What rights, principles and responsibilities should guide just urban climate adaptation?
On 24 September, Demsoc presented the proposal for the Local Parliamentary Cycles to the teams from JUST4CARE’s four pilot cities. These cycles will bring together community listening, public deliberation and the collective development of urban rights, connecting what is happening in local neighbourhoods with a European conversation on just climate adaptation.
This meeting marks the beginning of a new phase coordinated by Democratic Society, with methodological development by Zuloark and building on the framework of the Universal Declaration of Urban Rights .
Our next step is to work individually with each city to co-design its Parliamentary Cycle around its communities, ongoing activities and pilot objectives.
From a pilot project to a shared mission
When a European project arrives in a city, it creates opportunities for new knowledge, relationships and forms of collaboration. But its capacity to bring about lasting change also depends on what remains after the project ends: the alliances it has built, the capacities it has strengthened and the potential to transfer its learning to other places.
This is why the Local Parliamentary Cycles are built around a simple idea: connecting the pilots with the people, organisations and institutions already working to improve their neighbourhoods.
A school trying to protect its classrooms from extreme heat, an association supporting older people during heatwaves or a community advocating for more accessible public spaces may all be contributing to the same mission: adapting our cities to climate change in a just and democratic way.
Urban Parliaments create spaces where these experiences can meet technical knowledge and the people who have the capacity to act. They also offer opportunities to recognise and celebrate initiatives that are already working, identify what is missing and build alliances to develop new responses.
From everyday experiences to urban rights
The framework of the Universal Declaration of Urban Rights allows us to turn seemingly individual situations into questions of collective responsibility.
If someone cannot sleep in their home during a heatwave, what minimum living conditions should a city guarantee? If an intervention improves a neighbourhood, how can we ensure that existing residents also benefit from it?
Through the Parliaments, communities will explore different proposals for urban rights connected to JUST4CARE’s five lenses: Justice 4 Care, Knowledge 4 Care, Governance 4 Care, Cities 4 Care, and Policies 4 Care.
These proposals will serve as starting hypotheses. Each city will be able to test them against its own experiences, refine or challenge them, and formulate new rights emerging from the deliberative process.
What will a Local Parliamentary Cycle look like?
Each city will develop a complete process combining public activities, community listening and two Parliamentary Sessions with distinct purposes.
Before the Parliaments
Activate and listen
Each city will identify a local core team and a local ambassador with trusted connections in the community. Building on existing activities, interviews and relationships, the team will collect initial Voices and identify a guiding question that deserves public deliberation.
Parliamentary session 1 (Spring 2027)
Listen, deliberate and prioritise
Participants will bring together their experiences, knowledge and perspectives to identify what we should protect and strengthen, what should be guaranteed and what harm we need to prevent. The session will produce one to three collective priorities and initial proposals for urban rights.
Parliamentary session 2 (Autumn 2027)
Agree, draft and present
After reviewing the outcomes of the first Parliament, participants will examine the proposals, identify responsibilities and safeguards, and collectively draft a Local Declaration. The text will be read aloud publicly and opened for voluntary endorsement, while also documenting any disagreements.
After the Parliamentary sessions
Share back and connect
Each city will share the results with participating communities and prepare a Local Evidence Pack bringing together its Local Declaration, selected Voices, key learnings, disagreements and proposals for action.
Each session will bring together three essential perspectives: people directly affected by climate impacts; those who can design, fund or implement adaptation measures; and those who build trust and connect communities, knowledge and institutions.
The same people do not need to attend both Parliaments, as each session has a different purpose.
Four cities, four starting points
Each Local Parliamentary Cycle will be rooted in the realities and communities that the pilots are already working with.
Over the coming weeks, we will work with each local team to define the focus, participating communities, guiding question, formats and timetable for its Parliamentary Cycle.
From Local Declarations to a European Declaration
The process will culminate in a Final Synthesis Parliament, where the four cities will share and compare their results.
The aim will be to identify common principles, context-specific rights, emerging rights, safeguards and disagreements that should remain visible. In this way, the future European Declaration of Urban Rights for Climate Resilience will be able to express a shared vision of just climate adaptation while preserving the diversity of the experiences that shaped it.
This journey will be documented in the document Voices from the Parliaments, bringing together the Local Evidence Packs and Local Declarations, and will inform Declaration of Urban Rights for Climate Resilience, the European version agreed by the consortium.
We are starting to design the cycles with each city
Following the joint presentation on 24 September, we are now beginning individual coordination meetings with the four pilot teams. We will work with their local ambassadors and core teams to build on existing knowledge, relationships and activities, jointly identifying the support they need at each stage.
This process will be supported by the DIWO Guide — Build Your Urban Parliament, a practical resource developed within democratic Society and Zuloark to help cities organise their sessions, collect Voices, facilitate deliberation, document results and connect their Local Declarations with the European synthesis.
Over the coming months, we will see how four different cities begin to answer, together with their own communities, one shared question: