 Welcome, everyone. Once again, let's talk about urban planning. And today we'll look at citizen co-production, where citizens are involved in shaping their cities. And while this is often seen as positive, my guests today, Leica Aruga and co-authors, argue that simply involving citizens does not guarantee better outcomes. So in this conversation with Leica, we explore two examples in Norway to highlight the challenges that are posed by limited participation, limited knowledge, and sometimes limited transparency. Leica, welcome to our episode. Thank you for having me. So Leica, citizen co-production is becoming increasingly popular, especially in sustainable city initiatives. So I believe this is why you decided to conduct the research on this topic. Right. So co-production in urban planning context is often talked about as a necessity. This is because the challenges faced by our societies cannot be addressed unless there are collaborations across different sectors and different actors. We approached co-production as a process that generates not only knowledge, new knowledge, but also understandings of what sustainability means in different places. And we focused on the role of citizens because situated understandings of sustainability can't be obtained without their involvement. Let's follow up on that. I read your article and you mentioned that the current discussion on co-production often overlooks power imbalances between citizens and institutions. So was this devoid in the research that you wanted to fill? Exactly. Studies from before have pointed out already that the role of power and politics in co-production hasn't been addressed enough. And most studies focus on why co-production is needed or how it could be carried out. So that's why we were very much interested in the transformative potential of co-production. That is whether co-production could alter problematic power dynamics that reproduce inequalities and unsustainable practices. So we focused on understanding how inclusion and exclusion take place during the design and implementation of two co-production practices. And this made us question how the citizens as a subject was also being co-produced in the process. Well, promising. Let us know the findings then. So we looked specifically at two cases of localizing sustainability efforts. They took the form of democratic innovations specifically as citizen panels that was implemented by the Trondheim municipality in Norway. We chose the cases because of their specific commitments to making an inclusive and deliberative participatory space. We interviewed those who were engaged in the panels and we learned that the way citizens with diverse backgrounds were gathered and they discussed how to make their own neighborhoods and city more sustainable. But as we looked closer at how the citizens were brought into the panels, also how their roles were perceived during deliberation in relation to knowledge experts and professional facilitators, we found contradictions in the way citizens were expected to contribute on one side as individuals with no prior knowledge or group interests, but on the other side also being expected to represent different social categories. So the depiction of the citizen as a ghost subject that we use in our article underscores that the ideal citizen as imagined in many co-production processes simply does not and cannot exist. Let's follow up on that. So I'm particularly interested now about policy implications and implications for individual choice potentially. Well, our study pointed to one possibility of explaining why co-production practices often fall short of what their promise to achieve. So it is important to unpack what co-production does and to reflect on whose knowledge, values and also worldviews are actually making a difference. And without doing so, we also risk reproducing problematic discourses around sustainability, which becomes legitimized through cosmetic engagement of citizens. And future research on citizen co-production should focus on what more scrutiny, for example, or more geographies. What do you think it's ahead of us? Well, our analysis was made with an intersectional way of thinking that dynamically conceptualizes power relations, identities and social belongings. So this really complicates the question of who participates because a citizen subject is constantly being shaped and enacted throughout the co-production process. But also in relation to their social belongings outside the spaces of intervention. So we would like to see more research that make use of intersectional perspectives that can critically unpack co-production practices in terms of who participates, but also the political implication of their participation or lack of their participation. Well, some tips for future research. Leica, let us know your... I'm very interested to know about your personal reflection, so getting critical about your study. What are your thoughts? Well, our intention was really not to evaluate the citizen panels, but... And we want to acknowledge that the municipality actually placed a lot of effort and resources in these additional spaces to engage citizens. And when you speak to panel members, they were quite positive about their experience that they were able to meet and discuss with people from diverse backgrounds about the sustainability challenges in their own areas. But still, when we asked the panel members what were the outcomes of these initiatives, they were quite... They were not so sure about it. And partly, this could be because to know what came out of the panels also required their continued political engagement. So our takeaway is also that without having these collective spaces for engagement over time, it really makes it difficult to challenge any underlying premises of smart sustainability discourses that could be problematic. Perfect. This has been a very straight-to-the-point episode, the way we like it. But I would like to ask you, if there was a punchline for this episode, one or two sentences that would wrap it up, what would it be? So intersectional approaches can challenge taken-for-granted assumptions we make in co-production and participatory processes in general. And it's really about keeping the attention directed at complex and challenging power dynamics that are not always giving the attention they need. So our hope is that we could inspire more research to come that builds on intersectionality. Perfect. We haven't got the perfect citizen, but the perfect episode. Thank you, Leica, for this episode. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.