Collaborative planning · Helsinki · since 2021
A city with no mandate to imagine its future can only administer it.
We help cities try ideas with the people who live there while the brief is still open, and build the mandate to act on what comes out. We also run educational programmes for schools, universities and professional training.
141 engagements90 cities46 countries
We delivered some of these engagements in our previous collaboration with Toretei, under the brand name of UrbanistAI.
Coplanning
Where three kinds of knowledge meet.
Participation asked experts of planning to imagine everyday life, and experts of everyday life to comment on planning documents. Coplanning reverses this: residents imagine and evaluate, and planners turn that into design.
Point at a circle, an overlap or the centre · or tab to it
Collaborative planning is the opportunity to evaluate ideas and scenarios,
Vienna · Supergrätzl · 2026
The same street corner, as it is and as a scenario, with trees and planting where cars were parked. For the Supergrätzl, residents weighed generated images of their own streets: printed, pegged to a line and marked with dots.
Every image carried the city’s own label: „KI-generiertes Beispielbild, kein Planungs-Rendering“, an AI-generated example image, not a planning rendering.
understand their impact,
The impact evaluator · on the platform
A street corner with parklets tried on it, and beside it the evaluation: what the change would do, who gains and who loses.
Each scenario is checked as it is made: against the institution’s own rules, and for its likely environmental and social impact. The evaluation informs the choice. People make it.
take an informed decision
Munich · Zamanand festival · 2024
Visitors put more than 3,000 ideas for a car-free space around the Siegestor into images; about 300 votes chose one, and it was built there as a walkable prototype four months later. A vote is as informed as what people can see when they cast it.
Kaarina · with Sweco · 2024
Residents generated scenarios for the market square in a workshop and voted on 28 of them. The vision plan was approved in late 2024, and water, art and a stage were built on the square.
Asked in the room
Built on the square
Chosen by about 300 votes
Built, four months later
— and even change your choice.
Bologna · TICO – Officina mobile della conoscenza · 2026
TICO is the City of Bologna’s workshop truck. It travels through the city’s neighbourhoods, from Borgo Panigale-Reno to Savena, and ours is one station in it. Pupils, families and neighbours try an idea on a real street, see what it would change, and talk it through with whoever is standing next to them.
Changing your mind after seeing more is part of learning. It is also part of democracy.
Because a city is democratic when it holds knowledge in common.
«Perché una città è democratica quando mette in comune la conoscenza.» City of Bologna, TICO page
Where we have worked
One disc per city, sized by the number of engagements there (a project, or one session of a longer project) and coloured by the task most often run there; grey where none of them is on the framework yet. The land is drawn in dots, denser along the coasts and closest to where we have worked. Point at a city to read it. Positions are approximate. Land: Natural Earth.
The engagement framework · how we work
00Before the build
Any engagement that asks a public something can be placed with them: a workshop, a museum kiosk, a festival vote, a truck touring the neighbourhoods.
The figure is built from our own work: each disc is one of the 78 engagements in which people were asked. Talks, trainings and research grants are left off.
01The vertical axis
Could this engagement still change what will be done, or only how?
At the top, the brief is open: nothing is fixed yet, and what people say can change the plan itself. At the bottom, it is defined: what will be built is settled, and people shape how it looks and works. Each end promises something different, and a city should know which one it is offering before it asks.
From our vocabulary
open brief
What will be done is not yet decided, so an engagement can still change what happens, not only how.
defined brief
What will be done is already decided. An engagement can still change how it is done, but not whether.
02The horizontal axis
Will people bring material you do not have yet, or respond to material you provide?
On the left, people respond: to a scenario, a policy idea, a drawing someone else made. On the right, people propose: they bring the photograph, the wish, the first image of what could be there. Where the two questions cross, four tasks appear.
From our vocabulary
respond
People respond to material we provide: a scenario, a drawing, a policy idea.
propose
People bring material we do not have yet: a wish, an idea, a photograph of their own street.
03Open brief · respond
What if this happened here?
The question, not the answer. We have options to put to people.
A scenario or a policy idea goes to people before anything is decided, and we learn what they could live with.
In Enschede, residents of Twekkelerveld added trees, benches and water to photographs of their own streets. At the Estonian Museum of Natural History, a kiosk with no facilitator let visitors try a more biodiverse city on real sites. TICO in Bologna, above, sits here too.
04Open brief · propose
What could this place become?
Nothing yet. We want ideas about what this place could become.
Everything is still open. People bring the future they want for a place, and it becomes the raw material of the brief.
In Lahti, 66 images made by residents and stakeholders at an open-house station fed the City Centre Vision 2040, which the city adopted in spring 2024. In Luleå, children photographed real places and reimagined them on their own terms.
05Defined brief · respond
What would make this better?
The design. We want it better before it is final.
The design exists. People react to the actual drawings while there is still time to revise.
Vienna’s Supergrätzl and Munich’s Siegestor, both above, sit here. So do Helsinki’s market squares and Liivalaia Street in Tallinn.
06Defined brief · propose
How should it look and work?
What we will build, but not yet how it looks.
What will happen is decided: a street, a square, a building. How it takes shape is open, and what people propose feeds the design.
Helsinki Summer Streets, 2023, sits here. So do Kaarina’s market square, above, and Jyväskylä, where culture and real-estate actors imagined new uses for the interiors of the main library.
That is the whole framework: 78 engagements, four tasks, two questions. The use cases page holds every one of them, with a filter for each task.
Signals
Press, reports and talks from the cities, institutions and partners we work with. Each one opens at its source.
Working with us
Choose by what you want to change. The durations are typical.
Step 1
Self-service
You bring the facilitators; we provide the platform.
What changesYour tools1–2 daysto activation
Step 2
Guided launch
A bootcamp from the case library, training on the platform and in facilitation, and a first workshop set up with you. Then your team carries on independently.
What changesYour team’s skills4–6 weeksguided
Step 3
Co-creation
A programme built around your question: the method, a tailored instance, custom interface and purpose-built AI, with monitoring and evaluation.
What changesThe method itself2–4 monthsprogramme
Step 4
Strategic partnership
Internal processes, governance models and institutional culture, redesigned around collaborative planning. For governments and international organisations.
What changesThe institution3–12 monthspartnership
Step 5
Train the trainers
Your staff become certified facilitators, who then onboard partner organisations, municipalities or grantees.
What changesWho else can run it2–3 monthsto first rollout