Designing for inclusion: how urban planning can make or break a city

Good urban planning creates inclusive spaces for everyone in a city. But COVID-19 has revealed how European cities are plagued by poorly designed neighbourhoods and buildings, thus perpetuating socio-economic inequalities. In Friends of Europe’s Policy Insight debate ‘Designing for inclusion: how urban planning can make or break a city’, held online on 10 November 2020 and co-sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation’s Madrid Office, four experts and an audience discussed how to make urban areas more sustainable, healthy and inclusive.

A painful pandemic

05:40 – “COVID-19 was initially seen as a societal leveller, but this virus has only widened the inequalities that already exist in cities,” said Dharmendra Kanani, Director of Insights at Friends of Europe, and moderator of the event. In lockdown, poorer people may be confined to tower blocks and take public transport to their essential jobs; the middle classes work remotely from comfortable homes and enjoy more green spaces. Kanani was keen to explore ways of designing cities for inclusion, including positive new initiatives across Europe.

06:18 – “This pandemic is a major challenge for the inclusiveness of our cities, but also an opportunity, said Hannah Abdullah, Research Fellow at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). She called for more effective strategies to address the inequalities laid bare by COVID-19, otherwise the virus will result in “more fragmented cities”. CIDOB has produced a report on how cities worldwide are managing the pandemic and its impacts.

12:36 – “COVID has upended our illusions about the functioning of cities,” added Tau Tavengwa, Co-Founder, Curator and Editor of Cityscapes Magazine. He advocated:

• examining why city systems have failed;
• reflecting on ways to enhance inclusivity in urban areas; and
• adopting a “multidimensional approach” before the design starts.

In search of social justice

16:45 – “In Syria’s reconstruction, we don’t talk about social justice and people are not involved in the process. The focus is on the private sector and government partnership, and making profits,” remarked Nour Harastani, Architect, Urban Researcher and Co-Founder of Syrbanism. To ensure local people are more engaged in city development, Syrbanism works with citizens to help them understand complex technical issues and legal policy; this is done on a continual basis. 22:36 – “Our new role as urban planners and architects is to act as mediators between civil society and decision-makers.”

Harastani acknowledged that it is harder for women architects to influence Syria’s new development projects, as men in the profession wield all the power. She contrasted that situation with Berlin, her other business base, a city featuring a better gender balance in employment and “more focus on finding new solutions and more cooperation among all stakeholders” – including women and minorities – during the process of design, decision and construction.

29:08 – “Our philosophy is inclusion based on social security, especially through social housing, which is a human right,” said Kurt Puchinger, Political Advisor to the City of Vienna’s Administrative Group for Housing, Housing Construction, Urban Renewal and Women’s Issues. He noted how ‘social clauses’ have been developed over a century, whereby a minimum of 60% of housing potential is used for social housing, backed by cost and quality requirements.

Thanks to ‘unlimited contracts’ for social housing, which cover almost two-thirds of Vienna’s inhabitants, nobody has been kicked out of their homes because they could not pay rent during this pandemic. For Puchinger, “It’s key to show poorer people that we care for them and not to separate them from richer parts of society.”

The fight for funding

“Public banks are bust, so how can we build back better and achieve more inclusivity, if cities focus on saving jobs and skills?” asked the moderator. An audience participant, Normunds Popens, from the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy, highlighted how the EU is stepping up Cohesion Policy funding for European cities. To get these funds, a city must have an integrated development strategy and involve all stakeholders in the design process. He added that social inclusion and accessibility (helping marginalised groups in a city) are mandatory. Other targeted EU aid includes the Urban Innovative Actions instrument (86 projects funded) and the Union for the Mediterranean.

Popens said the EU wants to “capitalise” on innovative city initiatives. This goal echoed calls from others in the debate for cities to share best practices, such as through the competence centre for social innovation (collaboration on city design solutions), or the Mediterranean Dialogue Project, embracing over 10 regional cities.
Other participants worried that cities may lack the capacity to absorb all this funding from the EU and elsewhere. “Cities must also look at other opportunities to implement the required measures for city development, such as collaboration with other cities or partnering with other stakeholders,” noted Abdullah. She cited the C40 climate network as a leading example of private sector funding for innovative solutions, i.e. “co-producing” with civil society.

Other virtuous city planning projects, all with inclusion at their heart, are in Barcelona (cars directed to the perimeters) and the ‘15-minute city’ concept trialled in Paris and Milan. “Cities have been remarkably shock-absorbent during this pandemic, and many networks and platforms quickly set up structures and are sharing good practices,” explained Abdullah.

Going digital

Does digital help or hinder urban planning practice? To this question, audience member Charles-Pierre Astolfi, Secretary-General of the French Digital Council, responded that digital is chiefly useful: it can help democracy and build new forms of civic engagement, whilst offering improved data analysis.