Category: Uncategorised

by Hannah Hickman

Between 2019 and 2021, we led a study at the University of the West of England of 500 planning students studying in planning schools across universities in the UK and the Republic of Ireland. This research explored students’ motivations for studying planning and their expectations for future practice and was published in the journal Planning Education and Research (Hickman, McClymont, Melasecchi 2025).

One of the significant findings was that students were overwhelmingly motivated by environmental and social change, while economic change was rarely mentioned. When asked about subjects they most wanted to learn about, “economic development and growth” ranked near the bottom of the list, rather dispiritingly alongside “research”! Of course, this does not mean that students have no interest in economic development, the economy and growth, but these areas are clearly less instinctively interesting to students than other areas of planning.

This relative lack of interest raises important questions.  At a recent panel discussion at the UK and Ireland Planning and Research Conference entitled “the skills gap in planning”, I was asked to reflect on just one of these: “Given how often we hear about viability in UK planning, does this matter?”. I argued that it did, and for three reasons.

Viability is too important to ignore

The first reason is simple: viability  – whether a development is financially deliverable –  has become one of the most influential factors in contemporary planning practice. We are increasingly told by the development industry that development is unviable (Home Builders Federation, 2026), while planning policy places viability at the centre of decision-making. There are thirty-seven mentions of viability in the latest National Planning Policy Framework in England no less!

The consequences are significant. Securing affordable housing, infrastructure and other public benefits depends upon planners being able to critically engage with viability assessments and negotiate effectively through mechanisms such as section 106 agreements. As Bob Colenutt (2020) argues compellingly in The Property Lobby, viability assessments can become part of a negotiating process in which the numbers themselves are contested. His case studies suggest that some local authorities are neither sufficiently equipped nor sufficiently resourced to interrogate claims made by developers. Recent debates around post-consent design renegotiations point to similar concerns over the ability of planners to resist negative changes when faced with the apparently unremitting logic of viability (McClymont, Hickman and Dembski, 2026).

If planners are unable to engage confidently with viability, they risk being unequal players in the “cynical” (Colenutt, 2020) viability negotiation game, less able to shape the development outcomes (social and environmental) that young planners are purportedly most motivated to achieve.

This is about more than viability

The answer is not, however, simply to teach students more about viability.

The second, and perhaps deeper issue is that planners really do need to understand the relationship between planning, the economy and sustainable development (economy being just one of the three pillars of sustainable development alongside environment and society). The argument is not that planners should become neo-liberal market actors, but engagement with how markets operate is fundamental to understanding what planning can and cannot achieve, and central to being able to engage with important questions central to planning as wide as: will data centres deliver economic growth in a way that benefits communities?’; what’s the relationship between infrastructure investment and economic growth? what does planning for net zero (and doing carbon budgeting effectively), mean for prosperity? Therefore, viability needs to be understood as the sharp end of a much larger discussion: what do we mean by growth, what constitutes ‘good’ growth, and who benefits from it? These questions open up important debates about whether economic growth should remain the imperative, or whether we should instead be planning for post-growth or even degrowth (Savini et al., 2022). Planners need enough economic literacy to engage critically with competing visions of the future and help communities navigate what different forms of growth might mean for them.

Producing critical rather than technocratic planners

There is also a broader question about the kind of planner we want to educate.

Planning has become increasingly framed through numbers, calculations and technical assessments. Yet numbers are not neutral. As Layard (2019) and others have argued, the apparent objectivity of technocratic approaches can obscure the political choices embedded within them. Like viability, the solution does not lie in making planners more technocratic. It is to ensure they understand the economic machinery behind the numbers well enough to challenge it. Without that knowledge, planners risk becoming technicians administering someone else’s definition of reality.

Making economic knowledge matter

If planning students are primarily motivated by environmental sustainability and social justice, then perhaps economic knowledge needs to be taught through the lens of these concerns rather than separate to them. The challenge is not simply to make students learn economics; it is to demonstrate that economic literacy is essential to achieving the very outcomes that motivate many people to enter planning in the first place. Understanding viability, markets and development economics is not separate from being an activist planner. Perhaps it is a prerequisite for being an effective one.

References cited in this blog

Colenutt, B. (2020) The Property Lobby. Policy Press.

Hickman, H., McClymont, K. & Melasecchi, S. (2026), “Planners are Society’s Humanisers”: The Expectations and Motivations of 21st Planning Students, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 46(3), pp. 816–832. DOI: https://doi.org /10.1177/0739456X251377998

Home Builders Federation (2026) The Viability Crunch: Analysing the Impact of Increasing Policy, Tax, and Regulatory Pressures on Home Builders in England and Wales. London: Home Builders Federation.

Layard, A. (2019), “Planning by numbers: affordable housing and viability in England,” in Raco, M. & Savini, F. (eds), Planning and Knowledge: How New Forms of Technocracy Are Shaping Contemporary Cities, pp. 213–224. Bristol: Policy Press.

McClymont, K., Hickman, H. and Dembski, S. (2025) ‘Negotiated, approved … ignored? Regulating development after approval in England and Germany’, disP – The Planning Review, 61(4), pp. 40–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/02513625.2025.2632543

Savini, F., Ferreira, A. and von Schönfeld, K.C. (eds.) (2022) Post-Growth Planning: Cities Beyond the Market Economy. Abingdon: Routledge.

