Ebenezer Howard, a British stenographer and social reformer, was an unlikely person to shape the future of urban planning, but he did: He developed his garden cities idea in his book called “To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform”, published in 1898. Given the prevailing overcrowding, poverty and pollution in British cities back then, Howard wanted to find a way to combine the best elements of town and country living. In his vision of a garden city, several towns and a centre would be arranged in a circular shape, surrounded by a green belt. Separate land uses would characterise the different towns and through low density, green space and excellent transportation links, life would be made very comfortable and enjoyable.

Most interestingly, Howard envisioned socially mixed neighbourhoods and collective land ownership, a sort of compromise between anarchism, socialism, and liberal capitalism. Even today, this idea sounds radical, which helps explain the ongoing fascination with garden cities.

On the other hand, American-Canadian journalist and author Jane Jacobs criticised garden cities as early as 1961 for being “really very nice towns if you were docile and had no plans of your own and did not mind spending your life among others with no plans of their own. As in all Utopias, the right to have plans of any significance belonged only to the planners in charge”. She criticises the “paternalistic, if not authoritarian” conception of planning inherent in garden cities. Even today, the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) advocates “Planning for People” on its website, instead of “with the people”. So are garden cities utopian ideals?

Visiting Howard’s garden cities

Recently, I went on a day trip to look at the first two garden cities built right here in the UK - Letchworth and Welwyn, a short train ride from London. While they are both very pleasant places to live, I have to say that they are not very exciting. They have central green spaces and pretty houses, but in practice, they seem to act as commuter towns and places to retire, rather than the vibrant and self-contained communities that Howard envisioned. Their proximity to London certainly has to do with that.

My first impression of Letchworth was of a place to retire. Life is certainly very good there if you are living in a retirement home, or even if you catch the train into London every day. But beyond that, the town of roughly 34,000 inhabitants struck me as a sleepy suburb much more than a radical idea with a new social order, as envisioned by Howard.

In Welwyn Garden City, which is bigger than Letchworth, the garden city idea is even more pronounced in the town centre. Coming out of the station (and the shopping centre it is weirdly connected to), you look down one of its radial park axes right at a statue of Ebenezer Howard. This very wide boulevard has some shops and cafés to each side, and it certainly puts pedestrians at its heart. Perpendicular to it, there is another, almost 1,000 metre long axis that is also mostly green. Cars were slowly edging around the green space and residents were enjoying the park. But still, it seems that the utopian vision is mostly reduced to large linear parks and the statue of its founder.

In between visiting these two cities, I also stopped off at Hitchin, a lively market town on the way. And I have to say that it was the most liveable, attractive place out of the three, partly due to its pop-up beach. While it could certainly do with more green spaces, this is a market town that seems vibrant, full of cultural and commercial offers, and more diverse and self-contained than the two garden cities I visited that day. This organically grown town has a vitality that the planned utopias lacked.

Garden cities today

In the United Kingdom and beyond, garden cities remain a powerful idea. Greener cities are omnipresent in urban planning both for climate and for mental health reasons. What I like about Howard’s idea is that he envisioned garden cities as a “radical hope" for more cooperative civilisations, consisting of socially mixed and independent communities, managed in a participatory way with the public interest at heart. However, this is unfortunately very difficult to implement in our capitalist world. Experiences with garden cities over the last century have shown that the element of social inclusiveness is most difficult to achieve, since garden cities have mostly become upmarket suburbs.

The idea still feels exciting, because its spatial and ecological principles of green belts, low density, mixed use and walkability appeal to modern planners. It has found a new life in eco-cities, a globally applicable model that evolved from the garden city ideas. These cities aim to emit zero carbon, to function on renewables, and to reduce poverty. China and India are notable defenders of this idea. Singapore with its resource-efficient, omnipresent green cover and urban gardening is a good example, too.

Ebenezer Howard imagined cities as instruments of social transformation, not just pleasant places to live. The easiest part of his vision - green boulevards, low density, tidy parks - survived. It is also the least threatening to existing power structures. Letchworth and Welwyn are comfortable places, but comfort was never the point of Howard’s utopia. What if we instead looked again at his more radical ideas such as collective land ownership, real social mixing, and communities that can govern and sustain themselves? What kind of imagination does it take to change systems that treat land as an asset rather than a commons? These are inconvenient political questions, but asking them and finding answers would help us to actually plan with people and not just for them.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts: Have you been to a garden city or eco-city, or do you even live in one? What do you think we can learn from them as planners? And what are your thoughts on Ebenezer Howard’s original theory? Leave a comment below!

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Announcements

Save the date: On Thursday, September 24, I’ll host the next Urban Solutions Journalism Academy. It will run from 4pm to 5.30 pm UK time and will be free. Sign up here:

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I am also excited to announce that the Urban Solutions Journal is an official media partner for ISOCARP’s Women in Planning conference and award, taking place in Glasgow on November 23 and 24. Sign up here.

Despite these well known health risks, extreme heat rarely attracts public attention. When it does, it’s usually in a seasonal pattern like now as European cities debate air conditioning during a summer heatwave. But extreme heat is no longer seasonal. In fact, it’s become a constant threat and the risks fall the heaviest on the urban poor. From collecting more accurate data on heat to investing in incremental housing upgrades, cities across the Global South are deploying solutions grounded in protecting those facing the highest risks from heat stress.

Cooling homes first

On a blistering summer day, most of us can simply stand under a tree or step into an air-conditioned room. But for someone living in a neighbourhood of tightly-packed houses with metal roofs, these options are luxuries. In many cases, slum dwellers are even more vulnerable to heat stress inside their own homes. A recent study across Kenya, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe revealed that temperatures inside informal dwellings can be up to 9°C higher than outdoor temperatures. In some of the neighbourhoods, indoor temperatures can go as high as 45°C (113°F) during a relatively cool season.

However, cooling homes is not simply distributing and installing new appliances. It requires careful planning responding to the needs of residents most exposed to heat, whether it is due to the physical structures of their homes, their neighbourhoods or social economic status. There is now a general consensus among urban practitioners and researchers that interventions are best delivered when local communities actively participate in assessing what should be implemented to their benefit. A global campaign called Roof Over Our Heads (ROOH) exemplifies this community-first approach. The project kicked off in 2022 to tackle the housing crisis that vulnerable communities in informal settlements face. In India, ROOH researchers gathered local affiliates and women in saving groups to discuss what they needed and the challenges they faced to get it. Housing emerged as a top priority. Most of the residents were wage laborers, self-building and self-financing their homes, often with second-hand material vulnerable to extreme heat and heavy rainfall. To improve housing conditions, ROOH set up learning labs in informal settlements of 9 cities. Residents used these spaces with technical experts to test adaptation materials, co-design upgrades, repair, retrofit, and rebuild houses.

Source: Global Center on Adaptation.

The aim of ROOH was to make housing safer, more comfortable and better prepared for heat and flooding. In the city of Surat, located in the west Indian state of Gujarat, ROOH noted that homes built with metal roofs and poor ventilation intensified heat. Instead of rebuilding the houses entirely, efforts in the Rasulabad settlement went toward low-cost incremental upgrades. Local masons, women, and residents gathered in workshops, testing different materials like egg trays as an insulating layer to reduce heat indoors. One of the houses served as a demonstration, using pre-painted galvanised iron sheets, insulation, vedic plaster and terracotta floors. These changes lowered indoor temperatures by 5-7°C (41°F - 44°F). In the photos above, an ROOH participant expressed feeling cooler inside their home thanks to new solar-reflective coatings. Each one of these outcomes was a result of peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, as solutions were tested, refined and deployed.

Building localised heat data

Cooling individual homes is only half the battle; entire neighbourhoods need to adapt equally. To mobilise municipal action, communities are building their own data on heat. Most public weather data relies on satellite imagery. However, satellites measure surface brightness and then scientists use computer models to estimate temperature, often missing the actual air temperature and humidity we feel on the ground. This data blind spot leaves informal settlements at risk and excluded from climate adaptation planning.

In 2023, the Onekana initiative set out to fix this. A collaboration between the grassroots organisation Community Mappers, the University of Twente, and UN-Habitat, the initiative co-designed workshops with community leaders to identify key spaces most affected by heat in Nairobi’s Korogocho and Kibera urban settlements. Local residents trained to use low-cost sensors, walking through markets, clinics, and schools to capture real air temperatures. They paired this data with micro-surveys detailing housing materials, ventilation, overcrowding, and access to services. Like the ROOH project, the findings from this initiative directly informed low-cost housing and public space interventions like roof insulation and public shading.

Youth from Korogocho and Kibera settlements during fieldwork. Source: Onekaka Project

Findings from this initiative show that genuine collaboration between technical experts and community members is key in an urban intervention. For an urban planner, it is not only enough to know the number of settlements that need upgrades. Engaging residents in conversations will enhance the planner’s role, feeding them key information on adapting interventions based on the specific needs and socio-economic conditions of various households. This is the type of inside knowledge that a planner may not find on a map and yet a lived reality that affects any outcome.

Changing mindsets towards slums and their residents

The main takeaway from ROOH and Onekana is that valuing context guides success. Matching technical know-how with local, lived experience and knowledge allows global climate agendas to translate into actual solutions on the ground.

Despite ample local knowledge, slums remain invisible to policy. For example, without formal land tenure, these low-cost retrofits cannot be easily scaled to protect the hundreds of millions in climate-threatened cities. Historically, housing policy toward informal settlements has mostly led with one approach; “slum clearance” in many cases destroying homes, communities, and livelihoods for new high-rise buildings and short-term profitability. But discussions at the 13th session of the World Urban Forum (WUF 13) in Baku, Azerbaijan, suggested a shifting tide. Urban practitioners, governments, and international organisations are increasingly calling to move away from a previously destructive approach.

With active community participation and collaboration with experts, the ROOH and Onekana projects highlight a more constructive approach to urban interventions. As cities grapple with overlapping challenges and priorities, incremental but localised solutions down to the neighbourhood level become even more vital to achieve tangible results.

This article was written by Hirwa Hans, an urban economist and an alumnus of the Urban Solutions Journalism Academy run by Laura Puttkamer, who also edited this article. The next Academy will take place on September 24, 2026 - stay tuned for more details!

It may be a vast country, but its 23,000 public conveniences means that there’s the equivalent of one for every 1,200 people, even available in remote areas.

Compare that to data from the UK, where a single public toilet serves 15,481 people in England, 8,500 in Scotland, and 6,748 in Wales. Mainland Europe isn’t doing much better. Brussels only has a single public lavatory per every 20,000 citizens. Paris offers just 400 to a population of more than 2 million, and in the United States, Mayor Zohran Mamdani began his tenure in 2026 by announcing plans to improve its tally of just one public toilet for every 8,500 New Yorkers. Although stats are hard to come by for other regions, it’s fair to say that places where open defecation is commonplace, access to these amenities is even worse.

Yet, about a three-hour drive north of Sydney on Australia’s east coast, MidCoast Council maintains 106 public toilets, which is roughly one per 900 residents – well above the national average.

It is such an impressive figure that Neal Ames, a recreation and open space planner employed by the council, believes it to be a “benchmark for the rest of the world”.

Defining Public Toilets

As well as easy to come by, every single one of Australia’s public toilets is free to use and may be the most diverse range of public loos on offer. Aside from dunnies in urban parks, shower blocks at the beach, or drop toilets in the “bush” – forest or scrubland – Australia’s public toilets can be found in places ranging from a neighbourhood ‘village green’ to a city’s green inner or outer ring.

These are not to be confused with privately managed but publicly accessible facilities, though, such as those found in restaurants and supermarkets, or latrines in train stations, car parks, or even “in libraries or any other community buildings”. Australia’s public toilets are defined as those “owned, maintained, upgraded, enhanced, and cleaned by local government,” Neal explains, which means all of those overseen by MidCoast are in a park or reserve.

Public Inconveniences

Judging by the number of toilets per capita and the MidCoast Public Toilets in Parks Strategy 2025-2035, the council here clearly takes its duty seriously.

Neal moved to the region to develop these strategies after working as a planner at federal, state, and local levels of government around the country for 25 years. Combined, the eight papers contain more than 850 recommendations, including 121 targeted suggestions for maintaining, upgrading, or investing in public toilets.

Like all regional councils in New South Wales, MidCoast operates in an environment of financial constraints; the value of the eight strategies is to guide the future direction of their public assets and to help obtain funding from other levels of government.

