Why does a safer city for children mean a better urban environment for all?

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Urbanist – "Why does a safer city for children mean a better urban environment for all?"

Host: Andrew Tuck, Monocle
Date: May 21, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Urbanist delves into the premise that designing safer, more welcoming cities for children ultimately yields more inclusive, vibrant urban environments for people of all ages. The show pivots around the Start With Children summit in Bratislava, with insights from urban experts Melissa and Chris Bruntlett (authors of Women Changing Cities), Petra Marko (Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava), and international perspectives from the World Urban Forum in Baku. Through case studies, advocacy lessons, and global viewpoints, the episode demonstrates how focusing on children’s needs can unlock broader social, physical, and policy improvements in cities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Child’s Perspective — Women’s Leadership in City-Making

• Melissa Bruntlett discusses how women leaders, often as mothers or caregivers, experience cities "at a child scale", identifying barriers in urban design that restrict free movement or independence for children (00:12, 05:22).
• The Bruntletts’ new book, Women Changing Cities, explores 11 case studies (e.g., Montreal, Paris, Tirana, Manila), analyzing how women in leadership are pivotal in making urban environments more accessible, safer, and vibrant—without suggesting that simply electing women guarantees success, but emphasizing the power of diverse decision-making (03:14, 06:25).

Melissa Bruntlett (05:22):
"We plan, design, and make policies in our cities based on our lived experience... many of [the women leaders] are mothers or caregivers, and they've experienced the city at a very small scale, at a child scale, to see where the limits are, how it makes barriers."

• Chris Bruntlett stresses diversity:

"We’re not here to tell you that women do it better. We're here to tell you that more diverse decision-making tables do it better." (06:25)

Translating Inspiration into Action

• The Bruntletts view their book as a "menu" of ideas, not a "copy-paste" manual—encouraging cities to borrow, adapt, and experiment with child-centric solutions from various global contexts (07:46).

Melissa Bruntlett (07:46):
"Use [the case studies] in that perspective, not as a copy paste, but just as a book of ideas... and then figuring out which recipe makes the most sense for your city."

• They emphasize the importance of advocacy and the synergy between top-down leadership and grassroots initiatives in achieving lasting change (10:22).

Memorable Moment:

Chris Bruntlett (10:22):
"The great cities happen at the sweet spot in the middle where there’s top down leadership and also bottom up advocacy... relentless to make change happen."

Bratislava as a Living Case Study

• Both Bruntletts reflect on improvements and ongoing challenges in Bratislava's active transport network, stressing that building a "cycling city" is an incremental, generational effort (11:08).

Chris Bruntlett (11:08):
"It’s very much a work in progress. You don’t build a cycling, livable city overnight. It takes time, it takes decades, it takes generations... these are links in a network and until that network is complete, you’re not going to reach your true potential."

• Melissa Bruntlett underscores the significance of equitably extending infrastructure (e.g., cycle lanes) to peripheral neighborhoods, not just city centers, to combat gentrification and improve access for all (12:01).

Start With Children Summit — Format & Vision

• Petra Marko explains the evolution of Start With Children: a lecture series focusing on child-friendly housing, community engagement, and gender-mainstreamed urban planning for sustainable and inclusive cities (13:19).
• Describes the impact of women leaders such as Ada Colau in Barcelona, their resilience despite backlash, and the transformative effect of diverse leadership teams at municipal levels (15:40, 18:08).

Petra Marko (18:08):
"Women generally go for these roles because they want to make the change and they don’t care whether they are going to be re-elected... Once they have [a seat at the table], it’s really about making the change while you can."

• Bratislava's progress: revitalizing public squares, expanding cycle infrastructure, and scaling up “safe streets” and “school streets” initiatives (17:06).

World Urban Forum — International Perspectives

• Carlotta Rub reports from the World Urban Forum in Baku, highlighting challenges around inadequate housing, climate pressures in cities like Pakistan, and urban transformation stories.

Anna Claudia Rosbach, UN Habitat (22:23):
"Everybody wants to have cities that thrive. Everybody wants to have people housed in a safe manner... I think this wolf is giving hope because we see there’s an alignment in terms of language. We are together, we have the same objectives, same aspirations. Things are moving now."

• Discussion on ‘swimmable cities’—integrating water access as a key urban amenity for health, social resilience, and climate adaptation (26:53).

