On 18 June 2024, Dr Anke Blöbaum, leader of Build4People Work Package “Behaviour Change”, Magdeburg University, gave a talk about the challenges of urban sustainability transformation from a psychological perspective at the Federal Association for Housing and Urban Development (vhw) in Berlin.
Thereby, she illustrated the interactions between the designed environment and human behavior and pointed out that participatory processes in urban development can play an important role in reducing behavioral constraints, increasing self-efficacy and supporting the acceptance of sustainable lifestyles.
As a good-practice example, Anke presented the Build4People Ecocity Transition Lab (ECTL) series, which was carried out as part of the Build4People project in Phnom Penh. The ECTL is an inclusive and collaborative planning tool that brings together citizens, academics, the public, the corporate sector and local frontrunners of urban sustainability to identify a common understanding of current urban challenges and to jointly develop and to present alternative visions of sustainable urban development.