Category: Uncategorised

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).

by Reem Elnady

In the UK, refugee integration is often framed as a set of measurable outcomes—employment, language skills, “shared values.” This turns integration into an abstract checklist of achievements that allow a newcomer to “slot in” to British society. But in my research with Muslim refugee women in Bristol, I found that integration is a spatial, everyday practice, shaped through routine journeys, local services, neighbourly encounters, and the basic question of whether the city feels usable and safe.

Treating Lived Experience as Urban Knowledge

Over the past year, I have worked with Muslim refugee women across Bristol, drawing on sustained engagement with refugee-support communities. The study combines focus groups and in-depth interviews with participatory mapping: women produced cognitive maps of daily routines and emotional maps of places associated with comfort, fear, safety, and exclusion. These methods surface what standard indicators often miss—how urban conditions shape participation, belonging, and the practical possibilities of “integrating”.

Why the neighbourhood matters

Bristol is often celebrated through “City of Sanctuary” narratives. Yet my research shows that inclusion and exclusion are actually lived at smaller scale. For participants daily life is shaped at neighbourhood level; by the streets they can walk comfortably, the services they can reach with children, and the social atmospheres they learn to navigate.

This is not about women lacking interest in the wider city. Rather, it is about how constrains—care responsibilities, limited income, language barriers, and experiences of racism or Islamophobia—compress everyday life into narrow geographies. In these conditions, the neighbourhood becomes the primary site where integration is negotiated.

The Reality of the “Daily Loop”

A key finding is neighbourhood-boundedness: women’s daily mobility often takes the form of repetitive local loops—home, school, nearby shops, and essential services. In the maps women produced, large parts of Bristol appeared as blank space not because they were far away, but because they were difficult to access in practice.

This boundedness is produced through overlapping pressures. It often emerges where gendered caregiving responsibilities intersect with economic precarity and the anticipatory fear of racialised harassment. Travelling across the city requires time, money, and confidence in navigating unfamiliar environments—resources that are unevenly available. For visibly Muslim women, particularly those who wear the veil, entering unfamiliar areas can also carry heightened exposure to scrutiny and harassment. The consequence is straightforward: proximity to the city does not translate into access. For planners, this challenges a persistent assumption—living in the city is not the same as being able to access it.

Sanctuary or Trap?

Many participants lived in migrant-dense neighbourhoods that offered cultural familiarity—halal shops, mosques, multilingual streets, and a reduced sense of being “marked.” In these settings, diversity buffered hyper-visibility and eased everyday navigation. At the same time, women described these neighbourhoods as stigmatised and under-served. They pointed to visible neglect, limited green space, and safety concerns for children, particularly in environments shaped by drugs and antisocial behaviour. Several contrasted their areas with the “other side” of Bristol and described a recurring trade-off: cultural safety often came at the cost of environmental quality. This is a spatial justice issue, not an individual failure to integrate.

Monocultural planning norms and infrastructural exclusion

A further finding concerns infrastructural exclusion: services and spaces that exist formally but are not usable under the conditions of women’s everyday lives. In housing, allocation systems and affordable stock are often organised around an assumed nuclear household, yet many participants live in extended or multigenerational family arrangements. Several women described being placed in undersized, overcrowded flats—not only because of shortage, but because the housing system does not recognise their household structure.

Leisure provision revealed a similar gap. “Women-only” sessions were often described as infrequent or compromised by privacy failures—male lifeguards, overlooked spaces, or glazing—making participation impossible for some women who observe religious modesty. Centralised ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) provision also became difficult to access for neighbourhood-bounded mothers without time, childcare, or affordable transport, limiting language acquisition and reinforcing restricted mobility. The planning implication is clear: inclusion cannot be evaluated by provision alone. It must be judged through usability—who can access a service, under what conditions, and at what cost.

What this means for urban planning and “integration” policy

If integration is lived at the neighbourhood scale, then that is where interventions begin. “Neutral” planning often assumes a default user who is mobile, resourced, and culturally unmarked. For neighbourhood-bounded women, everyday infrastructures—bus stops, libraries, parks, local learning provision—are not minor amenities; they are the frontlines of participation.

