Shape Copenhagen

Shape Copenhagen is a civic participation service to help facilitate responsive citizenry amongst Copenhageners, in an accessible and informative way.

In this way, the service expands Copenhagen’s current smart city agenda, from focusing on infrastructure and open data, to incorporating a more human-centred approach to improving the city.

Speaking with over fifty stakeholders, from newcomers, residents and municipality staff, vested in both immigration and smart city affairs, our process maintained the objective of flipping the perspective of newcomers to a city as being needy to being an asset to the city.

To accomplish this goal, we went through an iterative process, where we prototyped many different ideas. From Newcomer Think Tanks – investigating how a city can harness the experience and talents of its immigrants, to Newcomer Ted Talks – exploring how immigrant networks can improve a city, our process defined and informed the final outcome from many different angles.

Beginning with the International House, our project sought not to streamline form-filling or shorten queue lengths, but to look at the issue of immigration and integration in Copenhagen and design something that would benefit a range of different stakeholders, the city, newcomers as well as more long-term residents.

Shape Copenhagen is more than just an app, it is a overarching service that facilitates dialogue between the government and residents of Copenhagen. We foresee the International House as the body that champions the voice of newcomers within this service. By designing something for ALL residents of Copenhagen and giving newcomers a voice in the city they live in, Shape Copenhagen aims to foster greater social cohesion.