UPDATE: Project details updated during the EPSA 2025-26 edition. Awarded Special Recognition for continuous improvement and long-term sustainability.
The overall aim of the project ‘My City, My Future!’ is to encourage and implement active participation of all citizens and stakeholders in Nilüfer City. This means creating a sustainable mechanism where resources are managed effectively and transparently, with innovative methods to meet public needs. In addition, the administration wants to take into consideration the point of view of the younger generation because they represent the future of society but also today’s partners. In this spirit, workshops for children and idea-sharing meetings were organised with the slogan ‘My Neighbourhood is My Future’. A new principle was developed around the administration of the municipality – ‘New Generation Nilüfer’. This concept refers to structuring a city by looking at the world through the eyes of a child or a young person.
In this way, Nilüfer Municipality aims to create its next strategic plans with participation of its stakeholders and to design a participatory process with the understanding of joint governance. This is the most important innovation of the project.
In this context, during the strategic plan studies activities were envisaged such as neighbourhood workshops to bring people closer to municipal decision makers, and the above-mentioned children’s workshops. The needs and priorities of the city were determined in the light of stakeholder perception surveys by ensuring the participation of all citizens in the process.
As a result of this participatory process, the 2020–2024 Strategic Plan was designed under five main strategic aims: corporate development, urban and rural development, social development, ecological balance and economic development.
Nilüfer municipality has been the only one to date where the decisions were made by discussing its visions, missions, values, strategies and projects directly with citizens. Workshops were conducted in all neighbourhoods during the strategic planning process in Turkey, including those for children of all ages, where they can express their dreams and mark them on the city map. The framework of the strategic plan was shaped further by analysing the feedback received from all stakeholders and collected via concept pools.
After all these studies, the strategic plan was initially presented to a public audience and explained in detail, and later presented to the city council. In this framework, the road map of 15 steps in a one-year period has been implemented with comprehensive participatory studies and a new generation strategic plan covering the years 2020–2024 has been created.
Local, national and international studies were carried out to reflect the perspective of youth in a strategic plan and to include project ideas that will make life easier for young people in the city. As a result of these studies, a national model has been created to ensure the participation of young people in the strategic plans of local governments. With the implementation of this model, a Youth Commission consisting of young, elected members of the City Council and representatives of the Nilüfer Community Council Youth Assembly was formed. Furthermore, a female and a male young representative were included in the higher commission, where the strategic plan was finalised, by the mayor and deputy mayors.
Developments
Since its initial submission to EPSA in 2021, the My City, My Future project has undergone a comprehensive transformation, evolving from a participatory initiative into a fully institutionalised participatory governance model embedded in the municipality’s strategic planning and governance framework. The most significant development during this period has been continuation and further development of the project within the 2025–2029 Strategic Plan under the governance approach Co-Create, Co-Manage. Through this integration, citizen participation has moved beyond a consultative role and structured as an institutional process directly influencing policy development, service design, and resource allocation.
Within the scope of the Co-Create, Co-Manage project, a wide range of interactive participatory practices were implemented. These included workshops with internal municipal stakeholders, as well as neighbourhood circles and participation circles with citizens; future workshops with women, youth, children, and municipal council members; and tools such as the Future Circle Board, Participation Box, and digital participation surveys. These mechanisms enabled systematic collection of ideas and proposals from all groups of society, ensuring inclusive engagement in shaping the city’s future. Among participatory platforms, the most comprehensive were the neighbourhood meetings, organised across 16 regions based on geographical distribution of Nilüfer Municipality’s 64 neighbourhoods. Conducted in cooperation with the Nilüfer Citizen Council and Neighbourhood Committees, these meetings maximised local involvement in the strategic planning process and ensured outreach to all social groups and geographical areas. Throughout this process, extensive qualitative and quantitative data was collected and thousands of citizen inputs were analysed using artificial intelligence-supported tools and digital technologies. These contributions were categorised and incorporated into different stages of the strategic planning cycle.
