By leveraging citizen science and participatory research methods, the URBAN PROSUMERS project actively involves Tampere residents and local stakeholders in developing sustainable solutions focused on mobility, food systems and energy. URBAN PROSUMERS strengthens and enhances the role of local Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as focal actors of transdisciplinary research and action in sustainability issues. Through co-creation, the project builds a knowledge transfer hub around the topic of sustainable urban prosumerism.
Focus on resident-led solutions
The title “URBAN PROSUMERS” highlights the project’s goal to engage residents as both producers and consumers of sustainable solutions, services and knowledge. Through novel participatory infrastructures and a co-creation process guided by HEIs, the project brings together the city, residents, and various actors to identify local needs related to the EU Mission themes. It funds community experiments that seek social or technological innovations within the three key thematic areas of the project (mobility, food and energy), addressing the needs identified by residents and local entities such as NGOs, associations and city administration. Tampere HEIs play a crucial role by developing and managing a new knowledge transfer hub for sustainable urban prosumerism, integrating this process also into their strategic work.
Co-creation and experimental community projects
The project aims to create a novel theoretical understanding of the urban prosumerism model through co-creation and experimental community projects. This model can serve as an example for participatory climate action in cities, with potential for scaling and replication in other cities under EU Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities Mission across Finland and Europe. EU Missions are a policy instrument under the EU’s Horizon Europe programme designed to tackle major societal challenges through ambitious, time-bound goals. They combine research and innovation with policy action, citizen engagement, and local experimentation to deliver concrete, measurable impacts by 2030.