Feature image: Planning students working. Image generated using AI.

by Hannah McConnell

Using spider webs to capture environmental DNA and designing plant-based structures to bring nature’s microbial richness indoors: these were some of the fascinating research projects showcased at UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture in London, at the Probiotic Cities Symposium that took place in early September. The event brought together experts from urban design, architecture, microbiology, ecology and public health, to explore how exposure to urban and built environments, including microbes and pollutants, contributes to health and disease. Central to the discussion was the question of how cities might be reimagined to support healthier lives for all. 

The influence of environmental exposures on health interests me because it closely relates to my PhD research: exploring the relationship between urban biodiversity, such as trees and plants in greenspaces like public parks and private gardens, and human mental health. Growing evidence suggests that the soil and air microbiome may be one pathway through which biodiverse environments influence mental health. The human body is increasingly understood to be a biological system consisting of a host and trillions of microorganisms. Importantly, microbes are not “bad”. Many are fundamental to the functioning of ecosystems and human health. So how do we reshape our cities to reflect this interconnectedness, promote biodiversity on the microscopic scale, and improve human health?  

Permanence and impermanence 

Adapting our cities presents both enormous opportunities and significant challenges. For some, i.e. owners and developers, solutions might be found in adaptations to the fabric of buildings. We were shown examples of bamboo or fungus-based biomaterials, designed to promote microbial diversity and allow air flow potentially increasing the circulation of microorganisms in indoor environments. For others, i.e. renters who cannot alter or make changes to buildings themselves, a solution might be found in the design of ‘stuff’ that can be kept in the home and moved around.  

The quality of ‘permanence’ is desirable in building. Humans want buildings that are built for longevity, with minimal maintenance that will last for a long time at low cost. However, if we want to retrofit buildings with biomaterials to promote microbial diversity, we will need to accept that healthier environments must be less permanent. Even man-made materials are not permanent in the strictest sense, but living walls must be tended to and maintained. It introduces a concept of care for the spaces and structures in which we live as well as the ‘stuff’ in them.

Introducing the concept of care 

I was intrigued by this concept of care. In one small study presented, participants were invited to care for a totem-like artefact fashioned from solid wood, with an instruction to mist the artefact once a week over a period of several months with a water spray to promote the growth of ‘beneficial’ microbes. Even though they were told that this process potentially improved the health of indoor environments, some participants found it hard to perceive the artefacts as ‘alive’ and worthy of care, or capable of producing health-promoting benefits. There was no visible change to the object over time – microbes cannot be seen with the naked eye – and benefits that cannot be perceived are hard to appreciate. Does benefit occur even in the absence of care, or does benefit require care to be present? Does perception of ‘aliveness’ matter? 

Beyond a human-centric perspective 

I am reminded of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s beautiful book, ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’, in which she talks about the concept of reciprocity. Drawing on the teachings and stories of her Potawatomi heritage, she emphasises a moral imperative to care for the land and the spaces we inhabit, because they give us life in return and because we are part of the ecosystem. Practically, we can care for the land by tending to the plants that nourish us, being generous with that which we have, and taking no more than we need. I felt her narrative encouraged a sense of the sacred but worry that this aspect could be overlooked. The imperative to care for something only because of what it affords us, through providing ‘ecosystem services’ including food, water and materials for shelter, is a human-centric perspective. In language, even terms like ‘probiotic’ and ‘beneficial’ are human-centric; indicating that desirable microbiota are those which promote human health, where pathogens contribute to disease. Valuing the world based on what it affords humans fails to capture interconnectedness, to our detriment. I wonder if there is potential in the field of microbiome science to move beyond this reductive view. 

Built not just for us 

Perhaps the most radical implication of probiotic cities is not the materials they use or the microbes they cultivate, but the different relationship they invite us to have with the living world. Emerging evidence about the role communities of microscopic organisms play in sustaining life requires us to expand our understanding of what is alive. It requires a shift towards animistic thinking – accepting that there is more than what we can see – to viewing surfaces, objects, even the fabric of buildings as potentially being ‘alive’. I wonder what it would be like if we understood physical space to be alive; if we understood ourselves not as separate from the world around us, but as participants in a living world where matter was just as much alive as we were. How might this influence our actions? How would we move through the world? Perhaps it would be with a little more care.  

By Sara Hayball and Michael Buser

The relationship between ageing, lived experience, and the built environment is increasingly recognised as a critical concern for planners, designers, and public health practitioners. Yet the ways in which places are imagined and designed often continue to reflect narrow assumptions about who uses the space, how they move, and what they need to feel connected, safe, and included. For people living with dementia, these assumptions can translate into environments that unintentionally restrict independence, limit participation, and contribute to social isolation.

Despite growing commitments to inclusive design, many dominant planning frameworks and built environment design responses still centre on an idealised user. This risks overlooking the diverse sensory, emotional, and spatial realities that shape everyday life across the life course. At the World Health Organisation Healthy Cities Conference in Viana do Castelo, Portugal, conversations about healthy ageing, intergenerational connection, and the role of neighbourhoods in supporting wellbeing highlighted the urgent need to rethink how we design places so that older adults, including those living with dementia, are not positioned as passive recipients of care, but as active participants in public life.

Co‑leading a Workshop at the Conference

The question of how people living with dementia participate in the shaping of place remains deeply entangled with broader debates about inclusion, agency, and the politics of representation. Too often, engagement is framed as an invitation to “fit into” pre‑existing spatial norms, implicitly positioning cognitive difference as a deviation to be accommodated rather than a form of knowledge that can actively reshape design practice.

