All Things Urban

One of today’s biggest challenges for cities around the globe is providing safe, accessible and sustainable urban transport for their citizens. Urban Mobility Explained (UMX), the new YouTube channel powered by EIT Urban Mobility, is providing short and easy-to-follow videos that showcase cutting-edge practices and concepts in urban mobility throughout Europe and the world. All Things Urban partnered up with UMX for this article series, so you can get inspired, learn and implement their insights to make our cities better places. This first piece introduces the topic of gender equality in urban mobility planning and what practical steps professionals can take to design cities for all.

Community is the key to most urban planning projects. But how to engage with citizens to make sure their voices are heard and all involved parties – planners, clients, residents – are happy? This article is sponsored by Maptionnaire— a community engagement solution for comprehensive collection, analysis, and reporting of citizens' feedback and ideas for developing urban environments. Maarit Kahila and Anna Broberg, both holding a PhD in urban planning, founded Maptionnaire in 2011, which has since been used in over 40 countries. Maptionnaire believes that successful, resilient, and inclusive planning is achieved only together with residents – because they are the ones who have unique knowledge about their living environments. In this piece, Maarit and Anna explain why community engagement is essential and how Maptionnaire can help you navigate the key tools of efficient community engagement.

As an official media partner for the upcoming CoMotion LA LIVE, All Things Urban spoke with John Rossant, the Founder and CEO of CoMotion and the Founder and Chairman of the NewCities Foundation, about a professional pathway from a journalist to one of the leading experts in urbanism, his opinion on the future of mobility, and the best solutions for cities to recover after the current pandemic.

As an official partner of the Wellbeing Cities Forum, All Things Urban sets off to find out what it takes to put wellbeing at the heart of the cities’ development strategy. In search of the main trends and ideas behind the wellbeing principles, we spoke with Niels Lund, Vice-President at Novo Nordisk and a member of the Advisory Board for the Wellbeing Cities Award that celebrated cities implementing ambitious, inspiring, innovative and inclusive initiatives.

In the run-up to CoMotion LA, we spoke with Greg Lindsay, its director of strategy, as well as a journalist, urbanist and futurist, about his career in urbanism, what brought him to the field and how he envisions the future of cities and urban mobility.