Community engagement around poor air quality in London: Citizen inquiry in a citizen science « Mapping for Change » project

This chapter introduces the air quality monitoring (AQM) projects, especially in Barbican Estate, which was the largest community-based longitudinal citizen science AQM project to be carried out in the UK. It discusses the emergence, conditions and transformations of citizen inquiry throughout the projects. Science in the City, a project commissioned by the City of London Corporation and funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Mayor of London Air Quality Fund. It was initiated with the aim to increase public understanding about air pollution, its causes and effects, and how concentrations of different pollutants vary over space and time, in the City of London area. Citizen inquiry, from personally meaningful, gets transformed in the process of participating in the citizen science AQM project by a double empowerment: scientific empowerment, and empowerment by the community. Citizen inquiry can then contribute to transforming these two mediations, innovating in the scientific process and strengthening the local community.