For women, girls and gender diverse people, the city is a space that was not designed for us. Manijeh Verghese said, we need to adapt to it, rather than have it reflect our needs. As we move through it, we are often filled with fear rather than confidence. We are forced to take the long way around rather than the stra…

With my background in architecture, my approach to better understanding public space is to use a process of exploration, observation and drawing on location, or as it’s called in some forums as “urban sketching”. With observation I try to understand the elements of the built environment which contribute to the v…

Urban Agendas are important guiding tools that frame thinking and point to major directions and changes needed. The dominant planning and city development practices in the 20thcentury resulted in the proliferation of modern cities that brought numerous problems that urban planners and designers are still dealing…

Public participation and the placemaking approach are receiving continuously increasing attention and are therefore likely to become, in a near future, the norm of shaping our cities. They are instruments of local democracy, enabling citizens to stake a claim and exercise their influence on the city, repositioni…

Young people aged 15-24 represent approximately 21% of the global population and increasingly inhabit urban environments. Traditional wellbeing assessment tools typically depend on surveys that use predefined indicators failing to capture emergent, context-specific factors affecting youth navigating complex urba…

The AR July/August issue examines public space; questioning its authenticity and seeking its true beneficiaries. We celebrate the commended projects of the inaugural AR Public awards, which carve new hope into our contested landscape. The inaugural AR Public awards are a celebration of open and accessible public spac…