Cities for All: Inclusive Co-creation, Participation and Urban Design

On Wednesday, 11 February, ULALABS hosted the open webinar “Cities for All: Inclusive Co-creation, Participation and Urban Design”, organised within the framework of the Distributed Learning Pilot. The session brought together academics, practitioners and urban innovation actors to reflect on how inclusivity can be meaningfully embedded in urban co-creation and design processes.

The webinar was introduced by Dr. Konstantinos Kourkoutas (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona / ULALABS coordinator), who contextualised the session and discussion within the broader ULALABS project and scpecifically the pilot phase which the project entered this year.

Exploring inclusivity in urban design

The session started featuring diverse perspectives from academia and practice:

• Mafalda Madureira (University of Twente) addressed the role of inclusiveness in planning processes, highlighting the importance of creating institutional conditions and methodologies that enable meaningful participation, particularly for marginalized groups. She also reflected on the use of ICTs in participatory planning and the risks of “false participation” when digital tools are not institutionally embedded.

• Kristiane Marie Lindland (University of Stavanger / NORCE) presented the case of Svankevika, illustrating how bottom-up approaches such as the Utopian Future Workshop can mobilize local stakeholders to co-create alternative urban visions.

• Evelina Faliagka (URBANA, Athens) shared practical experiences in inclusive co-creation, focusing on gender-sensitive urban planning, intergenerational participation and community-based design and their involvement in local and european projects such as Elaborator and GreenInCities.

  
  

• Sara Ortiz Escalante (Col·lectiu Punt 6, Barcelona) contributed insights on feminist urbanism and participatory methodologies, reinforcing the need to integrate lived experiences and everyday care perspectives into urban  Planning. Sara also provided examples of methodological guides that Punt6 has developed over the years and their 20 year experience.

Key reflections from the debate

Following the individual presentation, the roundtable debate, moderated by Begonya Saez (UAB), explored the concept of inclusivity with the participants not as a neutral concept, but as a transformative and political practice. A central theme was the importance of bridging academia, practice, public administration and citizens to ensure that participation processes are structurally embedded in decision-making frameworks rather than remaining symbolic and trapped into existinting power-structures. This perspective was also reflected in the participant-generated definitions of “inclusivity” collected during the session.

Participant-generated definitions of “inclusivity” collected during the session.

Publications and project framework

The webinar also highlighted key ULALABS publications that provide the conceptual and practical foundations for this work:

• Emerging Lab of Labs – Practices and Experiences of European Urban Experimentation Spaces

• Transformative Mutual Learning Communities Roadmap – Learning(s) from the ULALABS Experience)

These publications outline the theoretical framework of the distributed “Lab of Labs” model and capture lessons learned from ULALABS’ implementation across partner regions. A podcast with the Roadmap co-authors will also be released soon.

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Next Pilot Activity

The next webinar in the series, “Tech for All: Emerging Technologies for Inclusive Urban Transformation”, will take place on 3 March (11:30–13:00 CET, online). The session will explore how AI, VR, GIS, IoT testbeds and advanced fabrication technologies are reshaping collaborative urban design and experimentation processes.

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You can consult the presentation from the webinar here:

Cities for All_Inclusive Co-creation, Participation and Urban Design - ULALABS Webinar.pdf

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