My research calls for a shift toward co-production: moving away from symbolic multiculturalism toward gender-responsive, culturally sensitive, place-based planning. Refugee women should be involved in shaping neighbourhood environments as a form of expertise, not token consultation. Integration is not only about refugees adapting to the city; it is also about the city learning to accommodate difference- through design, service geography, and the everyday conditions that make participation possible.

Closing thought

This research does not claim that Bristol is uniquely exclusionary. Rather, it uses Bristol as a critical case to show how urban inequalities are experienced through intersecting identities—and how neighbourhoods become the practical terrain where belonging is negotiated. If we want inclusive cities, we need to start where integration is actually lived: in the neighbourhood streets, services, routines, and micro-publics that shape whether women can move, participate, and feel that the city is also for them.

Reem is a doctoral researcher at UWE. All the images are the property of the author of this blog.

by Katy Karampour

How can historic communities transition to net zero without losing their heritage identity?
This question guided our recent pilot project in Sea Mills, a garden suburb in Bristol, where we explored community-led approaches to sustainability in a conservation area. The project aimed to understand how residents, planners, and heritage professionals can work together to achieve climate goals while preserving the character of historic places.

The project was funded by The British Academy and UWE Bristol’s CATE Public/Community Engagement and Knowledge Exchange Fund.

Why Sea Mills?

Historic environments present unique challenges for decarbonisation. Many homes were built before modern energy standards, making retrofitting complex and costly. Sea Mills, designated as a conservation area, exemplifies these tensions: its urban heritage as an intact example of a Garden Suburb and Bristol’s finest example of planned post-WWI municipal housing (Bristol City Council, 2011) is highly valued. Yet residents face rising energy costs and the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions.

While national policy sets a target for net zero by 2050, Bristol’s local pledge is even more ambitious: net zero by 2030. However, practical solutions for historic communities remain underdeveloped.

What we did?

The project adopted a co-design approach, placing residents at the heart of decision-making. Through two community workshops, we mapped barriers and opportunities for retrofitting in a historic environment where individual homes are not listed, but the neighbourhood’s character is protected under conservation area status.

We explored questions such as:

• What measures are feasible without harming heritage?
• How do residents perceive sustainability and conservation priorities?
• What support do communities need from local authorities and policymakers?

Our participatory methods aimed to ensure inclusivity, capturing diverse voices and lived experiences. This approach fostered trust and generated ideas grounded in local realities rather than top-down assumptions.

Key insights

The Sea Mills Net Zero pilot revealed strong community appetite for sustainability, provided it aligns with heritage values and is supported by clear guidance and resources. Several themes emerged:

Community appetite and engagement: Sea Mills has a strong sense of community and a clear appetite for collective action. Residents are eager to participate in sustainability initiatives, especially when these are locally coordinated and inclusive.

Balancing heritage and sustainability: Residents value the area’s historic character but also want affordable, practical solutions for energy efficiency. This calls for flexible guidance that respects heritage while enabling innovation.

Policy and technical gaps: Current planning frameworks often lack clarity on retrofitting in conservation areas. Residents need clearer advice and support to navigate complex regulations.

Community knowledge matters: Local expertise and social networks are powerful assets. Engaging communities early can uncover creative solutions and build momentum for change.

Trust and collaboration are crucial: Successful transitions depend on strong partnerships between residents, planners, and heritage bodies. Co-design fosters shared ownership and reduces resistance to change.

Looking Ahead

The Sea Mills pilot demonstrates that net zero in historic environments should be approached through collaborative and context-sensitive methods. Our findings will inform future research and policy, with potential to scale up to other conservation areas across the UK. We are now exploring opportunities to deepen this work and invite partners interested in heritage-led climate action to join the conversation.

Read the full report here: Co-designing net zero strategy in historic settings: Pilot study of Sea Mills conservation area in Bristol

Acknowledgements:

Special thanks to Dr Katie McClymont for her mentorship and support throughout this project, and to our passionate research team: Joe Browne, Agnes Atare, Tom O’Keefe, and Thiladhavathy Mylapore Sivakumar.

