Plenty of professionals and residents in your city are hungry for change, just like you. It makes sense to combine forces. Together you can achieve more, faster. But it takes a specific skill set to coordinate a disparate team. In this article, we’ll walk...

The qualities that make a good Young Leader are eagerness to learn, openness to change, and commitment to improve the environment for everyone – with these words, an image of David Adam Braun is perfectly depicted. And what else makes this young and inquisitive...

What do a liberal arts degree, a congested street, and the City of Toronto have in common? They all link back to our CityChanger Jennifer Keesmaat, an unconventional urban planner. We sat down with this inspiring changemaker to find out what makes her tick. Jennifer...

Sustainable construction offers us the means to create durable, desirable cities of the future; places that are socially beneficial, environmentally friendly, and economically viable. With decisive and informed policy, upskilling, and budget-setting, city authorities hold the reigns for manoeuvring towards a sustainable construction drive...

A grand single-family house in the suburbs with a nice garden and a big garage at the end of a long driveway where two cars easily fit – that is an aspiration of many North Americans, spawned by the concept of the American Dream....

If you want a say in what happens within your city, the food-water-energy nexus is a perfect opportunity. It impacts almost every aspect of our lives and every function of our cities. Involving as many stakeholders as possible, via cross-societal and multidisciplinary engagement, we...

Why are we obsessed with success and fearful of failure? Often, it’s the unexpected trials and tribulations that provide the most valuable learning opportunities. Lior Steinberg is a rarity: with so many irons in the fire, he happily admits when something doesn’t go quite...

Green is the new black; or rather, ‘greenzoning’ is the new ‘grayzoning’. These EU projects are the ones painting the cities green, striving to protect the (urban) biodiversity, or focusing on social inclusion by providing their city with green zones. Have a look at...

How can you make authentic citizen participation work? Warren Logan, Policy Director of Mobility and Interagency Relations in the city of Oakland, has made a name for himself by not just superficially asking for the opinion of fellow citizens, but by building trust and...

It’s always important to know your stuff and be able to back it up with solid data. That’s why we’ve collated all the essential facts and figures on sustainable construction that you CityChangers might need. These will be sure to get your adversaries thinking...

The basis for every city-changing venture is to do your research and to know your facts and data. For this very purpose, we have gathered the most important, surprising, or even uplifting ones in this list, sure to impress any know-it-all enthusiasts out there. Did...

Elected officials make decisions that affect millions of people, but beyond voting every few years, what say do citizens really have? Maybe democracy needs a tune-up. Citizens’ Assemblies – a sort of lottery promising better representation – bring diverse voices to the table. Copenhagen, Denmark, has already...

In the 21st century, we are witnessing the erosion of the “human” habitat. Too many American cities are designed in ways that instigate fear, isolation and insecurity. As an engineer and urban planner, Cornelia Dinca will draw on her own experiences in Amsterdam to...

It’s minus 30 degrees. Not the ideal temperature to cycle to work, is it? The enthusiasm to get on a bike while it is freezing cold or insufferably hot might, understandably so, be rather low. So how can we activate more people to cycle...

It is probably no surprise to you that cycling is a great thing to do. But do you have all the facts you need to convince even the most car-loving person to switch to the bicycle?  This article will provide you with key facts and...

In 2015, a London cyclist clashed with a pedestrian, knocking her unconscious and leaving her with scars and broken teeth. It sent the media into a frenzy. Front and centre of the story was the negligence of the victim who was fixated on her smartphone...

A few weeks back, during an ECIU Challenge in Barcelona, I talked with the Office for Urban Ecology of Barcelona's municipality. They showed me the city's plan to win its war on cars. The plan is to install 503 Superblocks all over the city by 2030....

It’s a challenge in itself to know where to begin when trying to get people out of their cars. But maybe by looking at what the obstacles to greener mobility changes are, and with some advice from urban planners and activists around the world,...