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policymakers

#16: Why Politics Needs Young People 

Urban Future’s Cornelia Forsthuber-Aumayr talks to Maral Koohestanian – former Young Leader and now the youngest ever Deputy Mayor for the city of Wiesbaden, Germany – about everything from why we need more young...

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...

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...

How Cities Can Build with Timber… Responsibly

Biobased materials can deliver buildings that are both low-carbon and fit residents’ needs: robust, resilient, and pleasant to be in. They can allow us to ‘partner’ with the natural world too, supporting the forest...

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...

Lyon Confluence: How a District is Retrofitting Heritage Buildings

SPL Lyon Confluence is carrying out a stand-out urban renewal project in a once-deprived district of central Lyon. Project Manager Etienne Vignali describes how this offers a significantly chance to undertake a large-scale decarbonisation...

En Route to Changing the Conversation: How to Make Citizen Engagement Work

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...

Eurotowns: Big Enough to Cope, Small Enough to Care

If you think that only big cities can substantially contribute to sustainability efforts, you couldn’t be further from the truth. A network of small- and medium-sized European cities shows you exactly what can be...

A Just Transition: Raising Workers’ Rights in the Built Environment’s Transformation

As the construction and manufacturing industries undergo a transformation to new and better ways of delivering the built spaces we need, a hidden majority is often overlooked: the sector’s workers. It’s right that we...

Train Drain: Why We Shouldn’t (Always) Travel Sustainably

Sustainability needs a warning label. The somewhat tongue in cheek Godwin’s law suggests that in any online discussion going on long enough, someone will make a comparison with the Nazis. In a similar way, it...

Fuelling the Way Forward: Is Electric Really the Way to Go?

The electric car revolution is already underway on a global scale. Everywhere we look we are told that electric vehicles are green vehicles. But should we really be including ‘clean vehicle’ infrastructure in future...

The World on Your Doorstep: The 15-Minute City and Why We Should Be Creating It

A 15-minute city is simply a place where all basic amenities are available within a short journey by foot or bike. But what is the idea behind it, what does it mean for reducing...

Recycling Highways: A New Perspective on Car-Free Cities

"In the 1950s we thought the car would save our cities, now we have to reverse it." We spoke to Senior Urbanist and expert city planner Paul Lecroart to find out more about what...

Superblocks – the Spanish Idea That Is Conquering European Cities

Giving the streets back to the people: The Spanish idea of creating city blocks where cars are only allowed as guests is spreading across Europe. But what’s the story behind the superblocks, and how...

Reducing Car Dominance in Cities: How to Get Started

You know your city has a problem with car use but don’t know where to begin trying to fix it? Look no further! Our How to Get Started guide tells you everything you need...

Perspectives on the 15-Minute City: How to Turn a Utopia Into a Reality

You may have already heard of the concept of a ’15-minute city’, but what do urban planners really think about the feasibility of making cities time-scaled, is this mere design fantasy, or is this...

Underground Space: The Lesser-Known Champion of Climate Resilience

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 explores how cities around the world are looking, and ought...

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...