Citizens’ Assembly on the future of Albertslund

Albertslund is facing massive urban development, with plans to attract 10,000 new residents over the next ten years. The goal is for the municipality to become financially sustainable, but at the same time ensure strong communities that characterize Albertslund Municipality. Urban development is a complex issue, and therefore the city council wants the citizens’ help to come up with recommendations for a vision for the future of Albertslund and concrete suggestions on how communities can be secured as the municipality grows.

The Citizens’ Assembly was asked a core question by the city council of Albertslund, which was also the task description of the Citizens’ Assembly. The question read: “We want the citizens’ assembly to help us imagine what the future Albertslund should look like – what will it take to preserve and create new strong communities?” We Do Democracy were advisors throughout the process – from the first discussion about the desire to initiate a citizens’ assembly, to the design and facilitation of the entire process.

We Do Democracy ran the Citizens’ Assembly as a third-party secretariat in accordance with OECD principles. We were lead facilitators of the citizens’ assembly, ensuring a smooth process for the members of the assembly in both physical and digital meetings. We Do Democracy developed the core questions, political mandate and designed the process together with the city council and administration. This allowed us to guarantee the independence of the citizens’ assembly.

•  All citizens in Albertslund over the age of 16 received an invitation to the citizen assembly. This amounted to 22,345 invitations. 547 citizens wanted to participate in the citizen assembly.
•  36 citizens were randomly selected on set of criteria to be included in the citizen assembly. By using the criteria of gender, age, education, type of housing and time of moving to the municipality, we achieved a collection that was representative of the municipality’s citizens.
• According to the evaluation, very few vested interests had influenced the final recommendations. At the same time, none of the citizens in the assembly were dissatisfied with the final recommendations.
• The assembly acted as a civic school, with many of the members wanting to continue their involvement after the gathering was over. As a result, their democratic confidence was strengthened.
• The recommendations were broad suggestions that can contribute to the city council’s work on a coherent plan for urban development.
• The citizens’ assembly developed eight overarching recommendations, which they presented to the city council on December 14, 2020.
•  The citizens’ assembly’s vision has subsequently become the vision that the city council has decided and thus lifted into the municipal plan.

Read more about the Citizens’ Assembly on the digital platform and read the final recommendations here.