Latest Articles

CityChanger “Dog Poo Darren” Clark: Finding Meaning in Dirty Jobs

Environmental health officer “Dog Poo Daren” Clark found purpose in a job no one else wanted to do. He ended up improving public spaces nationwide. About a...

Notable City Darwin: Plausible Futures for Heat Mitigation in the Tropics

As extreme weather becomes commonplace, the Darwin Living Lab evaluates what cities in the tropics can do to stay cool enough to be liveable. Temperatures in Darwin...

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...

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...

Hefei’s Three-Ring Strategy: A Blueprint for Flood-Resilient Urban Growth

This article is reproduced with the kind permission of Urban Solutions Journal. In it, the urban planner behind “China in 5”, Lile Mo, explains how the...

Krater: An Untamed Oasis Built by Nature, Creativity & Socialist Commons

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...

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...

What Images Reveal About the Stories of Cities We Rarely Hear About

This article was written for CityChangers.org by Gosia Grzesikowska, an urban designer and architect at Gehl, and the founder of Urban Photo Atlas, a professional reference...

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...

Taking Root: The Tale of London’s Transient Story Garden

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...

CityChanger Deborah Saunt: Decent City-making with Social Value

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...

The Battle for Pedestrian Spaces: a Photo Essay from Ghent

This article was written for CityChangers.org by Caroline Tilleman, a communications expert and self-confessed avid pedestrian. In it, Caroline discusses how even street design with a...

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...

What are Buzz Stops? An Explainer

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...

Paw-sitive Cities: Humane Free Roaming Cat & Dog Population Management

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...

The Hive: Permanent Placemaking Returns Unloved Land to the Community

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...

What are Digital Twins? An Explainer

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...

CityChanger Alicia Johnson: A Guide to Urban Disaster Preparedness

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...