Nature in the city

Project ‘Nature in the City’ aims to spark conversations at local community levels about the
effects of urban areas and activities on air quality, natural habitat loss, heat budgets,
water system health and circulation, restricting the range of fauna, soil erosion, noise
pollution, etc. (based on the academic research Seto et al.2011).
We hope that those conversations will take roots and the objectives are that they will
broaden community action on environmental protection by engaging in scientific surveys
and supporting research, volunteering in local clean up efforts and collectively influence
the course of local policymaking.
In the preliminary stages of the project we intend to organise several online conferences
between the organisers, the partner organisations and other stakeholders, in order to
discuss and iron out the creation of an online survey that will help assess the awareness of
local communities with regards to environmental risk and habitat loss in and around urban
areas. We aim to reach at least 200 people with the survey, with our target demographics
being young people with ages between 17 and 35.
The survey will be catered to the particularities of each community and will contain simple
questions as well as resources to continue involvement in the project, if so desired, into
the next stages.

To accompany the survey, we are also looking to develop a simple video game
application through which participants can more easily interact with data that portrays to
the impact of urban areas and also the likely habitats and fauna to be found in such areas.
This will serve both to test the participants’ knowledge, but more importantly to arouse
interest and fascination with the natural world.
The information gathered from the online surveys will be analysed by the respective
members of the partnering organisations, and according to that information we will
collectively decide which changes and adaptations need to be made to either schedules,
project activities or anticipated outcomes. It is hoped that the survey along with the video
game app and social media presence will generate enough initial engagement with the
public to obtain good visibility for the project and its objectives. All of the gathered online
information will be compiled, along with suggested and necessary changes, into a rapport
which will be published and circulated to all of the participants and stakeholders.
The selection of any participants will be in accordance with EU non-discrimination
directives.
Team building and other necessary training for the volunteers such as how to use a
Selection of which aspects of the local natural environment are more easily tackled and
require a reasonable amount of training for the volunteers and participants.
Once specific themes are selected:
Specific areas in each community will be selected for an X-ray (for their vulnerability both
ecologically and financially) and the group will begin brainstorming ideas about how to gain
access, monitor the environments and engage with the individuals of the community so
that they will do the same.
The project intends to make usor of online apps such as iNaturalist, Instagram,
Facebook to stay in touch with communities around the world that share similar interests,
such as geological, ornithological or entomological societies, as well as other online
forums, records schemes and databases. We hope that during this project participants will
learn to use online open source platforms and understand their ability to access such
resources in order to achieve real world impact.
Another important resource for the project will be museums. Europe has some of the
most comprehensive and specialist museums in the world. Many museums still offer specialist expertise and an amazing amount of information. We believe that by promoting the connection between the local community and institutions such as museums and universities, the volunteers will learn the importance of facing challenging issues through cooperation and consolidated collective efforts.
The world Cities Day (on the 31st of October) is a U.N. designated international day for
urban areas and their sustainable development. By adding this international event into the
frame of the project we expect to increase the local interest and involvement. Other events
include: Urban October, U.N. Habitat, World Habitat Day and have similar objectives.
In order to promote an evidence based approach the participants will be asked to
workshop several citizen science ideas.