs and a vision for this outdoor area. These young participants were compensated for their involvement.
To ensure progress in 2024, a municipal project manager was appointed to facilitate and continue developing Markedshallen and its surroundings in collaboration with the newly established voluntary association, Markedshallen.
At the beginning of 2025, within our first year of UrbCitizenPower, Guldborgsund Municipality identified a key action to initiate the process for a new youth council. We joined the Danish cross-municipal project “Ung_Indflydelse – Demokrati for fremtiden” [Youth_Influence – Democracy for the Future]. This project brings together sixty representative young people aged 15-24 in a young citizens’ assembly. These young individuals, with their diverse backgrounds and experiences, will jointly develop concrete recommendations for what good democracy looks like for young people and present these recommendations to the five participating City Councils. The project aims to create better youth involvement strategies and develop new methods that municipalities and civil society organizations across the country can use to incorporate young people's perspectives.
Synergies
In addition to UrbCitizenPower, Guldborgsund Municipality is currently engaged in two EU Interreg South Baltic projects: D-EFFECT and Youth Mental Health Alliance. Both projects aim to elevate youth perspectives on local democracy, participation, mental health, and empowerment. We see many constructive interactions between these three projects, as well as between UrbCitizenPower and our participation in the EU Interreg South Baltic Region project Liveability.