Active citizenship is about being involved in your community, having your say and taking part in decisions that affect you. Above all, it’s about people making things happen. This often means taking the opportunity to be actively involved in tackling the things that need to change around you. As a result you will be able to improve the quality of life in your local community as well as inspire others, locally or further afield, to take action and make change a reality.

Interactive workshops, in the context of creating awareness around certain topics (poverty, homosexuality, race), are extremely important for people of all ages, especially younger persons, since it helps to deepen understanding and knowledge as well as broaden people's minds by breaking down stereotypes and challenging issues considered "taboo" or "the norm".

Community gardens provide fresh produce and plants as well as satisfying labour, neighbourhood improvement, sense of community and connection to the environment. They are publicly functioning in terms of ownership, access, and management, as well as typically owned in trust by local governments or not-for-profit associations.

There are many financial, social and business-related reasons to join a co-working space. First, it is a means to promote flexibility and lower operating costs. Second, being surrounded by other independent workers with different skill-sets, networks and creative projects incubates creativity, innovation and meaningful business and social relationships. Third, it can decrease feelings of isolation often experienced by freelancers/small business owners as well as increase a sense of community and trust amongst peers.

Cycling is increasingly recognised as a clean, sustainable mode of transport and an essential part of an inter-modal plan for sustainable urban travel. In the Netherlands and Denmark, the bicycle is one of the principal means of travel in the cities. Cycling can have many advantages as a short-distance means of travel in urban areas: it is environmentally friendly – without emissions and noise nuisance; provides cost-effective mobility, and offers an opportunity for health and physical fitness by regular exercise.

The approach of using derelict land and widely abandoned buildings for new, sustainable growth in Europe has numerous advantages for all parts of society, including for the environment. Empty buildings are everywhere, making it important to push users to reuse existing resources, avoiding the construction of new buildings, land consumption or landscape pollution, and creating space for a more social, environmentally-friendly renewal and regeneration of a community.

Community gardens showcase how a community, with sufficient will, knowledge and other resources, can come together to turn plots of unused land into communal vegetable gardens, thus changing the narrative of food in the surrounding areas as well as promoting healthier and more communal environments.

Allotment gardens are different as every gardener has his individual plot and the sites are created on leased land or land put at the disposal of the associations. Agreements/contracts regulate the relations with the landowner. Very often there exist allotment garden zones in the urban planning scheme.

Collaborative consumption, or “the sharing economy”, describes the shift in consumer values from ownership to access. Together, entire communities and cities around the world are using network technologies to do more with less by renting, lending, swapping, bartering, gifting and sharing products on a scale that can range from local to global.

Improving conditions of care and domestic workers

The introduction of a basic income – now demanded by numerous movements in Europe – consists in a regular income paid by a political community to each of its members on an individual basis and unconditionally.