Thanks also to students in the Grassroots Planning module for helping brainstorm workshop content and format ideas, Pete Insole at Bristol City Council, Sea Mills Community Initiatives, Sea Mills and Coombe Dingle Climate Action Group, and all those who attended our workshops and generously shared their experiences.

by Hannah Hickman

Earlier in the year, an excellent colleague asked if I would present at the Bristol Planning Law and Policy Conference, which was focusing on planning for infrastructure. Without too much arm bending, I said yes – after all, I genuinely enjoy talking about infrastructure – and together we crafted the unnecessarily grand title, “National Infrastructure Planning at a Crossroads: Insights from Research and Education”.

Approaching the event, I started reflecting on my own experiences of teaching about national infrastructure. My perception was that students start planning education with very little prior knowledge of nationally significant infrastructure as an area of policy or practice, but perhaps more significantly, are generally quite sceptical about whether the subject will interest them. Positively, I also sensed that students’ interest tends to increase over time as they gain more understanding of the criticality of infrastructure in the context of key societal challenges, while also seeing intellectual interest in the subject – particularly around democracy and spatial scales of decision-making, accountability and scrutiny, and community engagement.

However, as I returned to the title, I quickly felt that instead of relying solely on my firsthand teaching experience, it would be a good deal more engaging to share some insights from students themselves about their appetite for learning about, or indeed considering, a future career in infrastructure planning.

The Survey

To that end, I surveyed our postgraduate planning students at the University of the West of England – both those studying for the MSc Urban Planning (UP) and those studying for the MSc Planning and Urban Leadership (PUL) – all of whom had at least some exposure to the subject of nationally significant infrastructure planning, depending on their year of study and course.

Whilst not a large sample at 30 students, the results are nevertheless interesting and offer some highly relevant insights for education, professional bodies, and practice.

Prior knowledge: Asked about prior knowledge of nationally significant infrastructure planning as a specific sector of planning activity, 37% of the cohort said yes, 37% said no, and 26% answered ‘vaguely’. Prior knowledge was therefore a little greater than I had anticipated, but still with the majority relatively unaware.

Career awareness: Asked about their awareness of jobs working on NSIPs, whilst 42% of students reported ‘some awareness’ – which was encouraging – 37% of students stated they had ‘no idea’. This was somewhat dispiriting given the taught content on the subject!

Career interest: Finally, students were asked about how interested they might be in a career working on NSIPs. 16% stated they were ‘extremely interested’ and 47% reported ‘some interest’, but 37% reported little or no interest.

The Reasons Behind the Numbers

It is this last question where students were probed for more insight, and the findings are quite relieving.

Those students reporting a lack of interest cited three main reasons: concern about the complexity of the tasks associated with projects of a national scale and the potentially high skill level required; a stated preference for other areas of planning (particularly residential development); and a concern that infrastructure planning is not associated with social value. These reasons are reflected in the student quotes below:

“The extended timescales and volume of technical information, documentation and assessments required is daunting, and could become rather technocratic and separated from the political and value issues of planning”

“I’m used to being on a variety of projects which are more linked to social aspects, so the thought of being on one project for a long time is less appealing. Feels more removed from daily life and the planning issues I’m more interested in”

On the other hand, for those potentially interested in careers in infrastructure planning, the corollary arguments were presented, citing the potentially rewarding nature of complexity; the opportunity to work on projects of national significance; and the potential to deliver positive environmental outcomes via infrastructure:

“I like the idea of working on larger projects that really shape the UK”

“These are key projects that would bring significant impact on the country”

“Complexity and challenge of large projects, and significance of their delivery is interesting”

Whilst these findings reveal at least some enthusiasm for the subject of infrastructure or infrastructure planning careers in the future, they are not emphatically so – a mixed picture has emerged.

Why Does This Matter, and What Might We Do About It?

Given the current policy and practice focus on accelerating the delivery of critical national infrastructure, and the demands this places on the workforce, having a ready supply of future planners interested in this area of practice is going to be important for fulfilling these ambitions. Based on these modest findings, this might prove challenging for industry.

