Vilnius City participated as a partner at the Urban Future conference in Łódź, Poland in May. The conference took place over three days on 21-23rd May, gathering city changers from all over Europe. We sensed immediately that Urban Future is more than just a conference, it is a gathering of passionate people who work for cities and are buzzing with ideas how to make their cities more liveable and sustainable.

The speakers from Vilnius City talked about community engagement, leading the green transformation, retrofitting heritage buildings and revitalising neighbourhoods to breathe new life into them. At the Vilnius stand we engaged with many participants and shared about the many innovative sustainability initiatives and why Vilnius got awarded the title of the European Green Capital of 2025. Vilnius also hosted a discussion entitled „Meet the Doers“, where community leaders shared their first-hand experience how they took initiative and made a change in their local community. An active community leader from Vilnius, Goda Sosnovskienė, shared how she co-founded the community space and zero waste cafe Miesto Laboratorija (en. City Lab) as well as setting up the first community fridge in Lithuania. This inspiring discussion with Goda, and our guests Maria Derlõš, Urban Gardening Project Manager at the City of Tallinn, Estonia and Sara Edmonds, Co-Director at the National Retrofit Hub and Co-Founder of Home Energy Action Lab in the UK, was moderated by Beatričė Umbrasaitė, Advisor on Citizen Participation and Communication to the Chief Architect of the City of Vilnius.

The speakers at the conference opened up about their project failures, and didn’t just share the polished version. It was a unique space offering the chance to learn from past mistakes and meet the person behind the role, as they open up about their personal journey of leading the change. A common theme was the personal challenge of going to work in the city municipality structures after being independent NGO activists, which was referred to as an identity crisis. When it comes to building a successful city, there are no two opposing fronts of the municipality and the bottom-up NGOs, the magic happens when the two blend and work together towards a common goal. The conference offered many opportunities for personal growth, exploring qualities that it takes to lead a transformative change in cities, and the power of building networks in making this happen. No change is made alone, a supportive network behind a visionary leads to sustainable change.

Building trust was a recurring theme across the many conference speakers. Only when the society trusts and understands the city municipality’s decision and processes is it possible to co-create cities together with citizens. Vilnius City Chief Sustainability Officer Anton Nikitin spoke about the importance of community dialogue when transforming street design. He engaged in a lively panel discussion alongside Daniel Fusca, Manager of Public Consultation, Parks and Recreation Division at the City of Toronto, Canada and Sara Edmonds, showing how community engagement efforts in Vilnius look in the global context.
This is no news to Vilnius, as the city is raising the bar in public participation and working hard to improve the participation processes. Beatričė Umbrasaitė, the community engagement lead at the Vilnius City Municipality is at the forefront of this transformation, working to ensure high quality engagement processes. Two key initiatives this year are the Vilnius City community engagement guidelines, which aims to standardise and introduce clarity on the public participation processes. And most importantly Vilnius is launching its first ever Citizens’ Assembly this year. This is a carefully curated process that has involved a close collaboration with DemocracyNext. Guided by meticulous methodology, a representative sample of the population will be selected for this Citizens’ Assembly, and work through an important city decision over several consecutive meetings.

Vilnius Chief City Architect Laura Kairienė talked on several panels about the efforts of revitalising neighbourhoods and retrofitting cultural heritage buildings in Vilnius. She highlighted key projects, which are leading the change in Vilnius. The transformation of Ramintojos church (en. Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Consolation) and Lukiškės prison shows how Vilnius unlocked the potential of cultural heritage buildings and converted them into vibrant cultural hubs and community spaces. Ramintojos church, previously used as a soviet warehouse, is now a unique community church with a community space, and a social-enterprise – a restaurant run by staff who have a disability. Lukiškės prison became a lively cultural venue hosting open air cinema screenings, live music gigs and bars.

We saw that many cities are dealing with very similar challenges as Vilnius, and there is a lot we can learn from each other when we openly share about our projects and support each other in the change process. The year of the European Green Capital for Vilnius is about raising awareness of sustainability initiatives and spreading the word about inspiring stories, see our map of inspiring initiatives where you can get involved to make your change.

We leave the conference inspired by the supportive city optimists, buzzing with new ideas that we would love to test out in Vilnius. We invite you to attend the Urban Future 2026 in Ljubljana, which was the European Green Capital in 2016. Come and see for yourself!