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Thematic Area: Urban infrastructures

Infrastructure usually refers to the built environment or aspects of our surroundings that are built by humans, that is, distinguished from the natural environment. It includes not only buildings, but the human-made spaces between buildings, such as parks, and the infrastructure that supports human activity such as transportation networks, utilities networks, flood defences, telecommunications, and so on (Design Buildings Wiki).

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Leave No One Behind: Infrastructure and Inclusion

This review outlines ways in which different groups of people might be unintentionally excluded if their needs and livelihoods are not taken into account in infrastructure projects. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the concept of ‘leave no one behind’ capture the desire to ensure people are not excluded as citizens in their society. Some…
  • Publication year: 2018
  • Content Type: Report

Designed to Scale Mass Participation to Build Resilient Neighbourhoods

Small, fragmented, low frequency participation will not transform neighbourhoods. Is local participation at scale possible and does it hold the potential to improve people’s lives and make lasting positive change? The Open Works research project aimed to test if a platform approach could scale up the new type of ‘participation culture’ that has emerged over…
  • Publication year: 2019
  • Content Type: Toolkit

Social Infrastructure and Sustainable Urban Communities

‘Mixed use’ is a solution often used to address (urban) sustainability concerns. The claim is that more compact, high density urban developments that serve a multitude of uses and users can be socially beneficial while being environmentally sound and economically viable. In the case of the Luneside East regeneration project in Lancaster, UK, ‘mixed use’…
  • Publication year: 2012
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Enabling Inclusive Cities Tool Kit for Inclusive Urban Development

This toolkit has been prepared to provide support for the inclusive cities theme.  It presents methods to gather the required information on a particular context and location for IUD; to decide priorities; and to plan, design, and implement inclusive urban projects.  The toolkit presents an opportunity to create a record of the project design process…
  • Publication year: 2017
  • Content Type: Toolkit

Building Urban Safety through Slum Upgrading

Excluded from the city’s opportunities, physically, politically and economically marginalized, slum dwellers are particularly vulnerable to crime and violence. They face an acute risk of becoming victims or offenders and live in a state of constant insecurity. Only a few cities have incorporated a coherent component to prevent crime and mitigate violence in their urban…
  • Publication year: 2011
  • Content Type: Report

Lebanon Cities’ Public Spaces

In Lebanon, the social connections are undeniable and crucial. However, meeting places remain private such as houses, restaurants, malls, and beach resorts. This is mainly due to the shortage of public spaces in Lebanon resulting from lack of planning, regulations and awareness around the right to the city and the importance of public spaces. In…
  • Publication year: 2018
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Topic Guide: Planning for Sustainable and Inclusive Cities in the Global South

This guide explores the poverty and environmental challenges facing cities of the global South, and current thinking on how urban planning and management of the built and natural environment can be harnessed to address these challenges. The Topic Guide is written for DFID staff, but is relevant to all development professionals. It is suitable for…
  • Publication year: 2015
  • Content Type: Report

Social Infrastructure and the Public Life of Cities: Studying Urban Sociality and Public Spaces

Drawing on the arguments of the sociologist Eric Klinenberg, this article develops the concept of “social infrastructure” as a way to research and value these kinds of spaces. Social infrastructure helps in recognising the public dimensions of often overlooked and undervalued spaces. It draws attention to the breadth, depth, and textures of sociality that can…
  • Publication year: 2019
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Exploring the Fourth Environment. An Examination of the Home Range of City and Suburban Teenagers

In this study of a sample of 148 teenagers from metropolitan Toronto, home range is found to be smaller in the city, in lower social classes, and-in the suburbs only-for girls and younger teenagers. Home range is the spatial manifestation of exploring the “fourth environment,” which is globally defined as the environment outside the home,…
  • Publication year: 1983
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Can the Neighborhood Built Environment Make a Difference to Children’s Development? Building the Research Agenda to Create Evidence for Place-Based Children’s Policy

This paper argues the importance of exploring the effect of the neighbourhood built environment on child development as a crucial first step towards informing urban design principle to help reduce developmental vulnerability in children, and set optimal child development trajectories early.
  • Publication year: 2015
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Tools to Act- Year 2 Report for the Every One Every Day Initiative in Barking and Dagenham

The Every One Every Day initiative is grounded in Participatory City’s nine years of deep engagement with those at the forefront of developing ‘participation culture’ around the world. The genesis of the idea has been built on research aimed at developing an approach to fostering more of these new types of inclusive participation projects, seeing…
  • Publication year: 2019
  • Content Type: Toolkit

Special Issue: Child-Friendly Cities

The purpose of this special issue is to draw together strands of the conversations about evidence, policy, guidance, process and best practice; and to help practitioners, researchers and policy makers make the links between the health of the child and the health of the city. The research, ideas and case studies discussed in this special…
  • Publication year: 2019
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Exploring the Methodology of Participatory Design to Create Appropriate Sanitation Technologies in Rural Malawi

