Karl Dickinson

Krater is a feral site reshaping Ljubljana’s ecological stewardship by embedding it in creative practices. It’s also changing the way international communities perceive invasive species. Less than a 30 minute walk from the Old Town of Ljubljana, Slovenia, a team of creative young professionals have transformed a semi-abandoned patch of...

Omer Juma’s organisation 4 Lines 4 Days assesses the accessibility of metro stations. Findings in Montreal surprised city leaders, who have since commissioned improvements. Between 1984 and 2014, a succession of law changes related to the built environment secured stronger equality rights for citizens in Spain’s Catalonia region. “It was...

London’s mobile Skip Garden was co-constructed by local communities from construction waste. Now named the Story Garden, it has finally found a permanent home. The Story Garden gives people in and around the busy King’s Cross district of London, UK, a much needed connection with nature. Known by many as a...

Co-founder of DSDHA, Deborah Saunt, explains how social value optimises the investment in public spaces, and why redevelopment projects are improved by random conversations. When Deborah Saunt was asked to design a landmark building for South Molton Street in London, UK, she could not have envisaged the technological behemoth that...

How can cities reduce their gender cycling gap? Organisers of the Vienna Woman Bike Ride believe it starts with improving visibility of female bikers. Every September for ten years, people on the streets of Izmir, Turkey, stopped to wave and cheer as a large group of cyclists passed by. They...

Buzz stops are an example of how underutilised everyday spaces can be retrofitted simply, improving urban environments and creating habitats for biodiversity in the city. Commuters pass a lot of time at bus stops. Waiting times that we deem as acceptable can be as high as 13 minutes, although in...

ICAM provides an ethical choice for population management of free roaming animals, an issue largely ignored by leaders but a priority for citizens. National responses to the COVID-19 pandemic were a reminder of how a coordinated approach can be highly effective at keeping populations safe from harm. If the origin stories...

When an alleyway became too undesirable to even walk through, play and tactical interventions helped residents address their neighbourhood’s trauma and reclaim the space. Alleyways don’t get much attention but can be a critical space for revitalising a neighbourhood. One, in the West Hill neighbourhood of Albany, New York, USA, is...

Digital Twins offer cities an affordable, low-risk chance to experiment, tweak, and reformulate potential plans and possible solutions in an easily understandable, life-like virtual environment. Imagine if urban planners could test new concepts without risk and at minimum cost. What if we could see in advance what would go wrong,...

A city that prepares for the worse is disrupted the least. We explore what disaster preparedness looks like and how municipalities should be planning. The 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay area of California, USA, on 17 October 1989 damaging more than 23,000 homes, killing 63 people,...

It took just months to spruce up High Road Leyton, once again filling what was a declining town centre with businesses, people, and pride. London’s atmosphere was electric. In the run-up to the 2012 summer Olympic games, there was a sense of renewed hope just a few years after the...

Retrofitting has the potential to improve efficiency in the built environment, one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters, and help cities meet net zero targets. It is not a new idea, but many people still don’t grasp retrofitting. There’s a lot of misunderstanding and doubts about its efficacy. Sometimes the idea...

Conservatives fiercely resist behaviour change, but a six-point communications strategy designed to advance buy-in of heat pumps is a working model for engaging hard-to-convince groups. When Anja Floetenmeyer-Woltmann steps onto the stage, she is determined to change minds. In her work with the Mein Klimacoach (My Climate Coach) campaign in Hannover,...

So beneficial is it to add more than a smattering of vegetation to urban spaces that we've had to separate the main cases in favour. Think of it like this: we have a lot to gain from greener ground, and there's another world of wonders up on the roof. Of...

Non-profits in Denver have redefined the city’s understanding of chronic homelessness. Now their Collaboratory model is empowering people with lived experiences to design systemic change. Change-making can be a funny business. A lot of the time, we’re presented with a problem and the challenge is to find a viable and...

Against the odds, cities host an incredible array of flora (vegetation) and fauna (animals). How can we ensure that they thrive and why should we bother? Biological diversity – more commonly shortened to biodiversity – is a collective name given to all living organisms. Most of them will be one...

Leicester’s grassland strategy shows how diverse approaches to natural land management support biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and make cities more pleasant places to be. Since launching its Grassland Strategy 2023-2033, about 13.5% of all grassland in Leicester, UK, is managed as pollination or meadow grassland – habitat that promotes an increase...

A Lending Library allows citizens to borrow… well, anything. It’s emerging as an increasingly popular cost-saving, community-boosting, emission-reducing stalwart of the sharing economy. Could there be a greater neighbourly gesture than sharing your possessions? Lending someone an item that you own is to trust them to use it responsibly and that...