Urban Research
Sustainable lifestyles – evaluating municipal initiatives
Sweden strives to be a role model for the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, one being to achieve sustainable lifestyles by 2030. However, Sweden is among the top ten countries with the largest ecological footprint per person, and lifestyle choices such as private consumption, as well as housing and transport are often far from sustainable. Many municipalities are working in various ways to influence people's behaviour, yet with limited experience on evaluating the effects of their efforts. In addition they often lack knowledge of what others have accomplished in the field and rarely take advantage of research findings on sustainable lifestyles and evaluation methods.
In the new project “Sustainable lifestyles – implementation, evaluation and learning” five municipalities (Gothenburg, Borås, Malmö, Linköping and Umeå) will test and evaluate tools to influence people's everyday choices. The project also aims at developing a framework of concrete, relevant and useful guidelines for evaluating municipal sustainability activities. The framework will be available for use for all Swedish municipalities and will be developed in cooperation with consultants and researchers.
We invite you to join us for a discussion and share knowledge and advice on:
1. how to choose and design methods for evaluating effects of municipal sustainability initiatives
2. give input to a general framework on how to work with sustainable lifestyle projects of different character, so that the effects of the activities could be evaluated
We hope to bring together researchers from a wide variety of disciplines and to create a dialogue. It is an opportunity to share your expert experiences and ideas on how practitioners could overcome concrete challenges and obstacles connected to evaluation methods in the light of the wide spectre of sustainability goals. It is a chance to meet other researchers contributing to sustainability work and to discuss possible future contributions to the national website the project will deliver.
Target groups for the seminar are both researchers with interest in evaluation methods regarding sustainable lifestyles, e.g. consumption, food, housing, transport and leisure, and researchers interested in evaluating municipal instruments for influencing people´s behaviour such as public policy, urban planning, public services, procurement and educational/inspirational activities.
Date: June 14th
Time: 13.00–15.30
Venue: Göteborg, Vera Sandbergs allé 8, Vasa 5 (Nearest tram stop is Kapellplatsen)
Please note: Registration for this event ends June 7th and the seminar will be held in english.
Programme
13:00-13:15 Margareta Forsberg, Gothenburg Platform Director Mistra Urban Futures. Introduction, welcome, and introduction of participants
13:15 -13:45 Tove Lund/Karin Wallin, project manager, City of Gothenburg. Presentation of result of former Mistra Urban Futures project on sustainable lifestyles and the new project ”Sustainable lifestyles – implementation, evaluation & learning”
13:45-14:15 Workshop: How to choose and design methods for evaluating effects of municipal sustainability initiatives? Kadri Koppel, Hifab.
14.15-14.35 Coffee-break
14:35-15:15 Workshop continued
15:15-15:30 Summary and discussion on possible future contributions to the national website for sustainable lifestyles
Questions?
For questions regarding the programme please contact Karin Wallin, karin.wallin@kom.goteborg.se, 0728-55 30 08.
For other questions please contact our event manager Ulrica Gustafsson, ulrica.gustafsson@chalmers.se, 0721-88 55 88.
The seminar is lead by Karin Wallin, project manager at City of Gothenburg and Kadri Koppel, sustainability consultant at Hifab. The project ”Sustainable lifestyles – implementation, evaluation & learning” is financed by the Swedish Energy Agency.