However, by his own admission, Neal is not a toilet expert. He was assigned the task as they fall under his remit as assets located in public open spaces. But at one point, it did come close to an obsession: during a two-month backpacking trip around Europe, our CityChanger couldn’t help making comparisons to home.

In most of the 17 countries he visited, Neal noticed both a lack of public toilets and that there is usually a charge to use the rare finds. He surmised that this is the reason for men seen openly urinating in public in Florence, Italy, and an explanation for the strong smell of urine in the streets of Paris, France – behaviour he often saw elsewhere, too. Locals seemed oblivious, indicating that it’s normalised. “I was shocked,” he says. “We don’t have that experience at all.”

MidCoast Council’s Public Toilets in Parks Strategy

The reason for MidCoast’s success – which the strategy aims to build on – may be pinned on the Aussie outdoor lifestyle.

The regional authority serves about 195 settlements of various sizes spread across 10,000 km² of urban, farming, mountainous, coastal, and bush area, including 826 parks and reserves. These contain what Neal calls “attractors” – places of sport and recreation, relaxation, commerce, and natural beauty.

Like many Australians, he is keen to preserve these often pristine landscapes – among the country’s most precious assets.

“That’s a big thing in Australia. We protect our natural environment. We really value it, and toilets are one way to make sure that we protect it. It’s a strategy.”

This comes with a condition: expectation.

Demand & Supply

“Australians are spoiled for public toilets,” Neal explains. “Because you get used to what you’ve got, they want to be able to access them everywhere.” Fortunately, decision-makers strive to meet that demand, even when funding is tight.

In MidCoast, that expectation is higher than in most of the country’s 520+ councils. Elsewhere, people choose to live close to work or affordable housing options, Neal tells us, but MidCoast has additional attractors. “We’re delivering a lifestyle,” he says – surfing, sailing, swimming, hiking, fishing, etc. As stated in the strategy, “the provision of high-quality public amenity is important to their enjoyment”.

That’s why even MidCoast’s remoter locations are served by a dozen “what we call colloquially drop toilets,” Neal explains. Effectively a deep-dug hole beneath a single cubicle, these retain waste where it’s not possible to run a sewer or maintain a septic tank. “Most of them are next to rivers” or on islands in the regions’ great lakes, and other places people choose to enjoy day trips or camp, preventing human contamination of environmentally sensitive UNESCO-listed waterways.

“The toilets mean that we’re able to do what we’re supposed to do, and that’s to be good custodians of our natural environment.”

Why Public Toilets Matter

There are also social reasons why authorities should make public toilet provision an infrastructure mainstay.

Most obviously, there can be medical side effects of not having access to a restroom when we need to go, causing pain and infections. Toilet and shower facilities are also essential infrastructure for unhoused people, as well as a means “to maintain their dignity” and wellbeing, Neal points out.

“When you provide facilities that your community benefits from, you are creating social cohesion. And then you have fewer problems.”

For others, the prospect of being unable to find a latrine in a hurry can be a cause of such anxiety that it prevents them from enjoying what the region has to offer. “In Australia, we’ve found that public toilets are often the first thing that many in our communities consider before they go to a park,” Neal explains. “It is a limiting factor” with economic consequences too, curbing footfall to local businesses.

Public toilet provision is known to be a gendered issue: women and girls who are menstruating, pregnant, or caring for small children are more likely to venture to a park if reassured that there will be sufficient toilet, feminine waste, and changing facilities available.

And men who use sanitary products are often overlooked. Through community consultation for the strategy, MidCoast was made aware of the need for receptacles for used incontinence products for men. Based on demand, these have been added to some male public toilets, which are clearly marked by a sticker on the door.

Design & Practicality

As this shows, providing a public toilet is just one part of the puzzle.

Anyone who has entered one daubed with graffiti, tiptoed through dubious puddles, or strained a muscle to avoid touching the loo seat will appreciate the difference a well maintained toilet can make. Japan has taken this idea to the next level: each of the Tokyo Toilet Project‘s 17 designs are unique and so visually enjoyable that they aim to change the perception of public toilets from unpleasant and unhygienic necessities to structures of civic pride.

New Zealand was ahead of the game in 1999, when Hundertwasser revamped a toilet block in Kawakawa. Sydney has got in on the act too, with an inviting example of a refurbishment at Darling Harbour.

MidCoast Council stopped short of anything so fancy, but they have been rolling out two new, “artistically innovative and forward thinking” designs suitable for populous and bush locations.

“They’re beautiful structures,” Neal says, “because we believe that you only put beautiful things in your park.”

Politicised Peeing

The new designs are unisex, providing six individual gender-neutral cubicles – without urinals – and a shared external (but covered) hand-wash basin.

In an era when single-sex facilities are being dragged into culture wars, making public toilets accessible equally for men, women, and people who identify as trans or non-binary feels like a step forward. But, according to the strategy, there’s more to it: “Unisex, or gender-neutral toilets support families and social inclusion.”

Compared to smaller, gender-segregated cubicles, they are designed to benefit parents or carers “needing to accompany a child of the opposite sex”, as well as improving the ease of use for senior citizens, children, people with walkers and wheelchairs, or those with limited motor capabilities. “They also have the advantage of making it easier for people with visual impairment, and they help to avoid queues at busy times,” the strategy adds.

This last point is backed up by emerging research from queueing theorists at Ghent University in Belgium. They have determined that a shift to gender-neutral loos reduces women’s average wait times by 63%, more in line with men’s experiences – known as “pee parity”.

Listening to the Critics

But the enhanced, gender-neutral cubicles don’t get everyone’s approval.

Before signing off on the strategy, its 121 proposed actions were put to the public through a community consultation process. They received feedback about women feeling uncomfortable knowing that there could be a man in the next cubicle. For a while, it stopped the council contemplating whether it was doing the right thing, Neal recalls.

In the end, this didn’t stop plans for the unisex toilets, but they did amend the strategy to acknowledge the concerns. MidCoast will now consider providing some additional sex-segregated cubicles “on a case-by-case basis”.

Justifying the Cost of Public Toilets

Upgrading and the upkeep of MidCoast’s 106 amenities doesn’t come cheap and the strategy is a budgetary burden that locks the council into its commitments beyond 2035.

While plenty of authorities – like those Neal toured in Europe – slash this provision to help balance stretched budgets, Australian authorities persist. It’s an admirable feat given how councils like MidCoast are managing facilities over such large areas.

Island toilet tanks need to be pumped out. Restrooms in parks should be cleaned. Changing rooms located at surf beaches must be replaced regularly because salty air is corrosive. “The problem for us is the added challenges these coastal environments present as they rust more quickly and need more regular maintenance,” the CityChanger tells us.

Yet, maintain them they do, because investing in attractive, clean, and practical public toilets is an integral part of the public enjoying their cities and nature. This encourages authorities to find space for these essential facilities in their budgets.

The National Public Toilet Map

There’s one more point that Australia seems to do better than most other countries: telling people where to find their toilets. It’s possible via the user-friendly, government sponsored National Public Toilet Map.

MidCoast’s strategy document recommends people refer to it for information about “location, accessibility details, opening hours and features like sharps disposal and showers”. The council, like others, ensures they feed the developers with up-to-date information every time there’s a change to any of the local facilities.

“Older people love the app. People in wheelchairs love the app. The people that know about the app are the people that really need the app.”

Through personal experience, Neal realises how helpful this can be. As an avid runner, he’s often in unfamiliar parts of cities that lack wayfinding signs. The app always presents the nearest option, which is not always obvious – like one he used in Sydney, which was dug into a cliff, hidden behind a café.

“It saved me a few times and I imagine it saves thousands of people.”

Neal may be pleased to learn that Europe seems to be following suit; like Vienna, Paris has introduced its own toilet map, helping people locate the gradually rising number of modern, self-cleaning units on offer. But as a whole the continent has a long way to go to catch up with the Antipodean trendsetter. At least, for other councils taking their responsibility for public conveniences seriously, MidCoast’s public toilet strategy offers a decent framework to set them on their way.

It is a grey and drizzly morning by the Caspian Sea. About 100 people are gathered in a circle on the beach by the half-finished Sea Breeze resort on Azerbaijan’s Absheron peninsula. Just twelve hours ago, we were all in our business clothes, discussing housing as the most important urban challenge. Now, we are shivering slightly in our swim wear, wrapped in towels while a DJ pumps pop music into the air that vaguely smells of oil.

Swimmable Cities, together with Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Sports and Culture, has organised this morning dip as part of the SPLASH swim series. Once the ministry’s professional swimmers have stretched, once everyone has symbolically put some sand into one of ten jars representing the organisation’s foundational values, and once the drones are in position, we do indeed make a splash, running into the water.

The last days have been intense, sharing housing solutions for better cities worldwide. The Baku Call to Action sums up the agreements of the conference – no mean feat, considering that in the end, there were over 50,000 of us. Let’s look at a few examples of what better housing can look like.

Examples of inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable housing

Of course, no city has solved the housing challenge. A few cities that are doing remarkable well are Vienna with its massive subsidised housing sector, Tokyo with its highly centralised, market-driven supply, and Singapore, where the majority of residents live in high-quality subsidised public flats which the government keeps affordable.

The WUF was full of other approaches that shone new light on what SDG 11’s call for inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable housing can look like in practice. Here are some of my favourites:

• International city partnerships, for example between Hannover in Germany and Mykolaiv in Ukraine, can support urban resilience and recovery after conflict. Hannover is sharing its expertise on public social housing, enabling Mykolaiv to quickly build more housing stock that is urgently required by Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and will also serve Ukrainians returning after the war.

• In Malaysia, the URBANICE think tank supports the government in providing at least 10% affordable housing for any new development. It centralises different agencies and regulations, advises on non-formal housing and climate refugees from coastal zones, and supports residents with housing loans, aiming for rent-to-own schemes.

• Caribbean cities have a focus on providing housing after environmental disasters as well as ensuring a safer housing stock for future shocks. In Dominica, the government has implemented a large-scale resilient public housing project, constructing hundreds of climate-fortified homes. Nature-based solutions are key in Saint Lucia’s green affordable housing scheme, while in Trinidad and Tobago, cities focus on in-situ infrastructure improvements, tenure regularisation, and housing subsidies for low-income and female-headed households.

• Upgrading informal settlements, which often starts with granting land rights, is a particularly pressing concern for one billion people worldwide. In South Africa, a housing and land rights programme provides citizens with subsidised homes, tenure security, and land restitution, which includes free houses, formal title deeds, and communal land rights designed to address historical dispossession and poverty.

• Delegates agreed that affordable, resilient, and sustainable housing can take many different shapes and forms. It does not always have to be new: upcycled, modular, or prefabricated materials offer a lot of potential and can quickly create new or better housing, for example in this retrofitting project in Ontario.

• Inclusive housing means planning with, rather than for, the population. There were many calls at WUF to include indigenous people, women, children, and people with disabilities in housing solutions. And sometimes, it’s about providing houses to those who are experiencing homelessness. The NGO Depaul is working with its partners on finding solutions for families living on the street in the Philippines, for example.

Lessons from Baku

At any World Urban Forum, I like to focus on the host city to understand what we might be able to learn from it. I have attended WUFs in cities as different as Quito, Abu Dhabi, Katowice, and Cairo. Baku has been a gracious and generous host, and it was quite easy to get around with the WUF shuttles and the Metro. WUF13 was present throughout the city, even advertised on the famous Flame Towers every night.

What can we take away from Baku? Personally, my favourite urban project is the Boulevard, a 17 km-long stretch along the Caspian Sea that will be fully connected to areas like the White City by 2030, reaching around 25 kilometres in length. This floodable, accessible walkway makes for a very pleasant evening. Young people jamming and singing on the stairs, couples taking selfies, families buying popcorn, old people resting on the benches under the trees – this works as an urban space because it serves everyone.

Given the WUF’s theme of affordable housing, Baku did not have a particular answer. Like many post-Soviet countries, Azerbaijan struggles with a housing market that was suddenly and completely privatised. There is now a social, affordable housing programme called MIDA providing favourable rates to low-income demographics and young families, but applicants must fall into strict categories such as veterans or reserve military personnel, public sector employees, PhD holders, IDPs, and recognised athletes. These requirements mean that the programme is not a general affordable housing policy in any meaningful sense.