This would suggest the need for some action to increase both the legibility of infrastructure planning and to excite students about the potential intrinsic interests in the field – perhaps addressing some of the misconceptions or indeed highlighting the social and environmental importance of infrastructure investment. To that end, I would tentatively suggest the following three conversations:

For planning professional bodies – should national infrastructure planning become a required learning outcome of accredited planning courses?

For educators – how should we better communicate the social value and intellectual challenges of infrastructure planning, while demystifying the technical complexity?

For practice – what narrative of practice is being presented to future practitioners, and what could industry do to support more future planners via experience and apprenticeships?

The Conference Response

As to how these findings went down at the conference, there was evident surprise at the reticence – perhaps unsurprisingly from those working in infrastructure planning. Their refrain mirrored some of the more positive comments from students: why wouldn’t you want to work on the most complex projects in the national interest?

by Hannah E. McConnell

Great expectations

Like many other PhD students I am sure, I found myself struggling to stay motivated over the doldrum summer months. Campus quietens and academic activities wind down, which is an issue if, like me, you get energy from spending time with people who are enthusiastic about their research. I just couldn’t muster much excitement about my PhD topic.
So I admit that by the time September came round I was glad to be going away to Earthwatch’s Science Camp, and I had high expectations for it. The only things I really knew about the event was that it was a six-day/five-night residential event at an education centre near Oxford, and that the content of those days would be about environment-related research. I had hopes that the event would generate fresh ideas and inspiration. Happily, I can report that I got these in spades!

Translating knowledge with integrity

The days at Science Camp were jam-packed with talks, workshops, activities and reflections, and always getting outside in nature as much as possible if the weather permitted. Each day was centred around a topic including: the role of science in addressing environmental challenges, engaging communities in research, using citizen science and communicating science.

Activities were crafted to be fun, to get us up and moving and interacting with one another, keeping us engaged and making us laugh, even though at times they might be powerful reminders about the current health of the planet and of the urgency that is required to take action. Time was devoted to thinking about environmental inequity, about our privilege as researchers, about valuing indigenous knowledge practices and decolonising research, as well as the importance of community-organised participation and finding solutions to challenges.
There were external speakers every day from a diverse range of organisations, from science journalists to citizen science co-ordinators, offering practical advice about how to engage communities and how to communicate our research. We went on local site visits, used flipcharts and watched TED talks, took part in online quizzes, tried out making videos for social media and even got to do some painting!

We were encouraged to think about the value of storytelling as a medium for conveying our own identity as researchers, as well as storytelling to translate and communicate participant voice and knowledge with integrity. We learned how innovative creative research methods, such as art, photography, and poetry, are not only accessible and low cost, but can be effective and powerful means of sharing participants’ personal stories which can have real positive impact.

The power of community is massive

One of the reasons I think Science Camp was so enjoyable and effective was because of the way it is set up as an immersive context. Hill End Education Centre is situated out in beautiful countryside near Oxford. Dormitories are set out across the site, surrounded by trees and tracks that take you off to unexpected sculptures of tiny mushroom circles. It’s a perfect setting to get better acquainted with green and tiny life forms that make up our natural world, from the gentle old oak trees on site to the gigantic hornets that came buzzing in from their nearby nest. At the beginning of the week, we were given the message that “the power of community is massive”, and so it proved to be. Right from the start we formed a community: sharing dorm rooms, living and eating together. There were over twenty of us; two facilitators as well as a mixture of early career researchers and PGRs originating from Australia, South America, Nigeria, India, Denmark, the UK, and Oman, providing a diversity of experience and knowledge that was incredibly rich.

The event was well organised, and the team worked tirelessly to look after us while we were there. Individual’s faith, prayer and meditation needs were accommodated for, and all food for the week was vegan or vegetarian. Blackberries, damsons and apples were foraged from the land to make huge fruit crumbles enough for everyone, and evenings were spent sitting around the campfire singing, telling stories or jokes, or playing quizzes or games. There was also enough time for solo reflection, naps, for wandering around the grounds and befriending the trees, or cosying up on sofas together enjoying wholesome chats. Some of us are already meeting up with one another after the event to attend conferences and explore potential future collaborations.
I started the week feeling a little lost, but I came away feeling renewed and reinspired. I feel more connected to the natural environment and am buzzing with ideas for my research. I feel very grateful to have had the opportunity and would absolutely recommend Science Camp to future PhD students working in environment-related research.

