Co-Creation in Urban Strategy Making: Variety in Participant Recruitment and Interaction Formats for the Dresden Smart City Model Project

The success of smart city initiatives relies on the active involvement of diverse stakeholders. This article addresses the practical implementation of citizen engagement in smart city development, specifically focusing on elaborating a smart city strategy. The article presents the participative and co-creative formats that have driven the elaboration of a smart city strategy for Dresden, Germany. A comprehensive set of analogue and digital participation activities with open, random and selective participant recruitment has been implemented to ensure a maximum width and outreach of participation while ensuring the requisite depth and thoroughness of knowledge and expertise. From online surveys via showcase events to hands-on participation in public tram lines, various approaches have been used that complement each other. The methodical interplay of these various measures and their systematic synthesis and integration into Dresden´s smart city strategy has model character for other cities seeking to establish future-looking urban development strategies. Actual results of the diverse formats include the streamlining of digitisation efforts among administrative departments as well as insights into and capacities for iterations in complex and changing environments, potentially generating resources and creativity for sustainable urban digitisation.