The methodologies of demand-led sanitation programmes (including community-led total sanitation [CLTS] and sanitation marketing) encourage participation of users in the design of appropriate sanitation facilities. There has been limited examination of the application of established methodologies in participatory design in the sanitation sector. This paper describes and reflects upon three case studies that applied established…
  • Publication year: 2014
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Change by Design: Building Communities Through Participatory Design

This report documents a two-week action research workshop, Change by Design, undertaken in Nairobi, Kenya from 19th June – 1st July 2011. The workshop was developed and coordinated under the banner of Architecture Sans Frontieres (ASF), in partnership with the Pamoja Trust, a Kenyan NGO, and the Housing Policy Section of UN-HABITAT. The principal focus…
  • Publication year: 2011
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Mass Displacement and the Challenge for Urban Resilience

This report examines all forms of migration: forced and voluntary, domestic and cross-border, and in response to different pressures (particularly disasters and conflict). It focuses on the very large numbers of people moving out of conflict-affected places, across international borders, into urban areas of neighbouring or nearby countries. The report assesses the impact of mass…
  • Publication year: 2017
  • Content Type: Report

The Techniques of Participatory Design for Inclusive Public Space Provision in Kampung Kota of Surakarta

The technique of participatory design is essential for the future development knowledge of architecture to inform the improvement of architectural education and practice in Asia. Therefore to provide of inclusive public spaces for the community, this research article presents a field study of the usage of community participation design method in design and planning to…
  • Publication year: 2018
  • Content Type: Academic paper

A City for All Citizens: Integrating Children and Youth from Marginalized Populations into City Planning

Socially just, intergenerational urban spaces should not only accommodate children and adolescents, but engage them as participants in the planning and design of welcoming spaces. With this goal, city agencies in Boulder, Colorado, the Boulder Valley School District, the Children, Youth and Environments Centre at the University of Colorado, and a number of community organizations…
  • Publication year: 2013
  • Content Type: Academic paper

From Participatory Design to a Listening Infrastructure: A Case of Urban Planning and Participation

In this article, the authors confront challenges faced in public planning projects when the desire to implement participatory design is complicated by the need for mass quantities of data. Using one case of participatory design in urban planning, they suggest that planners struggled to effectively employ participatory design methodology because they neglected to collect the…
  • Publication year: 2016
  • Content Type: Academic paper

Child Friendly Cities and Communities Handbook

The Child Friendly Cities Initiative (CFCI) was launched in 1996 to respond to the challenge of realizing the rights of children in an increasingly urbanized and decentralized world. This Handbook is a succinct summary of the practices, common challenges and lessons learned. It contains a step-by-step guide to establishing a CFCI, which leaves adequate room…
  • Publication year: 2018
  • Content Type: Report

Participatory Design Processes for the Development of Green Areas of Large-Scale Housing: Case Studies from Budapest and Riga

Large housing estates (LHE) found in CEE countries can be seen as a legacy of socialism. Their endurance in these countries is still evident: the future of LHEs is substantially linked to their physical and social characteristics formed during socialism and their decline in status in Hungary and Latvia. The Western European practice of urban…
  • Publication year: 2016
  • Content Type: Academic paper

The State of the World’s Children 2012

The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World examines the situation of children growing up in urban settings and finds that denials of children’s rights to survival, health, nutrition, education and protection are widespread. It sheds light on the scale of these urban inequities and suggests ways to ensure that urban…
  • Publication year: 2012
  • Content Type: Report

Access to Play for Children in Situation of Crisis. Synthesis of Research in Six Countries

Very little evidence exists on children’s play in situations of crisis. The IPA research project aims to fill that gap by conducting empirical research in six locations (India, Japan, Lebanon, Nepal, Thailand and Turkey). IPA APC research questions include: How does crisis affect children’s right to play in everyday life? How do children cope with…
  • Publication year: 2017
  • Content Type: Report

Global Public Space Toolkit: From Global Principles to Local Policies and Practice

The toolkit will be a practical reference for local governments to frame and implement principles, policy recommendations and development initiatives on public space and for central governments to aid their efforts with material support and enabling legislation. It will also serve the purpose of demonstrating the value of the involvement of the citizenry and civil…
  • Publication year: 2016
  • Content Type: Toolkit

Child-Friendly Urban Design. Observations on Public Space from Eindhoven (Nl) and Jerusalem (Il)

This report presents findings on urban design solutions for increasing child-friendliness at the neighbourhood level. It reviews the literature on best practices, analyses indicators on the suitability of the public sphere for young children and their parents, presents empirical data on neighbourhoods in Eindhoven (NL) and Jerusalem (IL), and develops recommendations for better design of…
  • Publication year: 2018
  • Content Type: Report

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DeCID: Co-designing social infrastructure with children affected by displacement is a project led by The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (UCL) and CatalyticAction, and funded by UKRI through the Global Challenges Research Fund.

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