All participatory activities were aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, resulting in 6 Strategic Aims and 36 Strategic Objectives for the 2025–2029 period. Building on experience gained, innovative methods were developed to better assess evolving needs of different target groups. Integration of multiple participation channels ensured that stakeholder feedback was reflected at every stage of decision-making, positioning this approach beyond conventional strategic planning practices. Innovative structures such as neighbourhood committees enabled direct citizen involvement in governance, while diverse participatory tools facilitated the integration of multiple perspectives. Nilüfer thus became the only municipality in Turkey to define its vision, mission, values, and strategic priorities through direct deliberation with citizens during the preparation of its 2025–2029 Strategic Plan. Stakeholder feedback was analysed using artificial intelligence-supported technologies, generating conceptual frameworks that shaped the core architecture of the plan.
The participatory governance journey was initiated with My City, My Future and continued through Co-Create, Co-Manage, supported by innovative technologies, and laid the foundation for the Compass is Digital Participation project. Through this initiative, Nilüfer achieved another national first by conducting Türkiye’s first local digital election via a mobile application. The participation process was further strengthened through neighbourhood-based digital voting mechanisms, creating a hybrid participation ecosystem. These digital tools significantly reduced geographical, temporal, and physical barriers to participation, while substantially increasing participation rates, transparency, and inclusiveness.
Long-term impact
Nilüfer Municipality has been a pioneer of participatory governance in Türkiye since 2002, introducing strategic planning practices to strengthen citizen involvement in decision-making. The My City, My Future project and the following Co-Create, Co-Manage model represent the most advanced phase of this transformation, embedding participatory governance permanently within the municipality’s organisational structure and ensuring inclusive, transparent, and sustainable governance.
The project aims to enhance citizen participation, strengthen collective intelligence in policymaking, design services responsive to local needs, and improve administrative capacity. These objectives are systematically monitored through robust evaluation mechanisms based on key performance indicators such as stakeholder satisfaction, number of participatory activities, diversity of representation, and regularity of monitoring meetings. This integrated model provides a transferable framework for other local authorities.
The governance approach initially developed through Municipal Council Specialised Commissions was expanded by establishing the Participation Council under the Nilüfer City Council. This model brings together representatives of civil society organisations, professional chambers, neighbourhood committees, academics, and youth, and women and children’s councils. It defines a clear road map for stakeholder engagement, strengthening democratic culture, social cohesion, and shared responsibility.
Neighbourhood Committees, meetings, and digital participation platforms ensure continuous dialogue between citizens and the municipality. Regular feedback collection allows timely identification of emerging needs and directly informs strategic planning and service delivery. Project outcomes are assessed through quantitative and qualitative methods, including participation rates, implementation ratios of citizen proposals, surveys, focus groups, and stakeholder evaluations.
Strategic objectives are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, ensuring long-term coherence between local priorities and global sustainability targets. This alignment supports policy continuity and organisational learning, enabling participatory governance in Nilüfer to evolve into a stable, inclusive, and future-oriented model for democratic local governance.
Adjustment in the objectives
During implementation of the My City, My Future project, major adjustments were introduced in response to changing social needs, digital transformation, and growing expectations for participatory local governance. Integration of the Co-Create, Co-Manage approach redesigned the project framework and expanded participation tools. Initially based mainly on face-to-face methods, the process evolved into a hybrid participation model and strengthened through the Compass is Digital Participation initiative to increase accessibility, inclusiveness, and efficiency.
Dedicated coordination units were established to manage participatory governance, while interdisciplinary cooperation mechanisms were reinforced. Resource allocation was redesigned through performance and impact-based budgeting, ensuring financial sustainability and operational continuity. This transformation positively influenced not only participation policies but also social services, urban planning, environmental strategies, and youth engagement.
Experience gained guided other municipal initiatives, enabling transfer of participatory methods and digital tools across multiple service areas. The governance model has been disseminated nationally and internationally as a best practice example with awards, demonstrating its scalability and adaptability for other local authorities. Continuous senior administrative support and strong political commitment secured long-term sustainability, embedding participatory governance as a permanent element of the municipality’s organisational culture, strategic planning, and decision-making processes, while strengthening transparency, accountability, citizen trust, and democratic resilience at the local level.