It was within this context that we developed our workshop approach, Engaging People Living with Dementia in Place‑Based Research, at the World Health Organisation Healthy Cities Conference. Sharing insights from our work, shaped directly by people with lived experience of dementia, was both humbling and energising. The enthusiasm, openness, and generosity of participants were accompanied by a shared desire to rethink how cities can support connection, independence, and dignity for people with lived experience of dementia.

In listening to colleagues from across the world, we learned from the initiatives emerging within their own countries, each offering a different way of imagining what healthy, inclusive environments might look like. As part of the workshop discussion, we heard about inspiring programmes such as those in Portugal, where students support older adults with everyday tasks, creating mutually beneficial arrangements that strengthen intergenerational relationships and reframe ageing as a shared social responsibility rather than an individual challenge. These models challenge the assumption that care flows in a single direction and instead emphasise dignity and the everyday infrastructures of social connection. Further inspiring examples include immersive training being used to cultivate empathy towards people living with dementia. By enabling participants to experience the sensory and cognitive challenges that shape daily life, these initiatives move beyond abstract awareness‑raising and invite a deeper, embodied understanding of difference. Such approaches demonstrate how shifts in attitude and perception can complement design interventions, creating the cultural conditions necessary for more inclusive environments.

Learning from the Conference

Alongside presenting our workshop, we had the opportunity to take part in a number of conference presentations and workshops. A central theme was the importance of social connectedness and the role of the built environment in enabling or restricting it. Conversations highlighted how design can either support independence or contribute to isolation, particularly for older adults and people living with dementia. The discussions emphasised the need for people‑centred, integrated approaches that support individuals across the life course, recognising that designing for independence is ultimately designing for everyday life.

We explored how neighbourhood settings, including ideas such as the 15‑minute city, can reduce inequalities by ensuring essential facilities are accessible within a short distance. This aligns closely with the challenges faced by people with dementia, where, in our research, we have heard just how much poor design can lead to a loss of independence and social isolation.

What Comes Next

We were excited to contribute to this collective effort and to continue learning from colleagues working across generations, sectors, and disciplines. The discussions in Viana do Castelo highlighted not only the urgency of designing places that enable connection and independence, but also the transformative potential of research co-designed with those with lived experience of dementia. The next phase of our work will continue to centre their voices, not as contributors on the margins but as essential partners in shaping the environments that support everyday life.

Featured image at the top: Participants at the Workshop Engaging People Living with Dementia in Place‑Based Research, WHO Healthy Cities Conference

by Reem Elnady

Last month, I attended the World Planning Schools Congress in Helsinki to present my PhD research on Muslim refugee women’s everyday experiences of integration in Bristol. A highlight of the trip was a mobile workshop on public libraries, visiting Oodi (Helsinki Central Library) and Sello Library in Espoo. These visits offered a powerful glimpse of what it looks like when a city genuinely invests in social infrastructure – not merely as buildings or services, but as vibrant everyday spaces where people gather, learn, rest, make, and participate in public life.

This visit encouraged me to reflect deeply on the core focus of my PhD: what role do urban environments play in shaping refugee women’s daily experiences of integration?

The Bristol Context: Seeking Urban Presence

My thesis examines how Muslim refugee women negotiate their presence in Bristol through what I call localised social infrastructures – community centres, ESOL classes, women’s groups, and the essential support workers who make these spaces accessible. For many women, these are relational lifelines where isolation is actively interrupted. However, a critical tension exists: these spaces provide essential bonding capital (safety and familiarity) at the expense of bridging connections to wider society, often becoming socially enclosed.

While public libraries did not emerge as a central theme in my Bristol fieldwork, many of the needs the women described resonated strongly with what I observed in offered Oodi and Sello. They highlighted the profound need for safe and welcoming spaces to gather; places for learning, language, confidence, and practical skills; spaces for children and young people; and environments that support both bonding within communities and bridging across difference.

Redefining the Public Library

In Finland, public libraries are framed through a wider civic purpose. The Finnish Act on Public Libraries (2016) identifies libraries as institutions that must promote equal access to education and culture, access to information, reading and literacy, and lifelong learning. Crucially, it also mandates the promotion of active citizenship, democracy, and freedom of expression, stating that these aims are grounded in community, pluralism, and cultural diversity. Walking through Oodi and Sello, I found myself thinking less about libraries as repositories of knowledge and entirely about them as active urban infrastructures designed to support different forms of social life under one roof.

Located beside Citizen Square and facing the Finnish Parliament, Oodi offers a powerful example of how a public library can be imagined as a democratic urban interior. What struck me most was the openness and flexibility of the spaces. Rather than functioning solely as a place to loan books or read, it felt like a bustling civic living room: young people doing homework, children and families using the library as a meeting place, people playing chess, and others simply sitting, resting, or spending time without any obligation to buy spend money.

The library’s spatial organisation also challenges traditional hierarchies of cultural provision. Books and quiet study spaces remain central, but they sit alongside group rooms, public kitchens, gaming spaces, studios, and urban workshops. You do not need personal capital to own a sewing machine, 3D printer, or recording studio; these are freely accessible, shifting the library from a place of reading to one of making and participating.

Sello Library offered a different but equally important example. Located alongside a busy shopping centre in Espoo, it shows how a library can interrupt the commercial logic of the mall by inserting a free, non-commercial public interior into a consumption-based environment. While shopping centres are often treated as public spaces, their publicness is conditional on consumption. Sello provides a non-transactional civic interior where people can gather, rest, play, and use services without spending money. In this sense, the library quietly redefines who has the right to occupy valuable urban space.