The flagship development is the White City in central Baku, which was where the oil boom started over 100 years ago. This formerly industrial area of Baku was heavily contaminated and nicknamed the “Black City”. In 2000, president Heydar Aliyev announced its transformation to the “White City”. After removing and cleaning soil, construction began in 2011. Nowadays, the White City is already an attractive neighbourhood that resembles London or Paris. It has a metro station and will get four additional ones, there is mixed use, first floor activation, and a big, pleasant park. Heritage preservation plays a big role – but affordability does not. This is clearly for the upper middle and upper class income bands.

This investor-driven style of urban development is present in countless cities all over the world. Contrasted with the housing solutions listed above, it begs the question of how to address housing as a human right, driven by people and their needs.

Housing as a human right

For me, this has been the most practice-oriented WUF I have attended, addressing one of the most pressing concerns in the world. Around three billion people face inadequate housing. “We must place housing at the heart of integrated urban solutions”, Anacláudia Rossbach, UN-Habitat’s Executive Director, said at the conference. Her call to move from dialogue to delivery was heard by the tens of thousands of delegates who exchanged housing solutions. Nga Kor Ming, President of the UN-Habitat Assembly, added an important emotional element:

A personal highlight for me was hosting the Urban Solutions Journalism Academy at WUF13, training other journalists in how to report about housing solutions and other urban innovations from all over the world. We discussed how we can contribute to better housing and came up with a pitching challenge: Share your stories on sustainable, resilient, inclusive, and affordable housing with the Urban Solutions Journal and I’ll work with you to publish the article.

Pitch your story

I’m also curious to hear your impressions from WUF13 and any particularly good housing solutions you have encountered – leave a comment below!

Ten years ago, just as I was about to start my Master’s degree in Urban Development and Planning, I launched a blog called Parcitypatory – towards the participatory city. I had just finished a Bachelor’s thesis on sustainable slum upgrading and the Millennium Development Goals, and I remember attending my first big conference, European Habitat in Prague, happily surprised about how many people cared about sustainable cities. I started planning how to get to Habitat III in Quito later that year.

Making it to Quito shaped my whole career, especially attending the Urban Journalism Academy. I met new friends, colleagues, and connections and decided to keep showing up to conferences, to keep writing about cities, and to continue trying to understand what makes urban life better.

The blog years

Parcitypatory started as a place to share stories about participatory urban planning: what it looks like in practice, which methods work, and why it matters. The pieces on participatory methods still get questions from teachers and students around the world, which tells me the gap they were filling has not entirely closed.

My favourite section was always “Voices from”, a place for stories from cities like Paisley in Scotland, Kibera in Kenya, or Yokohama in Japan, beautifully illustrated by my now-husband. As I moved from Mexico to Germany to the UK, the blog was a constant companion, a lens through which to understand every new city I arrived in. One of my favourite examples is observing the neighbourhood ballet, a term coined by Jane Jacobs, in Mexico City.

The shift to journalism and consulting

After my Master’s, I began freelancing: first as a copywriter, then increasingly as a journalist and communications consultant. Landscape architecture became an unexpected passion: the discipline’s commitment to bringing high-quality, accessible green space into cities felt like urban planning’s quieter sibling, and I ended up writing two books in German about its best projects.

Green spaces in cities remain one of my favourite topics, as do blue spaces. But I love how my work can bring new perspectives as well, from looking at participatory budgeting or climate finance in cities to analysing sanitation, community communication, and even rolling discos for children.

Finding clients who wanted to write seriously about cities took time, networking, and patience. GIZ, Cities Alliance, KfW, UNESCO, and UN-Habitat came gradually. Each project taught me something about how international organisations communicate and where the gaps are. I always learn from stories where cities did things right, for example in this GIZ ebook on urban climate action in cities in Ecuador, Jordan, Namibia, and Serbia, or in this Cities Alliance position paper on sustainable construction.

Urban solutions journalism

I couldn’t name it when I started out, but Parcitypatory has always been about solutions journalism: reporting not just on urban problems but on the responses to them, rigorously and without pretending the answers are easy. From the Urban Journalism Academy at Habitat III to learning from and mentoring for the Solutions Journalism Network, I have come to realise that this is the name for my passion. My own version focuses specifically on cities.

Since last May, I write on Substack, but the Urban Solutions Journal builds on my blog. It records stories from cities that experiment, adapt, fail, and often get things right as well. Here are some recent pieces I am proud of:

What is next

Conferences like Urban Futures and the World Urban Forum are important checkpoints in my professional life. Next week, I will be reporting from Baku at the 13th World Urban Forum. I have also been invited to host the Urban Solutions Journalism Academy there. In this interactive workshop, I teach journalists and planners how to write about urban solutions and innovations in a constructive way. Drop by if you can and if not, there will be more online sessions later in the year.

My next steps include both journalism (and teaching journalism) and collaboration. I am particularly interested in working with other independent consultants in the field of communicating urban planning and landscape architecture to build something collectively that none of us could build alone. If that sounds like you, get in touch: laura@parcitypatory.org.

And if you are here for the journalism, stay: Baku is next.

Are you going to the 13th edition of the WUF? Send me a message to connect and meet up for a coffee:

Let's connect

I have been to three WUFs and the HABITAT III conference, an even larger edition of the WUF that happens every 20 years. Every time, I attend several sessions, interview urbanists, and write articles about my impression of the conference, interesting projects, important progress, and more.

And let me tell you, it’s a great experience, but also a very overwhelming one. I was recently asked to share my best practice tips for reporting from the WUF with a group of Azerbaijani journalists. I thought I’d share my insights with you as well, hoping they will support you in telling stories about great urban solutions (which abound at the WUF)!

Preparing in advance

Now is the time to prepare for the World Urban Forum. Once you have registered and booked your travel, if going in person, start by having a good look at their website and study the programme. There are usually live transmissions of many events in case you can’t make it to Baku.

Use the search function to look for topics or people you are particularly interested in. Shortly before the event, organisers will also release a very handy app that will help you with searches, marking your favourite events, personalising your schedule, and getting in touch with people.

Tip: Even if you can’t attend the WUF in person, look at the programme and download the app. Together, they offer a wealth of information and potential interviewees.

You will see that the programme has many different sections. Personally, I find the partner-led events in the “SDGs in Action”, the “Voices from Cities”, the Urban Expo and the Urban Library as well as Academy events the best. There are also great field trips, make sure you check the news on the WUF website to book your place (usually available a few days before).

You can sign up to WUF here.

Identifying stories

We already know that the main topic will be housing, something that affects almost every city in the world. This is a great entry point for you, so note down your questions and ideas for potential articles:

• What lessons do other cities at WUF have for affordable housing in your city?

• Looking around the host city, Baku, are there any inspiring housing solutions that you might be able to visit during one of the (very popular!) field trips?

• What are they key challenges and opportunities around housing in your own city, and how can you explore them further at the WUF?

But of course, just about every other topic concerning cities will also be covered at WUF. Whether you are interested in rewilding, restoring blue spaces, indigenous architecture, or cultural festivals, you will find several events focused on these topics - and with them, the right people to talk to.

Tip: The Practices Hub is a new section this year and I think it will be particularly relevant for urban journalists!

In March, I was at a smaller, but equally inspiring conference called Urban Future in Ljubljana. I already knew that the Slovenian capital is particularly good at pedestrianisation, so I looked out for interview partners and stories around that topic, while also being mindful of my own experience every day on the way to the conference centre. Here is my article:

Finding interview partners

Once you are at the WUF, I recommend strolling through the Urban Expo, where there are many stalls from all over the world, showcasing innovative products as well as projects and approaches. Not all of them will make for a good story, but again you might be able to do some interviews, identify trends, and collect LinkedIn profiles.

As a registered journalist, you will be able to request interview partners. You will also receive invitations to daily press briefings and special events, which I always find very useful to get an idea of the key developments at the conference. There are also dedicated media zones for doing interviews, filming, and recording.

You will find interview partners from simply attending events and approaching the speakers afterwards. Maybe someone from the audience had a particularly interesting comment or insight - don’t be shy to approach them either. I did that in Cairo two years ago. I attended an event on green spaces in this desert city and a local NGO worker made a critical comment about also protecting blue spaces. I approached her and asked for more information, and she ended up inviting me to a birdwatching tour on the Nile. Here is my story from that.

Be flexible

No matter how well you prepare for a conference of this scale, there will always be surprises. At HABITAT III in Quito, these started with queues that took hours so that you couldn’t even get into the venue on time for the day’s first events. Budget in some extra time, be prepared for the local climate, and bring snacks and drinks!

As a journalist, I recommend signing up for a press pass (free) which will give you access to daily media briefings, a special newsletter, and the media lounge. Bring your business cards, a recorder or a charged phone with a recording app at the ready, your notebook and your laptop. Interviews often happen quite spontaneously - be sure to get the person’s email address for follow-ups and to share your article.

I also recommend being flexible with your schedule. Often, an event might turn out to not be the best fit for you, so feel free to politely and quietly leave and attend another one. This could completely change your article and is a great recipe for finding new topics.

Be gentle with yourself

Every time, I have to remind myself that around 20,000 people are in the same place. It gets loud, it gets busy, and it can really be quite overwhelming. At the same time, it’s full of interesting events, inspiring people, and much more content than you can possibly digest, even if you want to take it all in.

I tend to have only a few must-attend sessions, mostly out of professional and partly out of personal interest, marked in my calendar. I then add back-ups and spontaneous “nice-to-have” sessions. But trust me: After 2-3 workshops, which amount to 6 hours of listening, you will need a break. If you only attend one workshop on any given day, that’s ok too. Make sure to take breaks, find a quiet space, go for a walk, and let your ideas develop.

If you are in Baku, enjoy the city! I always try and sign up for field trips, but even if you can’t, have a walk and find out what lessons this city has to offer. For example, I plan to travel to the WUF by metro every day to take a look at the public transport system and to experience what everyday commuting might look like for locals.

Pitching stories

Now is also the time to start pitching WUF stories to editors. Tell them that you will be attending, online or in-person, and what events you will attend. In addition, you will likely send a few pitches while you are already at the WUF based on stories you find there.

Tip: Identify potential outlets that might publish your story in advance. Your local newspapers as well as solutions journalism outlets are good candidates.

Take some time every day, likely in the evening, to sit down with your story ideas, transcribe interviews, pitch stories, and start writing the ones you have been commissioned with. Most outlets will want to publish your story during or just after the WUF, so there is no time to lose. The more preparation and writing you can do in advance, the better.

For my article on culture in the UAE, I was able to research quite a bit in advance. I also got to attend a fascinating field trip in Abu Dhabi, which supported my pitch and article for Topos Magazine.

Network, network, network

I love going to the World Urban Forum. It is always a very intense week, but it is definitely worth it - personally and professionally. One of the most valuable things for me as a freelancer is the opportunity to network. I have found clients, made great contacts, met future colleagues, and invited others to join and even write for the Urban Solutions Journal. Don’t be afraid to start talking to people, in the press room and beyond.

A good starting point with networking is to look for people from your own or neighbouring countries. Of course, you are here to learn from international examples as well, but it can be much easier to break the ice if you share a mother tongue, a home town, an employer, a city, or an interest specific to your country. Later, you can branch out.

From exploring Dubai to watching a dance festival in Katowice, some of my best WUF memories come from networking and making new urbanist friends.

Read more about my experience in Katowice here.

The World Urban Forum only comes around every two years, and WUF13 in Baku will be one of the largest gatherings of urban minds of this decade so far. Whether you leave with three published articles, a handful of strong contacts, or simply a clearer sense of the global conversation around housing and cities, the World Urban Forum is time well spent. If you are heading to Baku, I hope to see you there. And if you are following along from home, the stories coming out of WUF13 will be worth reading closely. Good luck!

Do you have any questions or additional tips? Leave a comment below!

There is only one four-wheeled vehicle in Ljubljana’s city centre: The electric “Kavalir” (cavalier or gentleman) vehicles offer an accessible option for getting around the Slovenian capital, whose old town has been pedestrianised for almost 20 years. For the elderly and those who are less mobile, the local public transport company is offering these free low-floor buses with audio and video announcements. You can flag them down or call them to be picked up. Seven of these vehicles zip through the cobbled streets. They each take up to five people and there is no specific route. You simply tell the driver where you’d like to go within the central zones. Up to 300 passengers a day, from 6am to 10pm, can benefit from the Kavalirs.

This is just one of many examples of how Ljubljana is implementing a true transformation. Dejan Crnek, the city’s deputy mayor, explains that the planning approach is all about passion for people’s wellbeing: “You can feel warm in Ljubljana” - this goal is certainly present in the Slovenian capital, where I felt very welcome as a pedestrian. “We want people to want to live in Ljubljana”, Crnek adds. As a pedestrian visiting the city, I can definitely feel the warmth, the ease of moving around, and the joy of having all my pedestrian needs met.

