arki_lab worked together with the Municipality of Ystad in Sweden with their strategic development plan for the two villages Köpingebro and Nybrostrand. The villages are situated close to each other with each their function and  potentials for future development and a stronger connection between the villages. arki_labs role was to design and facilitate a thorough involvement with the citizens and local actors in Köpingebro and Nybrostrand to inform the municipality’s upcoming strategic plan for the area.

arki_lab facilitated dialogue and workshops that were finalized with a summarizing presentation report, clearly communicating the citizens’ wishes and viewpoints for their area. The knowledge from the involvement process will be the base for the municipality’s future plans for Köpingebro-Nybrostrand to ensure local influence and participatory democracy. The project also aims to contribute to a stronger local engagement and to strengthen the relationship between the municipality and the local inhabitants.

A successful involvement process with solid data

With arki_lab’s different engagement methods the residents have been able to participate in different steps of the process. Interviews with local actors gave the basis to design the arki_nopoly game, understanding the overall conflicts and potentials for the area. The arki_nopoly and a pop-up feedback-loop reached out to more than 200 local residents who contributed with viewpoints and ideas for the area and the future development. The arki_nopoly engagement game was in particular a huge success and four times more people than expected showed up. 

With the ambitious involvement process we managed to create a solid data with more than 1.900 inputs in total. This builds a healthy basis for the final citizen-led development plan which contains knowledge of both thematic and location specific conflicts, qualities and potentials for the area of Köpingebro-Nybrostrand. 

This project is an example of how arki_lab’s different involvement methods are able to engage a broad group of people to create a solid foundation of knowledge for decision making in urban development.