 

Rethinking Spaces of Integration

For women in my research—who frequently experience the macro-city through exclusion or conditional welcome, and whose needs are consistently placed last—a free, high-quality public amenity serves as a powerful spatial statement of their right to be in public. Crucially, these libraries suggest a structural solution to the bonding/bridging tension. By offering diverse resources—multilingual story times, youth spaces, and workshops—they organically facilitate cross-cultural encounters structurally blocked elsewhere. Diverse demographics naturally overlap, allowing marginalized individuals to build new connections without losing the safety of familiar networks.

Furthermore, social infrastructure is not just about socialising; it is an incubator for urban survival. In my research, women use community spaces to navigate institutional systems, understand child welfare, and decipher UK life. Rather than forcing refugee women to rely on fragmented, under-resourced voluntary sectors, a public library acting as true social infrastructure helps marginalized residents firmly anchor their everyday integration.

Planning for Everyday Integration

The lesson I took from Helsinki is not that Bristol should simply copy Oodi or Sello. Our urban infrastructures are shaped by different welfare systems, planning cultures, and histories of migration. Rather, the visit helped me ask a question that sits at the very heart of my research: what kinds of everyday spaces make integration liveable?

Integration is heavily shaped by everyday infrastructures that allow civic participation, not just macro-level policies like housing or employment. Social infrastructure is therefore not an optional community benefit; it is the foundational urban condition making presence, recognition, and belonging possible. In a time of budget cuts and austerity where social infrastructures are severely underfunded, perhaps we need to pause and seriously reconsider their profound civic benefits for migrants and refugees’ communities.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to the Centre of Sustainable Planning and Environments (SPE) at UWE Bristol for supporting my attendance at the WPSC 2026, and to the workshop organizers for facilitating such a thoughtful and inspiring experience.

All photos featured in this post were taken during my visit to Helsinki’s Oodi and Sello libraries.

by Dr Yarden Woolf, Prof Issy Bray, and Prof Danni Sinnett

What can a single day of conversations tell us about the streets we live on, and the ones we want to create? At this year’s Festival of Nature, we spent the day listening. Listening to children imagining greener, brighter streets. Listening to adults reflecting on the spaces they move through every day. And listening to the ideas, tensions and aspirations that shape how people experience their local environments.

We began with questions that were intentionally straightforward: How do different types of spaces make you feel? What helps you take environmental action, and what gets in the way? And if you could redesign your street, what would it look like? People responded in different ways, placing votes on posters, sharing reflections in conversation, sitting down to draw and create, or experimenting with a thermal sensor to demonstrate the cooling power of plants and water. What emerged was a blend of numbers and narratives, each helping to make sense of the other.

What makes a space feel “good”?

The responses revealed  clear patterns. Greenspaces, like parks, trees and flowers, were overwhelmingly associated with positive feelings, with 100 out of 108 responses marked as “good”. Blue spaces, such as rivers and canals, followed closely (90 out of 113).

But there were subtle differences. Blue spaces attracted slightly more mixed responses, which was reflected in conversations about contamination and maintenance: “I like rivers and blue spaces but some of them are contaminated”. This points to an important distinction, while blue spaces are highly valued, they may be perceived as more vulnerable than greenspaces, which can influence how they are experienced. Similarly, as people were marking green as “good” they often commented that this was representing their potential, but at the moment they would consider them as having a bad or neutral impact on their wellbeing due to poor maintenance.

Grey spaces, like roads and buildings, told a different story. With only 18 out of 112 responses marked as positive, people’s views were more ambivalent than negative. Rather than rejecting grey infrastructure, many seemed to accept it as necessary, but not something that actively contributes to positive experiences: “We need buildings and roads, I suppose”. At the same time, even greenspaces were not universally experienced as positive, particularly where issues of safety and accessibility came into play: “I don’t always feel safe in the greenspace next to my house”.

Taken together, these insights suggest that it is not just the presence of different types of spaces that matters, but their quality, maintenance, and inclusivity.

Thinking about action: enabled, not just constrained

When we asked people about their views on climate friendly actions, a different pattern emerged. Participants shared nearly twice as many responses about what helps (100) as what gets in the way (58). The most frequently cited enabler, good local spaces, is particularly striking. It reinforces a key message emerging from both the GP4Streets project and our earlier research in Bristol, that the quality of local environments plays a central role in shaping people’s ability to act sustainably and their neighbourhood satisfaction.

Other important enablers included easy options, community support, and clear information, highlighting that people are more likely to act when opportunities are visible, accessible, and socially supported.

This has practical implications. Community-based initiatives, such as ‘Friends of’ groups for local parks, can play a vital role here. Spaces like Gainsborough Square in Lockleaze (Bristol), with community growing and planting initiatives, show how local environments can become hubs for action, supporting not only environmental outcomes, but also education and social connection. Barriers such as lack of time, cost, and uncertainty were still present, but often framed alongside calls for change: “Clean up our water!” and “Engage community in decision making/not for profit making”. Rather than focusing only on constraints, participants were articulating what needs to change, specifically pointing towards collective, place-based solutions.

Designing streets: what children showed us

Children’s designs offered a complementary perspective. Their streets were consistently greener, more colourful, and full of trees, plants, and space for nature, echoing adult comments such as “We need more trees and plants on our streets” and “More space for wildlife to live safely and undisturbed.”
Some children also approached the activity differently, moving beyond the templates or reworking the task entirely. One, for example, designed an indoor space, highlighting the importance of plants inside the home. Together, these contributions add a valuable dimension to the findings, showing how children engage with and reinterpret ideas about streets and environments.