A city for people instead of cars

Ljubljana had many lessons for the Urban Future participants. The conference aims to show ways of creating better cities and picks its host cities accordingly, so let’s take a closer look at Ljubljana’s success. The city started its campaign to remove cars from the historic centre in 2007. It was deeply controversial back then, for all the usual reasons: Shopkeepers feared for their clientbase, residents worried about less parking spaces, drivers felt threatened. But now, almost 97% of the city’s inhabitants oppose the idea of bringing cars back - an impressive number.

The key to this success story was a long-term strategy called Vision 2025, built around the simple idea to design a city for people, not for cars. It did not aim to punish drivers, but instead to improve the quality of life for everyone: cleaner air, safer streets, less accidents, more and better public spaces. Step by step, central spaces such as Prešeren Square at the heart of the old city were pedestrianised. Urban planners also redesigned major traffic arteries, including Slovenska Cesta, keeping access for residents. Deliveries are still possible in city centre at certain hours, but they are strictly regulated.

The city offers alternatives, for example the Kavalir vehicles. There are also park-and-ride facilities in several places at the centre’s edge; bus services were improved; and the bike-sharing system is widely used. This means that an overall mobility upgrade made the pedestrianisation of city centre possible. Instead of removing options for mobility, Ljubljana offered better alternatives.

Now, Ljubljana benefits from lower noise levels, much improved air, business thriving on foot traffic, and many attractive public squares filled with cafés, markets, and different events throughout the year. The riverbanks of Ljubljanica, the local river, have also seen major improvements and are now very inviting. Perhaps the best indicator of Ljubljana’s success is that Mayor Zoran Janković, the driving force behind the pedestrianisation, has been re-elected four times.

From backlash to civic pride

The Slovenian capital is working to expand its success into other areas of the city. There are new challenges, says Vita Kontić Bezjak, Public Relations and Mobility Advisor for the City of Ljubljana. “Our pedestrianised area is now 20 hectares large and still expanding. We run a lot of citizen engagement activities to extend the pedestrian zone to other neighbourhoods, including providing new spaces between buildings, introducing benches designed to offer stimulate social interaction, and improving pavements.”

However, even with the example of city centre, not everyone is on board: In the residential area Štepanjsko naselje, there have been passionate debates about removing parking or making it paid. “We used to have free residential parking here, but it got used by other people, so we introduced paid parking while keeping free spots for residents”, she explains. This has angered people who don’t always see what is in it for them - a challenge that is common when pedestrianising an area or taking away parking lots. Ljubljana is hoping that the new public spaces, green areas, and more room for socialisation will convince everyone soon. As always, even with perfect planning, people’s minds can change - making citizen engagement even more important, Vita Kontić Bezjak reflects.

Lessons for other cities

Ljubljana was an early mover for pedestrianising a large part of its centre. Already, it offers many lessons, especially in creating civic pride out of initial fear and backlash. Phased change with good alternatives and visible improvements will sway even the worst critics’ opinions eventually, which needs courageous, curious, and patient leadership that listens to citizens first before taking things away. It will be interesting to keep an eye on Štepanjsko naselje. In the meantime, the city is well worth a visit, both as a case study and as a warm, welcoming place for a holiday.

Thank you to my interview partners and to Urban Future for the press pass. Beyond learning about Ljubljana, I also attended fascinating sessions around trees, wooden construction trends, and green and blue spaces.

I’m opening registrations for the next Urban Solutions Journalism Academy, a two-hour online workshop on how to tell rigorous, engaging stories about what’s working in our cities.

After running several editions (online and in person), I’ve decided to continue the Academy as a paid workshop. If you’d like to join the next session on April 8th, you can find all details and register here:

Join the Academy

The Academy is for you if you:

• work in urban planning or city-making and would like to write about your projects more clearly and confidently

• are interested in freelance writing on urban topics

• are a journalist or communications professional looking for a practical framework to report on cities in a solutions-focused way

But even if you’re not planning to join, I’d like to share why I believe solutions journalism matters (especially now).

Cities are facing immense pressures: housing shortages, climate adaptation, inequality, strained public services. We need critical reporting on these challenges. But we also need reporting that carefully examines responses - what has been tried, what evidence exists, what the limitations are, and what others can learn.

Solutions journalism is not positive PR. It’s rigorous reporting on responses. It asks: Does this work? For whom? Under what conditions? And what can other cities take from it?

In my recent work, for example:

• I profiled Ingrina Shah, a National Park City ranger working to make London’s green and blue spaces more inclusive and accessible.

• I wrote about an NGO rethinking how people with disabilities can access swimming in cities - a simple but powerful example of how design and community action intersect.

These are small pieces in a much bigger puzzle: how we share practical knowledge between cities. Stories hold immense power to not just inspire but also share ways of making our cities work. That is why I think it’s so important to spread the word about solutions from urban contexts all over the world.

Recently, I also taught Azerbaijani students how to report from large international events like the World Urban Forum. I’ll share my tips with you in a coming article. And if you’re coming to WUF13 in Baku this May, I’d love to connect.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for caring about how we tell stories about cities.

More soon!

Cities these days feature a lot of the same materials consistent with the post-colonial era: concrete, steel, and glass. These are often cited as high carbon emitters.

But what if there was an alternative – a way to build to the same – even better – structural standards, but in a way that’s more in tune with nature?

Sustainable knowledge

Indigenous architecture is exactly that. Supply chains were limited for communities in the (much longer) pre-colonial era, so populations the world over became experts in building from nearby resources.

Many came to be stewards of the natural world. In a practice known as regenerative construction, they would take only what was needed, allow nature to restore itself, and build in such a way that it was not damaging to the environment.

Sounds idyllic. But this knowledge has not been lost, and these are not dead practices.

Intergenerational knowledge

As a child, Reanna McKay loved to help her grandfather – a trapper and commercial fisherman – build cabins by hand in their community along Reindeer Lake shore in northern Manitoba, Canada. “He would source the logs from another island and bring it back by boat, and then I would strip off the bark. That was my first introduction to architecture, but that also led to a natural process of working in wood.”

“The gentle and deep-rooted connection to the earth from my childhood is still instilled within me, and it has shaped my values.”

Even at this early age, Reanna was inspired to pursue a career as an architect. When she got to university, however, it suddenly became apparent how few Indigenous people and people of colour join the profession. She believes that there are currently only around 30 practicing Indigenous architects in Canada.

So, while the knowledge survives, rarely is it seen in the built environment of modern cities. Reanna is changing that.

Benefits of Indigenous architecture

“Tansi, sîpihkosiw anaskani iskwêw nisithîkâson, kisipakamak nitocin.”

Our CityChanger introduces herself by her true name in Ininimowin (the Cree language) – as Blue Blanket Women, from Where the Water Ends, her home community known in English as Barren Lands First Nation, in northern Manitoba.

This hints at the strong role of nature in her identity.

Reanna often gives talks in schools, where she uses examples of traditional structures from Turtle Island – an Indigenous term for North America – that we might all be familiar with to explain what Indigenous architecture is like.

They include “a tipi, a wigwam, a longhouse, an igloo”, she says, which are constructed from wood, vegetation, animal skins, rocks, and other local materials that are adapted to or created by local conditions and people. This makes them well suited to the regional climate, providing some comfort for occupants – in a way that concrete-based building envelopes fail.

“People in our communities are so knowledgeable in terms of construction. We know what types of materials work best within the climate.”

Non-Indigenous urban planners and architects who design in Indigenous communities “don’t use the local knowledge and ask people what works best,” Reanna observes, adding that it’s one reason why modern buildings “deteriorate very, very quickly”.

It may not be known whether Indigenous knowledge derives from people’s relationship to the land, or whether the reverse is true, but that connection to nature and ancestral lands runs strong.

‘Wahkohtowin’ in Ininimowin means everything is related and everything has a relationship, Reanna, a nihithaw iskwew, or Woodlands Cree woman, explains. “Everything is a relative. Everything around me is living and breathing. The trees are talking to each other. The ground is breathing beneath me. Everything is interconnected within a certain space.”

What is Indigenous architecture?

It can be difficult to define the term Indigenous architecture, Reanna admits, but that symbiotic connection to nature features heavily.

It is also grounded in community and spatial identity, Reanna points out. Designs include or make references to the languages, traditions, beliefs, ceremonies, and practices that Indigenous communities “dealt with on a daily basis”, what they “spoke about, and what is important to them”.

As an activist, educator, and architectural intern, Reanna puts considerable energy into making sure this becomes a mainstream feature in today’s cities.

“I primarily work, live, and play in Treaty One territory, also known as Winnipeg,” Reanna tells us. “Winnipeg is very significant because it has one of the largest Indigenous populations in all of Canada.”

Not that it’s particularly visible in the built environment. But that’s changing.

Hidden heritage

Like so many other buildings throughout Canada, the 655,000-square-foot Hudson’s Bay Company building in downtown Winnipeg, Canada, was constructed in a colonial aesthetic.

Opened in 1926, it came more than 250 years after the company was founded to hunt and trade furs, which intrinsically links its history with the policy of displacement from the early 1800s affecting the region’s Indigenous communities.

“We were forcibly disrupted from our lands,” Reanna explains. “We were put within parcels called ‘reserves‘ for First Nations people and forcibly told to stay.”

It was part of a wider programme of cultural suppression: “We weren’t able to speak our language or practice our ceremonies.” Gender roles, too, changed in line with the male dominance of colonial European values. “Within Indigenous culture or in ceremonies, women are described as being the leaders of the community. We are seen as the life givers, water carriers, and the ceremony people.”

Either physically or by diluting strong connections to their culture, this was all an attempt to keep Indigenous populations hidden. It was also the rationale behind Canada’s residential schools, where First Nations, Inuit, and Métis ‘stolen children’ were sent away from their families to assimilate into the invasive culture, a policy that only ended in 1996.

Wins in Winnipeg

Today this exclusion is reflected in the absence of Indigenous cultures in the fabric of built urban environments, a fact that the Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn project aims to rectify.

Meaning ‘it is visible’ in Anishinaabemowin, this project is turning the Hudson’s Bay building into an Indigenous hub.

Reanna, who will qualify as an architect in 2025, works on the project as an intern with Number Ten Architectural Group in collaboration with the newest owners of the building, Southern Chiefs Organization (SCO).

“The local community of downtown Winnipeg is primarily Indigenous centric, and so it’s providing support for those communities. The entire facility will have anything from residential to assisted living to museums to ceremony space to education facilities and daycare and office spaces.”

But it will be more than a place where people can access the services or practice their traditions. In order to nurture a true sense of belonging, Indigenous heritage and the connection to nature is represented in the very architecture: Wehwehneh Bahgahkinahgohn offers “a public space that honours our lands and waters in an atrium illuminated by skylights and the soaring sky above”, states the SCO website.

“We are reclaiming this colonialist building and reimagining it within Indigenous perspectives,” Reanna adds. “I’m very proud to be part of it.”

Emotional labour & creating allies

Belonging is a consistent theme in our conversation with Reanna.

Whereas sustainability and environmental design were part of her family for generations, her peers at university could not quite grasp her connection to the natural world.

“For some people, the closest thing that they could connect to is a cabin that their family owns.”

As one of the only Indigenous people in her architecture course, it was a lonely experience. That was exacerbated by well-meaning but exhausting enquiries into her culture and community practices, which Reanna would invest hours to explain.

“It comes from having to be the only [Indigenous] person in the room. Usually, if an Indigenous topic comes up, everyone looks at me, as if to ask: ‘What do you think about this?’”

This emotional labour has contributed to Reanna skirting on the verges of burnout. That, and overt discrimination: “I still battle with this today,” she tells us. “I look at a lot of public feedback and 99 per cent of it is complete racism. They say, ‘Why should our history be removed?’”

Which adds fuel to the fire of intergenerational trauma – the guilt triggered in descendants of survivors who harbour the same strong bonds to their ancestral lands.

“As an Indigenous person in architecture, I feel like I always have to advocate for myself. I have to work a little bit harder than the people around me.”

No longer hidden

Without interventions, the situation wouldn’t change, Reanna realised.

Sure enough, she started to feel less alone in 2021, after co-founding the Indigenous Design and Planning Student Association – adding to Reanna’s achievements that were recognised with her being named the 2023 Youth-First Nations Indspire Award Laureate.

