Prototyping for Policy Making: Collaboratively Synthesizing Interdisciplinary Knowledge for Climate Neutrality

Cities around the world are confronted with the unprecedented grand challenge of reaching carbon neutrality. Policymakers need support in translating the abstractness and complexity of the net zero goal into concrete actions. A prototype has been developed to support urban policy makers in understanding, selecting and tracking the implementation of social innovation approaches as levers to reach climate neutrality. The creation of the prototype develops new knowledge by synthetizing contributions from academic literature, case studies, and experts’ opinion, based on cities’ needs, and is embodied into an interactive tool of social innovation actionable pathways for climate neutrality. Testing the prototype with policymakers provided insight into cities’ envisioned interaction with the tool, leading to the redesign of the prototype into a more engaging interactive tool, and an integrated approach with more technical solutions. The developed prototype categories were based on a synthesis of scientific articles, and bottom-up information from 36 practice-based cases of social innovation for climate neutrality. The design and development of the prototype of the social innovation actionable pathways tool has been informed by the analysis of cities’ needs conducted within the NetZeroCities project, which supports 112 European cities in reaching climate neutrality by 2030. A team of experts aggregated the large amount of information derived from literature, cases and users’ needs into a pathway and visualized it in an interactive diagram, with the aim to support strategic decision making at urban level, by lowering information overload, providing visual guidance. The testing phase results provided further knowledge: a more engaging visual tool was perceived by policymakers as valuable to start considering social innovation actions in their cities’ policies, due to the scarcity of policy makers’ time and understanding of social innovation’s contribution to climate neutrality. Interaction design could support policymakers in better strategizing.