What we take from this

A single day of engagement does not provide definitive answers, but it offers insight into what people value, what they notice, and what they want to change.

Across the activities, common threads emerge. Natural elements are central to positive experiences of place. The quality of local spaces matters for how people engage with environmental action. And when invited into the conversation, people of all ages bring thoughtful, grounded, and often imaginative ideas about how streets could be different. For us, this reinforces the importance of listening as part of planning and research.

We are continuing to reflect on what we heard and saw and will share further insights from the GP4Streets project soon. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who stopped, shared, created, and imagined with us.

Feature image: UWE’s team, Yarden, Issy and Danni (left to right)

Through movement, we explored how spatial codes and social norms shape our feelings, bodies, and presence in the city.

by Elahe Karimnia

On a pleasant day in June 2026, a group of women gathered in Bristol city centre to participate in Be-longing in Making Places, a movement-based workshop exploring belonging, visibility, and inclusion in urban space. Building on an earlier workshop held during International Women’s Day at Bristol City Hall, this second stage moved beyond identifying and imagining places on paper to experiencing the city, its spatial codes, norms, materialities and opportunities through movement.

The aim of this workshop was to explore belongings and solidarities that emerge from embodied experiences and imaginaries of making places.

The workshop forms part of my ongoing interdisciplinary research (between planning, architecture, dance and theatre) investigating how embodied and creative methods can contribute to understanding cities and imagining more inclusive urban futures. Facilitated by Professor and practitioner-researcher Vicky Hunter, the workshop brought together ten participants of different ages, backgrounds, positions, and mobility abilities, united by their lived experiences as women navigating Bristol.

The workshop was grounded in simple but important questions: what can movement reveal about urban life that conventional planning and design methods often overlook? What kind of belongings and solidarities emerge from embodied experiences and imaginaries of making places?

Dancing the City

Urban spaces are not simply designed and used as public space; their publicness is continually reproduced through spatial practices, encounters, negotiations, and appropriations. Through choreographic thinking and movement practices, participants used their bodies as tools for investigating the city, responding individually and collectively to a series of prompts across five locations: Queen Square, Assembly Rooms Lane, Pero’s Bridge, Millennium Square, and Hannover Quay.

Moving through the city revealed both visible and invisible barriers to inclusion. Some were tangible, including temporary restrictions created by events such as the Bristol Garden Comedy Festival in Queen Square and the Festival of Sound around Lloyd’s Amphitheatre. Others were intangible, including concerns surrounding a potential far-right protest near College Green, as well as social norms that codify, regulate, or constrain presence and behaviour in public space.

Together, these experiences highlighted how accessibility, belonging, and inclusion are shaped not only by design, but also by social expectations, perceptions, and the politics of everyday urban life.

Reclaiming Public Space

Through a set of activities, participants shifted their attention away from the expectations associated with the space and towards collective play and movement. This temporary change in focus disrupted habitual ways of occupying public space and, for some, lessened the pressure of being under the male gaze. Moving together fostered trust, connection, and new relationships both with one another and with the space itself.

Participants also appropriated elements of the urban environment, including street art, urban furniture, architectural elements, and urban edges. Through temporary interventions undertaken in pairs, participants challenged the tendency of architecture to prescribe how bodies should move, sit, gather, or behave. Rather than fitting bodies into existing structures, the workshop explored how bodies might temporarily reconfigure the meaning and use of space. At Pero’s Bridge, a site characterised by movement and transition, participants slowed down and paused, attending to qualities and spatial relationships often overlooked in the rhythms of everyday life. The exercise revealed how pace and attention influence our experience of place and demonstrated the value of slowing down as a form of urban inquiry.

Millennium Square offered a different experience. Participants were drawn towards features that encouraged sensory engagement and playfulness, and opportunities for interaction. Yet some resisted the openness and visibility of the main square, seeking instead quieter and less exposed green spaces nearby. These differing responses highlighted the diversity of ways people experience public space and the importance of recognising multiple forms of comfort, visibility, and participation.

Mapping Experiences, Imagining Futures

As a sense of collectiveness developed throughout the day, participants were invited to work in pairs to create short videos exploring visibility, seeing, and being seen in the city. Initial discomfort quickly transformed into laughter, spontaneity, and the sharing of culturally specific spatial practices.

Participants also engaged in a collective act of mapping, documenting spaces, textures, memories, encounters, and emotions. The map evolved throughout the workshop as participants responded to one another’s drawings and reflections, producing a layered representation of their experiences of Bristol. Rather than recording a fixed reality, the mapping process revealed how places are continually made and remade through urban encounters that become past experiences and future imagination.

Throughout the day unexpected encounters and new territories emerged as participants felt the freedom of spatial expressions and the power of spatial imaginaries. Their playful interventions in the city encouraged passers-by such children joining part of the mapping activity, reinforced the relational nature of public space.

What We Learned

Several themes emerged through participants’ reflections.

Moving together allows re-inscribing the city through new perspectives and relationships. Familiar routes became sites of curiosity, while everyday spaces became places of joy, care, and possibility. The significance of visibility and entitlement in public space was captured. Moving slowly through the city, free from responsibilities and everyday pressures, felt almost rebellious; reclaiming time and imagining alternative relationships with urban space.