Still active today, it aims to boost the inclusion of Indigenous students in architecture but also provide a network of support, mentorship, collaboration. Membership boasts undergraduates, community Elders, and even some of Reanna’s former clients.

“I turn to my mentors if I’m having an ethical issue, or if I don’t know how to handle a certain Indigenous community, or I’m having problems within my own professional career in terms of being an Indigenous person, or just to talk about ceremony or our families.”

It’s an exceptionally useful resource because, of course, Indigenous communities are not homogenous.

“I am Cree. I don’t know anything about the Nisga’a or the Squamish of the West Coast. I still have to do my due diligence. I still have to do my research. I still have to engage. I still have to talk to people.”

Education as a change-maker

To save others just some of the trauma Reanna has endured, she has helped put together and instruct on a master’s course at University of Manitoba that teaches the concepts of Indigenous design.

Titled ‘Being a Good Relative: An Indigenous Approach to the Architectural Process’, it aims to promote Indigenous practices into the mindsets of up-and-coming architects of all backgrounds, creating a wave of allies who, it is hoped, will also advocate for the inclusion of Indigenous representation in design.

These allies are essential for creating a landscape of inclusion and representation when intergenerational trauma holds back so many young Indigenous people from careers like architecture, law, and healthcare, Reanna explains. “Some people don’t even graduate high school because of their circumstances.”

There’s a lot of odds that are stacked up against my population. Even going to school is a big feat within itself.

Historic markers

Although she knows how necessary it is to advocate for Indigenous representation, Reanna feels the pressure. Often, she’s pushing ahead alone, and against great forces.

In Winnipeg, though, there seems to be some willingness officials to enact change – they just need expertise of Indigenous communities to achieve it.

Hence, Reanna sits as the Manitoba Director on the Royal Architecture Institute of Canada Board of Directors, as well as “many local advocacy boards within the city”. This includes the Welcoming Winnipeg Committee, which assesses applications for the change of place names to honour Indigenous figures and for “creating historical markers to represent Indigenous perspectives and histories”.

It’s the first scheme of its kind in the country – a commitment from the city council of Winnipeg to acknowledge centuries of exclusion. They adopted the Welcoming Winnipeg: Reconciling our History Policy to officially recognise Indigenous communities within the city.

“It came out of a citywide public engagement from people that craved Indigenous perspectives,” Reanna explains. “It came from the Indigenous population directly saying that we want our language represented.”

Nominations are fielded from citizens and are progressed if they can argue impact for the community.

There has been a lack of suggestions from the Indigenous community itself though; a predictable reaction from those used to not being heard.

The committee plans to overcome this by working more closely with local Indigenous organisations to raise awareness and interest. But that’s not to say the idea has fallen flat.

Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine Park

One notable success is the renaming of Wellington Park as Theodore Niizhotay Fontaine Park. This honours “a significant local Elder who advocated for unveiling the [stories of survivors from] Assiniboia Residential School, which is located in the centre of Winnipeg,” Reanna explains, and to remember the many who succumbed to assimilation.

“I was very fortunate to offer some opening remarks, and I met his wife,” Reanna recalls of the ceremony announcing the name change. “I remember this moment vividly: she gave me tobacco and a tobacco pouch. Tobacco is significant: it’s a symbol of respect within Indigenous communities. Then she offered a sweet grass pin and said, ‘This was Theodore’s, and I want you to have it’. I still have it right next to my desk.”

Principles of Indigenous design

Reanna was given another ceremonial name recently.

‘Ogechitaakwe’ means ‘warrior woman’. Given the fight she has taken on to raise awareness of and help overturn centuries of colonial oppression and the architectural status quo, this seems fitting.

What keeps her going is a selfless vision of better cities for everyone.

“I always think about how this space would feel for me when I was a kid, or when I was in high school, in early university. And that is a constant reminder of the work. Yes, the emotional labour is challenging, but there is a benefit for the people that come after me in the future generations.”

As part of her degree thesis, Reanna developed seven guiding design principles. These may serve as a good practice reference to all architects, just as they are still “constant reminders to guide my practice”, she admits. The last point, to design with the heart, seems most important as she reflects.

“I always lead my practice very selflessly. I don’t need an award-winning project or anything like that. I just need something that works for my community.”

Knock-on effects

That certainly seems to be the case for downtown Winnipeg. Since the transformation of the Hudson’s Bay building, there’s a renewed sense a belonging and anticipation of more change – for the better.

“There’s this natural bleeding out happening from this building. That gets me very excited because this representation is expanding. This community is expanding, we’re having a larger voice, and people are very supportive.”

Realistically, there is a long way to go before Indigenous architecture is mainstream, but as practitioners learn the ropes and understand the social and environmental benefits – and as municipalities realise this helps them meet their targets – Indigenous representation will start gathering momentum.

“They have become too comfortable in the way that architecture and urban design has been happening. We are seen as people that are disrupting that. We are the challengers to try to make that change.”

This article was written in its original form by Karl Dickinson for CityChangers.org, an online resource hosted by Urban Future which aims to connect passionate change-makers with the knowledge they need to create more sustainable, liveable, equitable cities.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

This quote by American architect, designer and writer Buckminster Fuller is the inspiration for the artist Ulrich Schmitt. With the help of artificial intelligence, he has created a vision of a green, sustainable Nuremberg. In his model-making, the German city suddenly boasts lush plants and forests, almost no cars and concrete, but lots of trees.

The green oasis is a welcome vision. “I don’t believe that more technology, such as air conditioning, is the solution in our world for climate change,” the artist says. Instead, he advocates for trees as key urban infrastructure, capable of cooling and shading the city in summer.

A colourful office for the future

Schmitt shares his work on the Instagram channel Buntes Amt für die Zukunft Nürnberg, a wordplay on Bundesamt (Federal Office) that translates loosely as “Colourful Office for the Future of Nuremberg”. Based on city data and his own ideas of a climate-adapted city, the artist creates visual models showing everything from historic buildings embedded in urban jungles to overground trains, play streets, residential areas and expanded cycling infrastructure.

“I want to invite people to think differently about the future – or at least to start thinking and to lay the groundwork for change. Too many people only think about what we can lose. I think that we have a lot to gain, such as beautiful greenery and much improved streets.”

A local exhibition showed his work in Nuremberg in 2024 and attracted attention well beyond the city. In 2030, Nuremberg will host Germany’s national garden exhibition. Until then, the city aims to implement a master plan for green spaces. Schmitt’s images offer encouragement and a visual reference for what this could look like in practice, for example by turning parking lots into parks.

Between utopia and policy

While a completely car-free Nuremberg still seems utopian, Ulrich Schmitt’s ideas have resonated with local government officials such as environment councillor Britta Walthelm. Other German politicians have shared his images as well, underlining their value as tools for communication and public engagement.

Producing the images is labour-intensive and time-consuming. As AI tools continue to develop, however, the visual quality has steadily improved. Once interest in Schmitt’s green utopias picked up and local news reported, the images began to circulate widely online. The Instagram channel grew quickly, suggesting that virality itself can function as a form of informal civic participation, allowing people to engage with the potential of planning ideas.

A collective imagination of the future

“We pretend that this exists already,” Schmitt says, describing an approach that treats imagined futures as something tangible rather than abstract. By visualising a greener city as if it were already real, the images make long-term planning goals easier to grasp and discuss.

Schmitt creates the images in his free time. Maybe one day he will write a book. For now, he works as an art and crafts teacher, often generating new scenes on the train while travelling home from work.

Nuremberg was a good place to start, he explains. Visually, its red sandstone and distinctive architecture translate particularly well into AI-generated imagery. In other cities, similar visuals can quickly become generic. Even so, Schmitt believes this approach has broader potential. “I’m surprised when I look at the comments on social media,” he says. “There is very little outright criticism. People seem to connect emotionally.”

He hopes that this kind of future-oriented communication can help bring people together around a shared vision - and make greener cities a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Read more here: https://bazn.org/

And by the way, there are still some spots available for next week’s free Urban Solutions Journalism Academy. Register here:

Get your ticket

If the design of urban spaces does not make us feel safe, it limits how we move around, engage with, and enjoy the city. This impacts women disproportionately, and even spaces that seem welcoming in daylight can feel menacing after dark. We investigate the link between urban design and feelings of vulnerability and learn how cities plan street capital that makes everyone comfortable at any time of day.

Many of us are familiar with the idea that modern cities are the product of male design – a result of longstanding homogenous voices in positions of power.

This singular perspective has led to gendered microaggressions being built into the very fabric of cities. In other words, infrastructure takes forms that heighten women’s concerns for their safety, creating a barrier to freely moving around a city and therefore access to urban facilities.

Choke points include insufficient street lighting, poor signage, obscured line of sight, isolated spaces, long waits caused by infrequent public transport, and creepy, dark underpasses.

The way these features of urban landscaping make women – half the population – and gender minorities feel is a decisive factor in how, when, and even if they navigate the city.

Understanding the Gendered Design

Clearly, urban design needs a review.

Gender mainstreaming offers a remedy and pathway to feminist cities: places packed with designs that include, benefit, empower, and meet the needs of all citizens – not only women.

But implementing such designs requires us first to understand how we’re currently building spaces that invite gendered violence.

Safety: A Gendered Concern

Architect Nourhan Bassam is the founder of Gaming X, “a placemaking activation organisation” based in the Netherlands. She’s also the mastermind behind The Gendered City, and the FEM.DESign network; the latter being a collective of more than 250 international urbanists collectively working on research, advocacy, support, and “feminist design tools”, pushing for a global shift to gender-equal cities at a systemic level.

“It’s easier when you’re surrounded by people doing the same work you do,” she explains.

In her book, also called The Gendered City, Nourhan Bassam has pulled together multiple first-hand accounts of how cities keep failing women. She investigates many concepts that resulted from our gendered cities such as the Green Gap, Step Gap, and the Line Gap.

Adopting an intersectional lens, Nourhan’s research details how lone females feel intimidated and threatened, and of the harassment and unwanted attention that women around the world frequently encounter: obscene comments, following, non-consensual touching, catcalling, and physical and sexual assault, etc.

Even when no harassment occurs, urban landscaping can exacerbate a sense of vulnerability, unfairly tarnishing women’s experiences of the city with anxiety, shame, and fear.

Complicating matters further, the impact of our surroundings is not static; it changes with the time of day.

The Urban Night

The cover of darkness grants would-be perpetrators anonymity, and so fears for safety intensify at night.

This prompted Nourhan to begin Women After Dark (WAD): a research initiative by The Gendered City that taps into how women use cities differently at nighttime and what impact the dark hours have on their mental wellbeing, as well as economic and body autonomy.

“Around 70 percent of the women we asked felt unsafe walking alone after dark, compared to 14 percent of men.” - Nourhan Bassam

Although her primary research was conducted in Milan, Amsterdam, Paris, and Rotterdam, women’s experiences are similar in cities the world over.

Menace of Mobility

Women are more likely than men to rely on soft and public modes of transport because they make up a higher proportion of the urban poor. Being in shared spaces makes them susceptible to attack, compared to locked cars, for example.

In The Gendered City, Nourhan references surveys in France where almost 100% of women told of harassment on the metro system. In Mexico City it affected 65% of women taking public transport; in Beijing, China, it clocked in at 70% – with 58% of incidents occurring on busses.

At night, with fewer people around, travel becomes a greater risk, with tangible ramifications.

“It exacerbates economic disparities and the gender pay gap because women maybe wouldn’t take night shifts or certain jobs that require staying up late and using transportation at night,” Nourhan explains.

Arranging night walks, as recommended by the SafeCity project, offers night workers the chance to stroll home safely in groups.

Or, Nourhan says, if they can afford it, women will take a taxi or a service like Uber, paying just to feel safe – which, let’s remember, is a basic human need.

But female-only cabs driven by women – like those in Mumbai – do seem to increase safety; especially as the drivers are martial arts and first aid trained.

The Toilet Toll

Public lavatories are a common concern. Nourhan has written of Townships in South Africa where a lack of indoor plumbing forces women and girls out into dark, narrow alleys to reach communal latrines. This makes them exceptionally vulnerable to nighttime gender-based violence. Some never return.

Good lighting and separate stalls with individual locks can help, but even such simple solutions are generally overlooked, because men – the designers – don’t endure the same experiences.

No Park After Dark

Green spaces, too, are a problem.

One of Nourhan’s preferred places to exercise is in Milan’s Parco Sempione. But, half the time, it’s off limits.