Photo credits: images from the event (with permission to use).

by Hooman Foroughmand Araabi 

The concept of place lies at the centre of urban design and planning. Traditionally, place has been defined as a specific part of space imbued with social meaning, memories and activities, often public in character and central to civic identity. Despite its centrality, however, the ways in which place is imagined, designed, and produced are frequently constrained by narrow assumptions about its intended users.

Historically, these assumptions have privileged a normative, often able upper-class male subject as the default user of space. While recent decades have seen critical expansions, such as the recognition of women’s spatial experiences and, more recently, questions of race and spatial justice, many identities and embodied realities remain absent from prevailing conceptions of who place is for. The well-intentioned assertion that “place is for everyone” often results in centring a statistically average, fictionalised user, thereby erasing the diverse realities of everyday urban life.

Inclusion Against Oppression

The very notion of inclusion is contested. When framed as assimilation into a pre-existing norm, it assumes that bodies and behaviours can be moulded to fit dominant spatial paradigms, evoking the violent conformity of the Procrustean bed. Such a framing risks transforming inclusion into a subtle form of oppression. By contrast, when inclusion is reconceptualised as an expansion of design thinking to embrace a plurality of lived experiences, arguably the principle underlying the turn to inclusion at the beginning, it opens the possibility of genuine spatial justice. In June 2025, funded by AHRC IAA, a multidisciplinary team of urban designers, academics, third-sector practitioners, and disability advocates convened to explore how placemaking might better include individuals with disabilities. Grounded in principles of co-production, the initiative sought to generate tangible benefits for non-academic stakeholders. The event aimed not only to co-design solutions to pressing challenges but also to establish a shared plan for implementation. During this research event, we employed experiential kits to simulate different bodily conditions, such as restricted mobility or age-related impairments (Figures 1 and 2).

From Patchy Knowledge to Inclusive Practice

A central challenge persists: the legacy of placemaking shaped by limited assumptions has, in many cases, actively contributed to the disabling of particular populations. Designing for those at the “tails” of the normal distribution, those furthest from the statistical average, requires sustained attention to diversity in mobility, sensory experience, and cognitive engagement. Yet scholarship on disability and the built environment remains fragmented, disproportionately focused on transportation systems and interior architecture, with relatively little attention to the public realm and wider urban contexts.

This fragmentation is further compounded by the marginal presence of disability and inclusion within urban design curricula. The gap between academic knowledge and practice is both real and urgent, particularly in the context of an ageing population in the UK. Inclusive design can no longer be treated as a niche concern; it is a societal necessity.

Empathy as a Design Approach

Empathy constitutes a vital, though often overlooked, aspect of (urban) design. In our recent research event, the experiential kits used showcase their importance in advancing this debate. While such tools cannot replicate the lived experience of disability, they operate as powerful catalysts for reflective design thinking. They serve as reminders that placemaking is not merely about metrics or materials; it is fundamentally about care.

Empathy may begin with exposure, but it requires deepening through dialogue and collaboration. Creating opportunities for placemakers to share knowledge, challenge assumptions, and expand their ethical and emotional engagement is not simply desirable; it is essential. To design better places, we must cultivate greater care.

What Comes Next?

Collaboration across professional boundaries, combined with the cultivation of empathy as a design approach, may foster new ways of conceptualising inclusion in placemaking, approaches that more closely align with the genuine incorporation of bodies routinely disabled by the design of public space. Future research must investigate how professionals engage with disability and inclusion and explore how deeper forms of care can be nurtured within the field. Such work has the potential to move practice beyond the superficiality of “tick-box” approaches to accessibility, toward more substantive and effective forms of inclusive urban design.

Figure 1 displays Hooman engaging with the experiential kits.