These reflections suggest that belonging can be a matter of physical access to participate in a society, or to a political community that includes rights and responsibilities; yet the matter for us as planners and designers is about creating conditions for active participation in space (agency) that can be negotiated through spatial practices. Understanding such participations requires approaches that move beyond conventional forms of observation and consultation.

Toward Inclusive Urban Futures

As planners and designers, we often prioritise measurable outcomes and technical solutions. Yet embodied knowledge remains largely overlooked within urban planning and design practice. Movement-based methods offer alternative ways of understanding how cities are experienced, revealing dimensions of urban life that are difficult to capture through traditional forms of engagement. Drawing on feminist approaches to spatial practice, this workshop emphasised attentiveness, patience, experimentation, and joy as legitimate forms of urban inquiry.

The workshop demonstrates the value of interdisciplinary collaboration between choreography, architecture, planning, and urban research in understanding the lived realities of cities. By foregrounding embodied experiences, such approaches can help challenge dominant assumptions about who public spaces are designed for and how more inclusive futures might be imagined.

This workshop contributes to Dancing the Impossible City, a broader research project exploring how embodied and creative practices can deepen understandings of publicness, belonging, and urban futures.

The project was supported by UWE Bristol. Special thanks are due to Reem Elnady, whose care-full collaboration throughout the development, facilitation, and documentation of the workshop was invaluable.

by Sara Melasecchi

Last October 2025, I was awarded some funding as part of the UWE Bristol’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) Rapid Response Fund 2025-2027. Here are some thoughts on my journey with this funding.

This award represented the first time I led a research project; hence, it brought some flexibility and satisfactory results, but also some challenges. I will present both sides to inform the decisions of young researchers in applying for this scheme.

My recently completed PhD study on low-traffic neighbourhoods and the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood (EBLN) investigated these interventions from a human geography lens, understanding how the relationship between space, place and socio-demographic and cultural identity shapes the success of these interventions. Through immersive qualitative analysis, my findings link theoretical debates on just transitions with the lived realities of the community, investigating how class, race, gender, caregiving responsibilities, and disability mediate the experience of the policy.

The IAA Rapid Response Fund directly targets activities to advance the impact of UWE projects and collaboration through, for example, community workshops, an epistemic justice toolkit, and community engagement activities. Having been successful at securing the fund, I had the opportunity of disseminating my research findings, ultimately helping Bristol City Council and other Local Authorities to understand the different experiences within the community and integrate them into policymaking. 

What I found most helpful was the flexibility of the scheme and the support that came from the award. Following my own reflection and sustained engagement with community practitioners over the first few months of this award, the project priorities evolved to better support meaningful impact related to Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) policy in East Bristol and beyond. The revised approach consequently shifted the emphasis away from predefined outputs (such as a toolkit) towards relational, co-produced policy work developed in direct collaboration with practitioners already embedded in the community. As a result, thanks to the AHRC IAA Fund, I could organise a workshop to open a conversation around mobility justice and equity, bringing together approx 18 council officers from different departments together with other sectors’ stakeholders for an interdisciplinary discussion.

Moreover, among other disseminating activities, it also allowed me to develop a policy brief with the help of Luigi Moretti, a PhD student working at UWE Robotics Engineering and Computing for Healthcare (REACH), who is curating the design.

Every project comes with managerial and administrative burdens- yet there are differences from working as a PhD researcher or being a research assistant- here you are the one who is managing the project and needs to take care of the admin. As I already said, it was the first time I was a lead researcher, and the funding allowed me to learn new skills and acquire valuable experience, both in the managerial and in the administrative parts.  On the managerial side, some of the difficulties emerged from the lack of experience in communicating and establishing my role within the project with other stakeholders, which resulted in tensions and difficulties in the workflow. From this, I have learned that there is a need to be clearer from the start and not to fear having conversations about work responsibilities, project dynamics and balancing of powers within a collaboration. On the administrative side, I was very lucky that our department’s Executive Support Assistant for the School Management Team is Karen Duka. She helped me through all the financial and administrative tasks and got me through what I thought would have been impossible. This shows the strength of asking for help and having a good work environment.

In general, I recommend every PhD student writing up their findings to apply for the UWE Bristol’s AHRC IAA Rapid Response Fund 2025-2027. It is a powerful tool to have relevant outputs and increase dissemination potential. However, be prepared to understand what being a research lead means: to know when to assert your responsibility and ask for help.

By Elahe Karimnia

Through this workshop, we aimed to show strings of our thoughts, feelings, doings, and knowings that pass between us and places in the city.

On a warm and bustling International Women’s Day 2026, my research assistant, Reem Elnady, and I joined one of the largest women‑led gatherings in the UK, hosted at Bristol City Hall. Organised by Bristol Women’s Voice, the event brought together more than a thousand participants through talks, exhibitions, and workshops exploring women’s experiences, inequalities, and possibilities for collective futures.

Within this year’s theme—connection and common ground—I curated and co-facilitated a participatory workshop titled: Be-longing in Bristol: Moving, Knowing, and Re-making the City

At its core, the workshop asked a deceptively simple question:

How do women experience belonging in the city through their everyday urban encounters?

Rather than posing this question directly, the workshop was designed to let it emerge through mapping, and shared reflection. In diverse societies, belonging is not a fixed state, but a set of conditions negotiated through encounters. For some, like myself, it involves challenging norms that restrict bodies, and histories that constrain futures. What if belonging is not about rootedness, but about the conditions that allow bodies to be fluid—unfixed, relational, leaning toward others and toward the city?