“When the winter comes and days are shorter and I finish work, it’s nighttime; I cannot go there anymore.”

Under the shroud of darkness, leafy green spaces loved by day can feel oppressive and unwelcoming. Trees and low light impair visibility and, like many urban spaces, structures that could obscure perpetrators make being there alone too risky.

Instead, for her night exercise, Nourhan subscribes to a gym, choosing to pay in exchange for the sense of personal security. There’s a theme emerging here; like the pink tax – where women pay more for sanitary and other essential products – women seem subjected to a ‘safety tax’ that men escape.

Costs of Urban Gender Gaps

The ever-present fear of harassment or attack is exacerbated by design and the dark. And it’s exhausting!

A well-known study using heat maps compares the focus of male and female pedestrians as they walk the city at night. Men look straight ahead, while women are hyper-aware of their surroundings.

Nourhan says how mentally “taxing” it is to be so vigilant. Like many, she constantly looks over her shoulder as she navigates the darkness.

“A lot of my male friends never thought of it,” Nourhan admits, emphasising gender disparities. “This is why urban storytelling and putting these testimonies out there is necessary. These experiences are really exclusive to women and other marginalised groups.”

And the one security detail that planners do usually include – CCTV – doesn’t curb those fears.

“That camera will do nothing, just document what’s happening,” our CityChanger explains. “Surveillance would only help after the incident, for reporting, but I don’t want the situation to happen in the first place.”

Mental Maps

So women rely on what Nourhan calls ‘mental maps’: plotting routes deemed to be safer.

For the most part, they will stick to lively places and streets overlooked by residential windows. The presence of other people provides ‘eyes on the ground’, thought to prevent situations of harm.

That’s why mental maps will often not include mono-functional spaces, like markets, which – outside of peak times – tend to be empty.

“I will definitely take a longer route where I know that there will be a bar open and there are people in the street; it’s more active, so it’s not as dark.”

Mental maps are the basis for apps like Safetipin and Your Way Home, which ease significant cognitive exertion by plotting women’s collective knowledge on an accessible digital interface.

Community Commitments to Gender Equality

A city which seems to get it right, Nourhan tells us, is Seville, in Spain.

A thriving nighttime economy helps her feel safe out in public, even at 4am. Part culture, part city policy, it’s thanks to al fresco dining, bars staying open late, and groups of friends – female and male – talking, smoking, and drinking in the street.

“It was really laid back; I didn’t feel any gaze, I wasn’t followed, and never at any point was I stressed.”

That’s the goal: creating cities that thrive by being inclusive at any time of day.

Umeå, Sweden, has also made significant inroads towards being a safer city.

As the city’s Gender Equality Officer, Linda Gustafsson is responsible for helping those with a grasp on power learn how to use it to create change.

“It’s about understanding power structures and understanding what people and certain groups are made victims of,” she explains.

But, Linda adds, “Feeling safe is too low of an ambition.”

Rather, she aims to make Umeå “a place where people want to live and spend their time and live their lives”.

Feminist Spaces Are Purposeful & Enjoyable

So we shouldn’t settle for the design of, for example, bus stops being well-lit and in busy streets. Linda suggests that real gender inclusive public transport would run so frequently that it allows passengers to choose exactly when they travel – as often as every few minutes.

Maybe that’s wishful thinking at this stage. At least the Frizon development in Årstidernas Park meets Linda’s optimistic outlook.

Frizon is a purpose-built social space, which offers seating ergonomically suited to teenage girls, and long, clear lines of sight that has designed-out the chance for any nasty surprises.

Just as important, it’s a space that young women feel safe – and happy – to just hang out, encouraged also by the on-site speakers where they can play music directly from a smartphone.

LEV and Let Live

But Umeå’s 130m-long LEV tunnel is a triumph in feminist design.

Underpasses are classic offenders for making us feel unsafe. Women feel tense walking through them; they will pick up speed, and remove their headphones as to be vigilant of telltale signs of danger.

“Maybe it’s quite narrow, and it’s dark, and maybe you enter the tunnel going downstairs and you’re all alone,” Linda explains. “There might be a hidden space and you don’t know who you’re going to meet when you go around the corner.”

But LEV sets a new precedent for making even these spaces an enjoyable experience.

With its broad pedestrian walkways and shallow gradient, wheelchairs and pushchairs can easily use the space. A separate bike lane invites additional ‘eyes on the ground’.

“When you enter, you see all the way to the other side,” Linda explains. There are no pillars, and the space is long and wide, and “the lighting resembles daylight”.

Both entrances are long curves, meaning that from start to finish, the tunnel offers clear visibility, even at night. There are no nooks to hide potential assailants, but side entrances allow for a quick exit if necessary. A neon sign illuminates at night, telling us it’s a fun, frequented space, like a bar.

“Most important, I would say, the entire tunnel is covered in glass artwork.”

Adorning the walls are quotes from Swedish writer Sara Lidman, embedded onto images resembling trees. As if a comforting companion for lone women moving through the space, “you can hear her voice and you can see her picture,” Linda points out.

People now take their time to slowly walk through the tunnel to read the walls and enjoy the artwork. LEV – Swedish for ‘live’ – seems apt. So, rather than settling merely for safer cities, let’s design places where everyone can really enjoy the city – wherever and whenever they choose.

This article was written in its original form by Karl Dickinson for CityChangers.org, an online resource hosted by Urban Future which aims to connect passionate change-makers with the knowledge they need to create more sustainable, liveable, equitable cities.

Thank you for reading! If you’d like to learn more about Urban Solutions Journalism, join the free workshop on January 30th.

Join Academy

I hope you’re getting ready for a well-deserved year-end break now. Before you sign off, mark this date in your calendars for next year: On Friday, January 30th, I’ll host the next Urban Solutions Journalism Academy. It will take about two hours and I’ll share details on how to sign up in the new year. If you have any preferences on time, feel free to leave a comment, and for any questions, contact me on laura@parcitypatory.org.

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It’s been an exciting year for me and the Urban Solutions Journal - starting out on Substack, building a community and hosting the first Urban Solutions Journalism Academy. I also got certified as a Solutions Journalism Trainer and started publishing regular stories for Bluedot Magazine - here is my latest one on bike buses.

And on top of that, I work as a communications consultant for a few different projects, including for the German Development Agency GIZ, and for the Futurium in Berlin, which teaches future literacy skills to children. Both of these have amazing project results that help restore faith in the work happening all over the world towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

I have loved experimenting on Substack, writing about what works in cities and discovering new solutions on the way. Here are some of my favourite articles:

I’m always on the lookout for more guest writers, so if you’d like to contribute, have a look here to learn how to best pitch me your story idea:

I wish you a very restful end of the year - and hope that you’ll find some inspiration along the way, be it for better cities or other goals of yours.

Thank you for following along! All the best, and see you next year.
Laura.

As a Northern German, saunas are a familiar joy to me. Growing up, my neighbours had one and I have fond memories of running out into the snow to cool down in between sauna sessions.

A new kind of third space

It makes me very happy to see saunas cropping up everywhere now – at least in Northern and Central European countries. Many of these places have long traditions of thermal baths or sauna culture, but unlike in the Nordics, they are not typically seen as community spaces. Community saunas are small, often housed in a wooden barrel or a converted container, usually fitting between two and ten people. Many offer a cold dip afterwards, whether in an ice barrel, the sea, or a lake.

During my visit to Oslo, it became clear that saunas are increasingly functioning as third spaces. The same pattern is emerging in Germany, the UK, and even parts of the US. Have you noticed saunas popping up in your area as well?

A “third space” is a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe the informal gathering places that sit between home and work. These are the cafés, parks, libraries, and community rooms where people meet friends, encounter neighbours, or strike up conversations with strangers. Third spaces are essential for social cohesion because they are accessible, low-pressure environments that help us build the softer ties that make urban life feel connected.

Saunas may seem like an unlikely addition to this list, but they share many of the same qualities. In the context of what many call the “loneliness pandemic,” saunas can help fill an important gap. They appeal particularly to people who are health-conscious or curious about wellness and who may not want to socialise in pubs or bars. Many go with friends, but there is also something powerful about going alone. Once everyone is sitting there in swimsuits, the usual social hierarchies and judgments fall away. You are all slightly uncomfortable, slightly exhilarated, and sharing the same sensory experience. It becomes easy to exchange a few words, share a quick joke, or collectively decide whether to put more water on the hot stones.

These third spaces create a relaxed environment where people naturally drift into conversation, share a moment of quiet, or laugh together about the heat. The combination of ritual, routine, and physical vulnerability makes it surprisingly easy to connect.

The growth of community saunas

The growth of community saunas is remarkable. According to the British Sauna Society, the number of public sauna sites across the UK has increased from around 45 in early 2023 to more than 140 by mid-2025. In London and Scotland, operators such as Community Sauna Baths and Community Sauna Highland now offer low-cost community hours, outreach programmes, and even doctor-referred sessions, positioning saunas as a form of affordable social infrastructure. Sessions typically begin at around £9.50, making them comparable to the cost of two beers in a pub.

Emerging research also suggests that regular sauna use supports cardiovascular health, reduces stress, and improves mental wellbeing. These benefits strengthen the case for saunas as a form of preventative public health. Below, Monika shares about her mobility issues and how coming to the Hackney Wick Sauna has changed her social life:

From health trend to accessible community space

Of course, saunas are not free, and this alone means they cannot replace traditional public spaces. Still, community saunas tend to keep prices accessible, and many offer concession rates. The cost is low enough that they remain within reach for a wide range of people.

The experience can be intimidating at first, especially for those unfamiliar with sauna culture. It’s important to pay attention to health briefings and listen to your body. But for most newcomers, the mix of heat and cold becomes enjoyable with a little practice, and the sense of welcome is usually immediate. Regular sauna-goers tend to look out for one another.

Location is another challenge. In London, for example, community saunas are not always easy to reach via public transport. Yet their clustering in East London, often in economically vulnerable areas, makes them accessible to local residents and anchors them in the community in a meaningful way.

In Oslo, I caught a glimpse of what a mature community sauna culture can look like. Saunas have become an everyday part of urban life, used by people before or after work, after stressful days, or simply as a treat. In the colder months especially, they can serve as warm, comforting hubs where social connections are built.

Sauna culture in cities

With their combination of affordability, wellbeing, and social interaction, community saunas can act as valuable third spaces in cities. The addition of cold dips makes them attractive even in warmer climates - something for planners to consider. Often, saunas take over empty spaces as “meanwhile sites”, but they can also become more permanent. Floating saunas offer the additional benefit of changing location easily.

To truly turn these spaces into low-barrier environments, it is key to offer accessible prices, including lower rates. Neighbourhood sessions as well as women-only sessions, for example, can help to further break, down barriers and make saunas attractive across different groups. In winter, their draw increases as many other forms of outdoor social life shut down. This helps explain why they are increasingly recognised not just as wellness spaces, but as emerging third spaces in cities.

If you have a community sauna nearby, give it a try! And if you don’t, I’d be curious to hear if your city has other kinds of third spaces that cater to physical and mental wellbeing in a similar manner – share a comment below!

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I’m off to the sauna now. And next time I’m in Oslo, I’ll make sure to go to another floating sauna. If you book a sauna cruise, the wooden platform, complete with a steering wheel and an electric engine, will even take you on a tour around the fjord. Heaven.

This piece was edited by Ely Bakouche from .

Step 1: Learning about the story

Once I had heard that beavers are back in London, I started to read more about them. Did you know that they were extinct in the UK for almost 400 years, even though they are a native species? This is mostly due to their valuable fur and castor oil, but they also got hunted by farmers who were not amused by having their land turned into wetland corridors.

However, nowadays we can really use the effect that beavers have on land: They flood it in a controlled way. Urban areas face both droughts and flash floods – exactly the conditions that beavers mitigate. The wetlands they create are important ecosystems that store water, while also being able to take on a lot of excess water and slowly release it into the ground.

Step 2: Pitching the story

There were already a few articles about beavers out there, for example on Reasons to be Cheerful – one of my favourite solutions journalism outlets! I sent several pitches out to nature-focused magazines and the one for Bluedot Magazine, an environmental outlet from the U.S., commissioned me for a short story.

Step 3: Visiting the site

Whenever I write about an urban innovation, I try to make sure I can see it in person. That’s not always possible, but of course, in this case it was relatively easy. Even though I missed the late-summer beaver safari – one of the last ones, since beavers are easiest to observe on a summer night -, the team at Ealing Wildlife Project and Citizen Zoo graciously suggested a private walk-around of about half an hour after one of their meetings.

