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citizens

All Bits Count: Making Sustainability Science and Communication Approachable and Actionable

This article was written for CityChangers.org by Mahak Agrawal, Steering Board Member of ITACUS and Founder of All Bits Count (ABC). In it, she argues that the most effective sustainability discourse for sparking behaviour...

How to Excite People About Retrofitting

Big cities can learn a lot from smaller communities. Dunleer, a town in the northeast of the Republic of Ireland, has managed what many larger places have struggled to do: excite people about retrofitting....

Lessons from Edinburgh’s Retrofit Programme, Which Runs Hot & Cold

Inefficient building envelopes are huge carbon emitters. Retrofitting promises results but the time left to attain climate targets is narrowing. This calls for urgent, scaled-up action. With an abundance of social housing, city authorities...

#17: Heart & Seoul

How did Seoul turn a backed-up expressway into a tranquil urban stream? We take a look at the landmark Cheonggyecheon River Restoration project and ask why, almost 20 year later, this peaceful pocket in...

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...

The Case for Urban Manufacturing

With cities growing and due to skyrocketing demand for housing, vast areas of industrial land have been rezoned. So, what is still being produced in cities? And why does it matter? Here’s why cities...

Just What is the Beef with Meat?

There’s a lot to be said for going vegan. That must be why they drone on about it all the time! Like other drones, don’t you wish they would just fly off? But let’s give...

Utilising Untapped Space: Food Security with Rotterdam’s Floating Farm

Space in cities is limited. Urban farming signals better times for food security but if there’s a future in it, we need to find ways to make it fit around existing land uses. When...

Please Don’t Kale My Vibe – Piloting Edible City Solutions to Change Food Systems

This article was written for CityChangers.org by Mirka Råberg and Olivia Fokeerah, who both work for Forum Virium Helsinki, the City of Helsinki’s innovation company, in Finland. In it, they explore how cities can...

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...

Notable City: Tanga – Generating City-Wide Benefits by Boosting Youth Social Mobility

Through population growth and in-migration, cities are only going to increase in number and size. This presents a challenge: how do we ensure citizens’ needs are addressed adequately as urban environments sprawl at an...

How to Avoid Heat Islands with Greenery

Have you noticed the extremely high temperatures this summer? Especially when walking around a larger city? That is because city concrete and rooftop tar contribute to temperature increase and creating what is today known...

d-Lab: Reviving Social Infrastructure via Architectural Design

Preserving historic architecture seems at odds with renovating buildings to meet modern sustainability standards. One Spanish university, however, is bridging these two worlds – by reviving traditional construction methods. It just so happens that...

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...

Revitalising Inner City Districts: Brussels’ Many Faces of Circularity

Economic hardship drives many struggling city centres to relent and force manufacturing and commerce to give way to residential developments. But some cities are resisting. The historic Abattoir site in Brussels is proof of...

CityChanger Sophie Mirpourian: Creative Ways to Listen

Being heard makes us feel valued and identifies priorities for change, but municipalities struggle to do it well. CityChanger and creative Sophie Mirpourian tells us how her idea to use a portable townhall -...

CityChanger Sepp Eisenriegler: Eliminating Planned Obsolescence

Spend less and save the environment: these are the benefits of repairing durable household electrical appliances over buying cheap replacements every few years. The fact we even can give products a second lease of...

Green Finance Institute: Accelerating Retrofits Through Investment

Retrofitting Europe’s built environment would drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and position us closer to climate goals. It’s a tantalisingly tangible but costly outlook, and progress is slow. To change this, the Green Finance...