Urban encounters, practical engagement with a place, shape relations between bodies, places, politics, and meanings. My research explores these relations through choreographic thinking and practice: understanding how our bodies read the grammar of the city, and how we co‑inhabit other bodies, ideas, ideologies, and identities. These encounters—whether fleeting, intimate, conflicting, conscious or unconscious—reveal the conditions through which belonging is constructed.

The workshop unfolded in two interconnected parts.

Participatory Mapping

In the public exhibition space, we invited women to engage with a large map of Bristol using pins and threads. Our aim was to explore the situations and conditions that relate people to places. So, we asked participants to identify places they enjoy being in or moving through, and places they avoid in their everyday routines.

This was not simply data collection. It was an invitation to storytelling. Participants shared the “whys” behind their choices, pushing pins into the map to mark their experiences and connecting places with threads of their choice. As women described their encounters with the city—joyful, anxious, nostalgic, or tense—the map became a collage of affective geographies: anxious zones, no‑go zones, comfort zones, and spaces of possibility.

We then asked a more imaginative question: Where in Bristol would you “gift a dance”?

For some, “dance” initially suggested professional performance. However, based on my previous collaboration with Theatrum Mundi (Choreographing the City research project) and ongoing interdisciplinary research with Dance scholar Dr Adesola Akinleye, we reframed dance for participants as an embodied journey of sensing the city: attuning to movement, stillness, and feeling. Once understood this way, participants engaged enthusiastically, reimagining their relationship to the city. And some already enjoy dancing in the city, as they claimed: “Dancing is easier than walking. Music is easier than language.” More than 130 spatial narratives were mapped; many women returned, adding new pins for gifting the dance to the city.

Dialogue and Embodied Reflection

In the afternoon, in a small room at City Hall, filled with 19 participants, including two men, we shifted from mapping to dialogic and embodied exercises [we limited the narratives to women participants].

As belonging in this research is framed beyond representation, participants were asked to self‑identify in the ways they wished to be remembered. Then we aim to shift the dynamic from individual narrative to collective by asking participants to complete the phrase: “I am… when I experience the city” and pass it to the person next to them. As participants repeated the exercise a few times, they began listening and responding to one another, recognising shared experiences, offering support, and at times proposing solutions. The room transformed from a table surrounded by individuals into a space of relational lines between shared ideas and knowings of the city.

Participants were then invited to sensory imagination of “rest” in ideal places where they felt comfortable; places to pause, places to be still. They then mapped out these desired places reflected collectively the gap between their spatial imagination and current experience of stillness in Bristol.

Based on the two activities of the day, several patterns were immediately visible. We found various and sometimes conflicting spatial narratives, but also shared experiences and emotions related to specific urban encounters in highly commercial spaces, abandoned spaces and green spaces in the city. We reflected on a couple of themes, to be further explored in the next stage of this research.

The agency of mapping, the power of listening

The act of placing pins, choosing thread colours, and drawing connections allowed participants to become visibly part of knowledge production. The map was not a representation of the city – it became a site of negotiation, encounter, and storytelling. Women got engaged with the map in close proximity, created a space of togetherness. Powerful moments of exchange even emerged. In one instance, a participant described avoiding her favourite park at night; another immediately mentioned someone else who lived in the area and suggested they go together. Given the tight schedule and the density of the event, we could not delve deeply into every story or fully unpack the impact of city‑making practices on these experiences. However, we tried not to be outside observers and instead becoming part of the unfolding narrative.

What Comes Next: Moving into the City

This workshop was the first phase of the research project Dancing the Impossible City. The second workshop, currently in development, will apply choreographic thinking and practice to explore places in Bristol that participants identified as needing healing.

In the current dark times, we need hope but not as an imaginary, as an obligation. “That the end of the usual is not catastrophe, but a stranger choreography where every collapse composes a new rhythm, a fugitive score for those willing to dance offbeat.” (Bayo Akomolafe. Sanctuary is not a place. June 2025).

by Amir Gohar

Maadi, located in southern Cairo, has long been known as an upscale residential district distinguished by quiet streets, dense vegetation, and expansive gardens. Established in the early twentieth century, it was planned as a low-density suburb of spacious villas set within generous green plots. This design produced a distinctive aesthetic and attracted embassies, international schools, expatriates, and political and cultural elites, fostering a socially diverse and cosmopolitan community.

From the outset, Maadi embodied principles akin to the garden city philosophy, emphasizing balance between built form and nature, low density, and high-quality public space. Villas were integrated into the broader landscape through low boundary walls, extensive gardens, and tree-lined streets. The organic overlap between private and public greenery created shaded pedestrian corridors that encouraged walking and outdoor life. Planning respected natural topography, preserving slopes and vegetation patterns. The result was a harmonious environment that reinforced residents’ sense of belonging and daily engagement with nature.

Maadi’s relationship with the Nile was central to its urban identity. The river functioned not merely as scenery but as an extension of everyday life, connected through promenades, open views, and recreational use. The ‘Connecting Cairo to the Nile’ workshop identified Maadi as one of four key zones shaping Cairo’s riverfront relationship (Kondolf et al., 2011). Historically, the corniche offered accessible public space, minimal barriers, and unobstructed views, encouraging strolling, exercise, and social interaction. Vegetation, including ficus, jacaranda, palms, hibiscus, and duranta, reinforced this identity, while nearby Wadi Degla provided ecological continuity through desert biodiversity.