When I got to Ealing, a volunteer-led walk around the beaver site was about to start as well. I got to share some of the excitement of the local families and the official Urban Beaver Officer, Şeniz Mustafa, who took them on a walk. Pia Trevelyan-Ashby, urban rewilding officer at Citizen Zoo, arrived briefly afterwards to show me around the beaver’s habitat. It’s a publicly accessible space that used to be the site of anti-social behaviour such as littering and drinking in public. Now, it’s a proper park that is clean and respected in the community.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any beavers, which I had been warned about. But we saw lots of their traces, including on trees, and their “workshop area” where they gnaw on wood and collect the best branches to build dams. It was also really interesting to get an impression of how much wetland they had created.

Step 4: Conducting the interview

While we walked, I did my best to interview Pia in a semi-structured way. I often do interviews on Zoom, where I typically record and then transcribe the audio file. In this case, I had some questions prepared in my notebook, aligned with the four pillars of solutions journalism - what’s being tried, what evidence exists, what the limitations are, and how the community is involved.

I write about two questions on a page with lots of space in between. Often, conversations don’t go linear, or the interviewee will answer several questions at once, so there’s a lot of scribbling involved! I make sure to do a literal transcription of particularly good quotes. I also typically offer the chance to approve the quotes before the article goes live, as that’s what I would want myself as an interviewee.

For the last question, which I asked just as we were nearing the end of the tour, Pia referred me to her colleague Elliot, who was just around the corner. I gave him the quick elevator pitch of who I am and what I’m writing about before briefly getting his very helpful input as well.

Step 5: Writing up the story

For this story, I knew that I only had around 450 words. I first wrote down all my handwritten notes into a Word document. I did this as soon as I came home to make sure that I remembered as much as possible. I then added some personal impressions and more research on beavers and on the project. In a next step, I highlight the best quotes and organise them, together with key information, into response – evidence – limitations – impact, which helps a lot with the logical flow of the article. The hardest part was choosing what to leave out, especially around the ecological background of rewilding. Focusing on the four pillars of solutions journalism helps to stay disciplined. Next, I used AI to check flow and clarity as well as any spelling mistakes.

The magazine had also asked for some pictures, so I offered one of my own from the site visit, as well as one from Citizen Zoo – of course after making sure that I could use their picture and which copyright I should put. For this kind of article, pictures are particularly important, I think – they show habitat changes as well as community involvement and the story’s protagonists, the beavers. To make the editors’ work easier, I copied everything into a Google Doc so that we could work on it together.

After some edits, I had a final version that my two interviewees approved as well. A day later, the piece went online! You can see it here:

https://bluedotliving.com/beavers-are-back-in-london/

I hope this was helpful! Would you like more behind-the-scenes posts - maybe on pitching to editors, interviewing, or structuring a solutions story? Leave a comment below!

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In densely populated cities like Kigali, it’s increasingly difficult to find public green spaces like parks near business districts. Located in Remera, one of the busiest business areas in the city, a new multi-purpose complex is nestled between two narrow streets. On a small plot of land surrounded by blocks of buildings, Zaria Court echoes the need for open public space in the city. At the same time, it demonstrates how density can be used efficiently to facilitate social cohesion through entertainment in nature.

Increasing the city’s tree canopy

As the city of Kigali has committed itself to promote and execute environment sustainability standards, so has Zaria Court. The site has provided a space for nature to coexist with business and entertainment components within the multi-purpose complex. As you can see on the map below, there is very little tree canopy inside Zaria Court. The place is still new and the trees and vegetation will eventually grow. But if you take a close look at the surrounding area and streets, there are very few trees and the area is a dense business district populated by concrete infrastructure.

That being the case, shade and fresh air will make the new complex attractive for people in the Remera area and Kigali in general. The sun’s radiation is highly reflected by concrete surfaces from buildings and roads which increase temperatures. So the tree-shaded park benches in Zaria Court will come in handy for extremely hot days. More shade can be found at the kid’s playground, which is largely covered by trees, a bit of sand to play with, grass, and various plants.

At the second entrance, there is a pond with small fish in it, surrounded by a few plants nearby. This blue space is linked to the entire natural ecosystem of the complex because birds can drink the water. As surrounding plants and trees grow, birds will also nest in them and enjoy their shade. Other living organisms like small insects will use them as their habitat. Another important use of the pond is to absorb rainwater and prevent flooding in cases of extreme rainfall. The trees and vegetation surrounding the pond will absorb rainwater, use it as food to grow new leaves and roots and release it with much less intensity than they absorbed it with - an element of the sponge city.

A truly accessible public space

On my visit to Zaria Court on a Sunday in September, a group of young children was practicing their karate on a large roof-covered event space that also serves as a basketball court. On the other side, groups of young children were playing football on the new synthetic fields, while toddlers enjoyed the sand and swing in the kids’ playground surrounded by tall trees and vegetation. This shows how the space successfully serves different purposes at the same time, attracting a wide variety of people from all age ranges.

Zaria Court provides public space while incorporating nature. This not only helps various natural ecosystems but also offers shade and fresh air in a busy part of the city surrounded by concrete blocks that reflect the sun’s heat and raise temperatures.

When designing and evaluating a new public space, it is important to listen to the target group and their needs in terms of the quality of the space, its accessibility, and its potential for socialising. Zaria Court is primarily for young people. I managed to talk to a group of girls who had taken centre stage at the open space to record videos for the latest TikTok trends.

“Kids are free and the space is open for everyone,” Marie told me. For young people like Dushimire Marie, that comes first in any public space as she said in her own words. A high school student, Youtuber and artist, Zaria Court offers just what she needs. While public spaces should by definition be free to access, multi-purpose elements like the ones at Zaria Court are too often turned into an amusement park that charges entry fees to everyone.

Expanding football pitches across the city

In the city of Kigali, seeing new football pitches is exciting. There’s a shortage of football pitches, especially ones with quality and not deprived of grass and filled with potholes due to the sun and poor maintenance. Although there are two five-a-side football pitches, Zaria Court’s new fields are synthetic, making them virtually immune from drying out under the sun. “We usually play in Nyamirambo [another part of town], but I think we’ll be coming here more often,” said a young football player to me when I asked if he regularly plays here. He was there to celebrate a win with his team and their treat was ice cream and a visit to Zaria Court.

With all the positives from community-building and entertainment, there remains one caveat. From my observations, accessibility is still a mixed bag. To reserve one of the five-a-side pitches for example, prices are higher during weekends. During weekdays, the price is 8,000 Rwandan Francs (RWF) per person, which is roughly five USD . During the weekends, the price goes up to 12,000 RWF (around eight USD) per person. This profit-maximisation strategy is unfair to those who can only play on weekends, making it less affordable.

Conclusion

Zaria Court provides public space while incorporating nature at the same time. This not only helps various natural ecosystems but also offers shade and fresh air in a busy part of the city surrounded by concrete blocks that reflect the sun’s heat and increase temperatures.

All in all, Zaria Court is an exciting environment, especially for young people. But it is still quite new and therefore attracts a lot of curiosity. It will be interesting to follow up in a few months or years to see how the space holds up with time. The key question will be whether it remains accessible. If that is the case, it can be an inspiring example for other cities like Nairobi or Kampala which are also very densely populated.

Thank you, Hans! Here you can read more of his work:

Development Works

urban and development economics with a focus on African countries

By Hirwa Hans

A German startup called Agvolution is one promising player in this space. They’ve developed solar-powered sensors that measure soil quality, humidity, and temperature around young trees. Through a dashboard, caretakers get alerts when intervention is needed. In pilot projects with German municipalities such as Potsdam and Erlangen, tree survival rates have reportedly improved, saving thousands of trees.

But nobody claims sensors are the complete solution. Vandalism, pests, storm damage, or lack of human follow-through remain real threats. Still, Agvolution’s technology is tackling one of the preventable causes of mortality. Its parameters can be adapted to different tree species, soil types, and climate conditions. Ideally, the sensor is installed at planting, so it monitors the environment from the beginning.

Agvolution’s Approach

When I spoke with Andreas Heckmann, co-founder of Agvolution, he explained how the idea grew out of agriculture:

“Originally, we came from the agricultural field - where plants also suffer from climate change. Conditions on site are often simply unknown, so people rely on gut feeling. We wanted to make that measurable.”

Founded in 2019–2020, Agvolution works on two fronts: the Climavi sensors, which fill data gaps in the soil, and the AGMEO model, which maps microclimate and water balance across whole areas.

The company’s approach is straightforward:

“Our sensors measure soil moisture exactly where young trees grow, because weather data is too coarse. The crucial zone is 50 cm to 1 metre deep, and you can’t always dig a hole to check manually,” says Heckmann. “We provide a permanent data feed with an alarm system.”

So far, 19 cities in German-speaking countries are using Climavi sensors that measure soil moisture and temperature. These IoT units typically run on solar or low-power batteries and are built for robustness: partly buried and barely visible. In Potsdam, for instance, they are “Kreuzberg-proof”, as the team jokes.

“Our software maps fields, offers dashboards, alerts users, forecasts future conditions, and will eventually create a digital-twin-like model for the tree’s microclimate,” Heckmann adds. “We can’t perform miracles, but we can detect risks early - for example, frost or drought stress - and help prevent damage before it happens.”

Agvolution’s sensors are now active from Garbsen to Berlin, with interest from up to 60 cities. “A city with 70,000 residents might start with eight sensors, then order fifteen more,” Heckmann says. “That’s roughly 30 sensors per 100,000 people, depending on green space. Even one tree saved pays off twice over: a sensor costs about €1,200, while replacing a tree can cost €3,000-8,000.”

Why Young Trees Fail and What Else Works

Sensors have the advantage that they enable data-driven watering where trees get water when they need it, rather than under- or over-watering. Municipalities like Erlangen and Potsdam use Agvolution’s system to reduce drought stress and optimise maintenance budgets. “With limited resources, knowing which trees need help first is powerful,” says Heckmann. “Over time, we can also see which species handle stress better and support more resilient selection.”

Yet sensors are only one piece of the puzzle. They can’t protect against vandalism, storms, or pests - they alert, but someone must act. Cost also remains a barrier for smaller municipalities that need to pay for hardware, installation, and upkeep. Moreover, reliable connectivity and staff training are essential.

Research and practice show several complementary success factors:

· Soil quality & compaction: Poor, compacted soil restricts root growth and water infiltration, as MDPI research on urban abiotic stress confirms.

· After-care & stewardship: A New York City study found young street trees in residential areas had much higher survival rates (82.7 %) than those in industrial or vacant areas (60–63 %), due to better ongoing care.

· Planting methods: UK “Trees Outside Woodland” trials showed that Miyawaki planting - with dense, prepared soil and early care - boosted survival from 47 % to 79 %.

· Root space technologies: Structural soils and modular soil cell systems, as studied in the Journal of Urban Ecology, improve tree health above and below ground in paved environments.

Making it Work: Best Practices & Recommendations

If cities want to increase young tree survival, combining several strategies gives the best results:

1. Prepare soil properly - loosen compaction, add organic matter, ensure sufficient rooting volume.

2. Select suitable species - match trees to local heat, drought, and soil conditions.

3. Install sensors early - at planting or soon after, at the right depth (moisture, temperature, frost).

4. Ensure after-care - regular watering, mulching, pest control, and strong community engagement.

5. Monitor and adapt - use sensor data but also observe growth, canopy, and root health.

6. Combine methods - Miyawaki, structural soils, or root cell systems can strengthen early growth.

“The aim,” says Heckmann, “is to make plant growth more efficient - in cities and in fields alike. We want to provide the data to train models that can predict where trees will struggle, and help cities adapt early to local weather extremes.”

Looking Ahead

Agvolution’s roadmap is ambitious: building microclimate maps and eventually soil moisture and temperature maps for all of Germany and Europe, using satellite and open-data sources. Their long-term vision is a “digital twin” of urban vegetation, allowing planners to simulate and forecast tree stress.

“Our mission,” Heckmann concludes, “is to help cities and landscapes become more resilient. We can’t stop the heat, but we can give trees a fighting chance.”

Young urban trees are fragile but not hopeless. With thoughtful planting, after-care, smart soil, and tools like sensors, cities can protect their investments and grow cooler, greener streets. Agvolution offers a valuable model for sensor-based monitoring, but success will depend on integrating many strategies - and ensuring that every alert leads to action.

