CATEGORY

Inclusive Cities

Targeted Participation: A Toolkit for Involving Disengaged Groups

From targeted participation to making it fun, the Urban Minded project shows what strategies and activities really work to involve people usually excluded from engagement processes. “One of the pitfalls of citizen participation is that...

Urban Minded: Designing Cities that Support Mental Wellbeing

Poor city design correlates with poor mental health. Urban Minded sought to involve young women, among those worst affected, in determining how planning can support wellbeing. Even a small space can produce a lot of...

Football Centrism: Where Schoolyard Design & Culture Gender Divisions Converge

Honorata Grzesikowska explains how football centrism, where schoolyards are built around sports fields, excludes girls from accessing and enjoying sport and shared spaces. Culturally revered and a money-making machine, football – or soccer – is...

CityChanger Emma Cutting: Improving Neighbourhoods with Street Gardening

Street gardening gives city-dwellers a way to reconnect with nature. In Melbourne, it is also helping Australia’s wildlife and makes people feel safer in the street. Little did Emma Cutting realise when she broke ground...

4 Days 4 Lines: Improving Equitable Access to Public Transit

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...

How to Open Urban Swimming to People with Disabilities

This article was written for CityChangers.org by Laura Puttkamer, a writer, journalist, communications consultant, and founder of parCitypatory. In it, she explains how a lack of inclusive infrastructure is a barrier to independent recreational...

Vienna Woman Bike Ride: A Demonstration of Solidarity

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,...

What is a Lending Library? An Explainer

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...

Dignity by Design: How Kitty’s Laundrette is Reviving Anfield’s High Street

Faced with a decimated high street, residents of an Anfield neighbourhood created a community hub, reviving much needed services, decent jobs, and social infrastructure. There’s a wall of washing machines constantly on the go at...

CityChanger Siobhan Burger: How to Lead Social Design for a Better Future

The cities we build today will still be standing for generations to come, so we need to anticipate how these will form the physical and social infrastructures people need in the future. Siobhan Burger...

CityChanger Marjan Ehsassi: Amplifying Voices with Citizens’ Assemblies

When we as citizens feel helpless to interject in the questionable actions of decision-makers, the cracks in democracy are laid clear. But what if there was a way to put power back in the...

Mums for Lungs: The Campaign for School Streets Powered by Coffee

The benefits of school streets are numerous. So too are the triggers that prompt people to set them up. For campaign group Mums for Lungs, it’s urban air pollution. We explore how their mission...

Od-Nowa: How Łódź is Creating Its First School Street

Karolina Taczalska was appalled by the density of traffic outside her son’s school, so she and Mateusz Cyganek started a project that aims to make the street child friendly by implementing small but effective...

What are School Streets? An Explainer

There has been a lot of talk about school streets in the sustainable cities sphere of late, but what does the term really mean, and why are school streets necessary? We gen up on...

Kids’ Court: How Children & Traffic Police Are Making School Streets Safer

When drivers don’t observe – or know! – traffic laws, people can get hurt. A quirky idea expanding through Africa is making streets safer by educating motor users about courteous driving. It’s called the...

Does Indigenous Architecture Hold the Secrets to Sustainable Construction?

Diversifying cultural representation in architecture extends a sense of belonging to communities that have long been hidden. Reanna McKay tells us how Indigenous urban design and place markers are rolling back centuries of exclusion...

Inclusive Cities Glossary: Key Terms

Create a more equal world is a lot of work. We not only have to build inclusive cities, but first dismantle the long-established and accepted systems that stand in our way. It can be...

Young Leader Luisina Perassi: Enabler of Child-Inclusive Urban Design

Understanding children’s experiences of cities exposes new opportunities for inclusive design. The trick is knowing how to properly engage them. Gold Coast transport planner Luisina Perassi has made it easy – even collating a...