Scholars have documented Maadi’s development and transformation. DeVries (2021) traces its formation and early suburban vision, while Badawy, Abdel-Salam, and Ayad (2015) analyse the broader effects of urban planning policies on socio-spatial divisions in Cairo, including Maadi. Together, these works frame the district’s evolution within larger urban and political dynamics.

From a Green Suburb to a Concrete City

Since the 1990s, Maadi has undergone rapid urban transformation. Market-driven development, rising land values, and weak long-term environmental planning have reshaped its character. Villas surrounded by gardens have been demolished and replaced with multi-story apartment buildings, often constructed without setbacks. This shift has significantly reduced private green spaces and severed their visual and ecological connection to public streets.

The Nile waterfront exemplifies this transition. In the 1970s, built structures occupied only a small percentage of the corniche, leaving most of the riverfront open and accessible. Today, a large proportion of the same stretch is occupied by commercial or enclosed uses. Mini-markets, restaurants, cafés, wedding halls, and institutional facilities increasingly dominate the frontage, frequently obstructing visual and physical access to the river. What was once a continuous public promenade has become fragmented and partially privatized.

Walkability has deteriorated. Sidewalks vary in width and quality, are often encroached upon by parked vehicles, and in some areas are reduced to narrow passageways. Inconsistent design and poor maintenance disrupt the pedestrian experience and weaken the connection between residents and the river. The corniche has shifted from a coherent public space to a disjointed strip shaped largely by commercial priorities.

Access to the Nile is now stratified. Some areas require entrance fees; others require mandatory consumption at cafés or restaurants. Private clubs restrict entry to members, while certain institutional facilities limit access to affiliated personnel. Only a small portion of the riverfront remains freely accessible without financial or institutional conditions. This pattern reflects what Harvey (2008) describes as the restructuring of urban space in ways that constrain the ‘right to the city’, reinforcing socio-spatial inequality. Figure 1 displays a map that shows how the land use of the water bank has changed from the 1970 to date.

Similarly, the map in figure 2 illustrates the extent of accessibility along the riverfront, categorized as follows:

• Public: Areas that are freely accessible to everyone.
• Semi-public: Spaces that require a ticket purchase or a minimum fee for entry.
• Semi-private: Areas that are accessible through membership.
• Private: Stretches that are exclusively accessible to their respective owners.

Green cover has also declined over the years. The demolition of historic villas eliminated mature trees and gardens that once extended into public space, forming continuous canopy corridors. While some streets, such as Street 5 and El-Nahda Street, retain partial tree canopies, these are now exceptions rather than the norm. The reduction of vegetation not only alters aesthetics but also affects microclimate, biodiversity, and pedestrian comfort.

Civil society initiatives have emerged in response. Local groups advocate for tree preservation, organize clean-up campaigns, and document environmental violations. These grassroots efforts seek to defend what remains of Maadi’s ecological identity and to reassert community participation in shaping the district’s future.

Future Prospects

Maadi’s transformation raises fundamental questions about its identity. Once a model of suburban balance between urban form and nature, it increasingly reflects broader metropolitan trends toward densification, privatization, and profit-oriented land use. Public space has been fragmented, and the relationship with the Nile has shifted from open engagement to conditional access.

Reversing this trajectory requires coordinated action. Protecting remaining mature trees and preventing further loss of green cover must become planning priorities, not aesthetic afterthoughts. Clear urban and environmental policies, coupled with effective monitoring mechanisms, are necessary to counter unchecked real estate pressures. Community-led initiatives should be integrated into formal planning processes rather than treated as peripheral activism.

Safeguarding and rehabilitating the Nile waterfront is equally critical. Restoring accessible, continuous public space along the river would help rebuild Maadi’s historical relationship with nature and reinforce social equity. Design interventions should prioritize walkability, shade, and ecological sustainability, reconnecting fragmented green spaces into an integrated urban network.

Ultimately, Maadi’s future depends on reestablishing balance between development and environmental stewardship. Its history demonstrates the viability of a human-cantered, nature-integrated urban model. Whether it continues toward concrete density or reclaims aspects of its garden-suburb heritage will depend on policy choices, civic engagement, and a renewed commitment to the right of residents to access, shape, and inhabit their city.

This blog is based on Amir’s book chapter ‘Maadi: From Landscape City to Concrete City’ in Maadi: On the History and Culture of a Green Suburb, ed. Nezar AlSayyad, Professor Emeritus at UC Berkeley and sponsored by: National Organisation of Urban Harmony (NOUH)

Feature image: Book cover of Maadi: On the History and Culture of a Green Suburb

References cited in this blog

Badawy, A., Abdel-Salam, H. and Ayad, H., 2015. Investigating the impact of urban planning policies on urban division in Cairo, Egypt: The case of El-Maadi and Dar El-Salam. Alexandria Engineering Journal, 54(4).

DeVries, A., 2021. Maadi: The Making and Unmaking of a Cairo Suburb, 1878–1962. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press.

Gohar, A., 2018. Greening and Opening the Public Space of the Nile Banks: A Demonstration Case Study in Maadi, Cairo. The Journal of Public Space, 3(1).

Harvey, D., 2008. The Right to the City. New Left Review, 53, pp.23–40. Kondolf, G.M. et al., 2011. Connecting Cairo to the Nile: Renewing Life and Heritage on the River. Working Paper No. 2011-06. Berkeley, CA: University of California, Institute of Urban and Regional Development (IURD).