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Thank you to those of you who joined the first Urban Solutions Journalism Academy two weeks ago. We discussed how to find a story, how to write it based on the four pillars of solutions journalism, how to pitch it to editors, and how to share it with the right audience. In two group exercises, we analysed a story based on the four pillars of solutions journalism and practised our pitching skills.

Here’s what participants said:

“This was super insightful and inspiring! I’m eager to get writing.”

“I was able to relate to a lot of what you said - which means maybe I am on the right path after all :) - but was also able to take a few pointers for improvement. So, thank you.”

“Relevant and compelling. Quick to engage, kept me hooked throughout.”

I am now an accredited Solutions Journalism Trainer and can’t wait to teach the Academy again. I will offer different formats, such as:

• Finding and developing urban solutions stories

• Writing and structuring stories about cities (Solutions Journalism method)

• Pitching to editors

• Sharing stories and building an audience

• Pitching clinic to refine your pitch together

• How to become a (freelance) urban journalist

• Deep dives into urban topics

• One-on-one sessions to support your career as a journalist

I’d love to know which of these topics you’re most interested in. Click the button below to register your interest for the next edition and tell me what focus you’d like most for the next Urban Solutions Journalism Academy:

Register your interest

In the meantime, I thought I’d share the favourite resources of the Academy attendees:

• This is the Story Tracker at the Solutions Journalism Network, where you can find many inspiring stories.

• They also have Impact Stories that show the importance of Solutions Journalism.

• Here are some helpful insights on what editors are looking for in a pitch.

• You can filter this directory by journalist or outlet to find out where best to pitch.
  

  And this is our definition of Urban Solutions Journalism:

“Urban Solutions Journalism is the practice of reporting on how cities are tackling their most pressing challenges — from climate adaptation to social inequality — with rigor and evidence. It highlights responses that work (and their limitations), offering insights that can inspire change in other urban contexts. The aim is not to promote but to provide constructive, critical stories that empower readers, policymakers, and communities to reimagine what’s possible in cities.”

Join me for future editions by registering your interest via the button - and remember: “Problems scream - solutions whisper”!

Register your interest

Over the next week, I’ll dive deeper into some of the lessons we covered at the Academy and will also share more urban solutions journalism. Remember that you can pitch me a story by filling out this contributors’ form. I look forward to hearing from you!

“Because everything here is temporary and built on concrete, we use raised beds and moveable structures that can be relocated in Somers Town and beyond when we move on. We also use reclaimed materials, like scaffold boards, skips and fallen trees.”

Run by Global Generation, an educational charity working with local children and young families, residents and businesses in neighbouring boroughs, the goal of projects like this garden is to create healthy, integrated, and environmentally responsible environments. The Story Garden hosts many diverse events including one-off workshops and courses on horticulture, construction, art and design, and volunteering opportunities. Food grown here supports the local food bank as well as residents, who can cultivate and harvest from their own plots.

Since 2018, the Story Garden emerged on its current site, named through a community process to reflect the many stories that get shared and created in the garden. The site’s temporary nature is visible not only in the plants, but also in the modular classroom and meeting spaces. The different voices of local residents, many of them from Bangladesh and Somalia, are everywhere, including in the signposts and the selected plants.

“I can hear the chirping of urban birds over the metallic hum of the overground, heralding the arrival of spring. It feels like a special place, an oasis of hope in a concrete desert. A waste dumping ground, reborn as a garden, a place where plants and children grow together.”

Young person from King’s Cross

What temporary spaces can do

Some version of the Story Garden has been around for 16 years, starting with a moveable vegetable garden built in skips. The “garden of a thousand hands” has moved around King’s Cross several times, growing in scope and scale – always with the mission of connecting people to nature. Originally intended as a three-year project, the lease was extended. Now, it is time to move. The new forever home of the garden will be on York Way, not far from the current site.

During its stay behind the British Library, the Story Garden has offered a green oasis with an orchard, a small oak forest, raised flower beds, and different meeting spaces, to thousands of residents. Workshops, group meals cooked together, youth programmes and Family Saturdays all speak to the success of the programme. In addition, MAKE @ Story Garden has brought local people together with students and staff from Central Saint Martins in creative, collaborative workshops, including clothes-making and climate skills.

The benefits of urban community gardens include boosts for local economies, increased civic engagement, and better wellbeing of residents. The Story Garden has certainly achieved this: Its abundant greenery has offered access to greenery for Somers Town residents, many of whom live in old social housing blocks without gardens or communal space.

Similar temporary projects around the world show what else can happen on vacant land: In India, projects in Warangal and Pimpri Chinchwad are transforming waste land and underused stretches into parks and play spaces, serving densely built communities with little green space. In Paris, Les Grand Voisins illustrated how a large vacant institutional site can be activated with mixed‐uses long before redevelopment begins.

Lessons from meanwhile sites

Despite their promise, meanwhile sites face significant challenges. Their necessary temporariness can weaken community trust. Residents and groups often invest time, energy, and emotion into shaping these spaces, only to see them dismantled when development begins. For gardens, cultural organisations, or local services, the sudden loss can feel like more than just a logistical change: it can erode the social bonds that had been carefully cultivated.

Meanwhile sites can also become entangled in wider debates about urban change. While they inject vitality into high streets or derelict lots, they risk being co-opted as symbols of “revitalisation” that mask longer-term displacement or gentrification. Without long-term guarantees, there is a danger that they serve developers’ interests more than communities’, offering a pleasant moment in time, but little real power over what follows.

This is a challenging problem to solve. But at the same time, meanwhile sites fill an important gap in the urban fabric. For a few years, they provide a meeting point, a garden, or other uses — from artist studios to pop-up shops and community kitchens. They actively reclaim brownfield sites and speak to the idea of using all spaces in cities. The Story Garden shows a way of re-inserting the natural world on top of a paved lot.

Growing community

The British Library plans to extend its site from 2026 to 2032. Unfortunately, key benefits of the garden such as providing food security might get lost – although on its website, the Library promises to include a green space:

“The Story Garden is a direct response to the community’s wish for more green space – feedback that we’ve taken forward into our plans for the extension. So while the existing Story Garden will move at the end of September 2025 to enable construction to start in 2026, we plan to create new green spaces, including a community garden where we’ll continue to grow not only plants and produce but our connections and relationships with local people too.”

While the Story Garden will have a permanent home at the Triangle Site, other meanwhile sites are not that lucky. Yet even in their short lives, they remain resourceful and often wonderful places, including community orchards, gardens, shops and workshops for local artists, or classrooms – showing how cities can make use of empty lots and explore their identity.

Is there a meanwhile site in your city? Share in the comments!

I’m currently taking part in the Training of Trainers programme by the Solutions Journalism Network, which will soon make me a certified trainer. In two weeks, I’ll run the first Urban Solutions Journalism Academy (September 26, 4-6pm UK time) - you can still sign up for free via this button:

Join the Academy

I’ll send out all details on how to join next week.

One of the key lessons in my training is that the best way to learn solutions journalism is to read good examples. Seeing how others frame responses, use evidence, and keep stories grounded in reality is invaluable – especially for those of us writing about cities.

My favourite tool for this is the Solutions Story Tracker®, a curated database with more than 17,000 published stories. You can filter by place, theme, or journalist and find everything from climate adaptation to housing models. In their own words:

Welcome to a curated database of rigorous reporting on responses to social problems.

17,200 stories produced by 9,700 journalists and 2,100 news outlets from 99 countries. The stories cover responses in 199 countries, in 17 languages. This resource is made possible because of a growing movement of journalists who use solutions journalism to illuminate both problems and evidence-based responses to them.

Here’s a search I did on eco-friendly green building responses:

It’s also worth exploring the Impact Tracker, which shows how solutions journalism has influenced debates, policy, and even practice on the ground. It’s a reminder that good reporting doesn’t just inform, it can shape change. For instance:

Have a look around, and if you come across a story that inspires you, whether about your own city or a topic you care about, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Leave a comment

For decades, Olympic architecture was focused on spectacle with grand, single-use buildings. But in recent editions, that has changed – most notably in Paris’s Summer Games 2024, where many of the Olympic structures already existed. Designing for legacy has become the new approach, looking at the heritage that cities keep after the Games such as affordable housing, resilient public spaces, and long-term social value.

Buildings as a natural extension of their surroundings

Colin Koop, of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), a Chicago-based architecture and design firm, is leading the design of the Olympic and Paralympic Village. He frames the project as only the first step in revitalising the former cargo station Scalo di Porta Romana.

In fact, when I spoke to Colin, he focused on the long-term qualities of the new neighbourhood:

“Milan is an amazing and remarkable city with a deep love of design. Already, Porta Romana is a neighbourhood that’s evolving in real time. It is undergoing a radical adjustment. A decade ago, the Prada Foundation was opened here, anchoring a new cultural and residential district. We now want to add buildings that feel like they are a natural extension of their surroundings.”

Where there used to be a massive void at the heart of Porta Romana, there will now be a dynamic new neighbourhood that is open to the surrounding community. From February 6 to 22, 2026, around 1,700 beds will be available for athletes and staff in the Village during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

“We are focusing on what happens beyond the Games. This project gives back to the city by creating beds for students, subsidised to offer lower cost – a form of affordable housing, focused on building community”, Colin says. His office wants to create “a kind of urban porosity” with an active public realm that has the amenities and public spaces that people of all generations want.

Beginning in September 2026, the first new residents will move into Porta Romana. But the project is doing more than just providing housing. It will change Milan’s urban texture. A large park will replace the former railway tracks, connecting two boroughs that used to be separated: a residential area north of the station and a more industrial and commercial one to the South. Of the 190,000 square metres that are available, green spaces will take over half. The rest is for residential use and public spaces.

Investing in the outcomes

The new Olympic and Paralympic Village is an all-electric development that aims to minimise environmental impact. It is largely based on prefabricated mass timber elements. SOM aims to deliver a net-zero ready development with energy generation on the roofs to offset the initial carbon cost of construction.

“We had the option to demolish everything on site, but decided to preserve two of the historic train shed structures.”

That way, SOM was able to work with low embodied carbon. Green spaces, but also design principles for hot summers, such as high albedo rates and deep shadows between the buildings and shaded interior courtyards for hot summer will result in a pleasant temperature difference, where the Olympic and Paralympic Village is a few degrees colder than the rest of the surrounding city.

Currently, there is still a large fence around the development. A transit hub is being set up. Once the Games are over, the fence will be taken away, and after a short conversion period, the development will reopen. The flats in the eight-storey-buildings already have their final furniture that will serve both athletes and students. This is an “outcome investing” approach that has the aim of contributing to a positive social and environmental impact in the community.

Stitching the city back together

Porta Romana is one of seven decommissioned railway yards that Milan aims to regenerate. Like many other cities, the formerly suburban train stops are now in the heart of new neighbourhoods, leaving the question of what to do with these spaces on a modest budget. The challenge is to “stitch the city back together,” as Colin puts it. Many communities have experienced more than 100 years of separation through railway yards – the Olympic and Paralympic Village wants to show how that could be changed.

The speed of the designing and building has been the biggest challenge, according to SOM. Prefabricated technologies were key to quickly build the Village, working with a contractor to develop a unique system. Every column is three storeys tall, every floor slab is pre-cast, every bathroom is prefabricated. That means that they all stack up into a superstructure. “We gave over some of the look and the feel in exchange for lower carbon, safety, and speed of construction”, Colin says.

A soft and careful approach

“We didn’t want to build a gated neighbourhood. Instead, we like the word “porous” with residential areas connected to the pedestrian areas of the neighbourhood, offering rich options of retail, food and beverage, using historic structures and reviving the ground floors of the new buildings.”

SOM is working with Michel Desvigne, a French landscape architect, to make sure that the new neighbourhood integrates well with the rest of the city. He has created the athletic facilities and passive landscapes of the new Olympic and Paralympic Village, as well as a large plaza towards the East interspersed with small spaces for exploration. “We want a feeling of effortless connection to the surroundings”, Colin says.

Lastly, I ask him what he would recommend to other planners who want to regenerate former railway yards.

“It’s an interesting challenge because they appear as blank states, which might give you a sense of absolute freedom. But in reality, what neighbourhoods need are designers that focus on how the disparate pieces of the surrounding community can be stitched back together. That could be an open space strategy, for example. We need a soft, careful analysis of the pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together, which requires a lot of sensitivity – rather than putting a piece of starchitecture in the middle of it all.”