Matthew Sykes (26:53):
"Swimmability is a key part of the livability of neighbourhoods... as we think about a warming climate... cities need to have swimmable waterways that are safe, healthy, and accessible."

• Example from India: transforming a former slum into thriving community housing by prioritizing communal spaces at a human scale, reinforcing that urban transformation must be rooted in lived experiences (28:31).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• Melissa Bruntlett: "Many of them [women leaders] are mothers or caregivers, and they've experienced the city at a very small scale, at a child scale, to see where the limits are..." (00:12)
• Chris Bruntlett: "We’re not here to tell you that women do it better. We're here to tell you that more diverse decision-making tables do it better." (06:25)
• Melissa Bruntlett: "Use [the case studies]... not as a copy paste, but just as a book of ideas..." (07:46)
• Chris Bruntlett: "The great cities happen at the sweet spot in the middle where there’s top down leadership and also bottom up advocacy..." (10:22)
• Petra Marko: "Women generally go for these roles because they want to make the change and they don’t care whether they are going to be re-elected." (18:08)
• Anna Claudia Rosbach (UN Habitat): "Everybody wants to have cities that thrive. Everybody wants to have people housed in a safe manner..." (22:23)
• Matthew Sykes: "Swimmability is a key part of the livability of neighbourhoods..." (26:53)

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• 00:12–03:14 — Melissa & Chris Bruntlett on why women’s lived experience shapes better cities for kids
• 05:00–07:28 — Applying global case studies and learning from success for local adaptation
• 11:03–12:58 — Observations from Bratislava: Infrastructure progress and social equity
• 13:14–17:06 — Petra Marko on Start With Children evolution, inclusive planning themes, and Bratislava's recent advances
• 21:39–24:05 — World Urban Forum: Global housing crisis, coalition-building, and hopeful urban policy outlook
• 26:53–28:31 — Making cities livable: water access, swimmable infrastructure, and human-centered community design

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Conclusion

The episode makes a compelling case that child-centered urban design catalyzes improvements in safety, health, and equity for all city dwellers. Diverse leadership—particularly from women and caregivers—imbues policy and infrastructure decisions with critical empathy and insight. Cities worldwide can adapt successful elements from global examples, but must do so through local advocacy and context-sensitive experimentation. Ultimately, the future of urbanism depends on creating environments where children, and by extension everyone, can thrive.

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For more insights or to track ongoing conversations, listeners are invited to explore further resources at startwithchildren.com.

Transcript

[Melissa Bruntlett]

Many of them are mothers or their caregivers, and they've experienced the city at a very small scale, at a child scale, to see where the limits are, how it makes barriers, not just for them as caregivers moving around with strollers or bikes or what have you, but even just children enjoying that independence that some of us might have enjoyed when we were children that informs their policy.

[Andrew Tuck]

How are women leaders making cities safer for children and better for everyone? This is the Urbanist Monocle's programme all about the cities we live in. I'm your host, Andrew Tuck. Today we check back in with our friends at Start With Children, the organization arguing that making a better urban environment for children ends up benefiting all citizens. We also head to the World Urban Forum to hear from some of the most interesting speakers and attendees present at the world's premier conference on sustainable urbanization and cities. That's all ahead right here on the Urbanist with me, Andrew Tuck. For the last two years, the Urbanist has made it a point not to miss the Start With Children's Summit, which takes place in Bratislava and and has done so since 2024. The event centers around the idea that when you design and build a city that is better for young people, the result is a place that benefits people of all ages. This year, Start With Children comes in the form of a series of conversations across multiple dates, covering topics such as housing for intergenerational communities, the role of women in changing cities, sustainability, inclusive master planning and and green mobility. Friends of the Urbanists Melissa and Chris Bruntlett were the second guests to speak as part of this series and Monocle's Alexei Korolev was in attendance as they explored how women leaders are reshaping cities to be safer and more welcoming for children, and therefore all of us. Alexei caught up with them after their presentation.

[Alexei Korolev]

So your previous two books were about traffic congestion, cycling, so now this one is women leaders. Is this the natural next step after traffic and cycling?

[Melissa Bruntlett]

Well, I think it was for us. I mean, the first two books focus heavily on the Dutch experience, in part from our first trip there in 2016, our reflections and the lessons that we were learning. And then the second book being very much a reflection of our first year and a lot of those physical, mental and social health benefits that we were experiencing as a family. And we kind of felt that we had written all that we could. There's lots of great stories in the Netherlands, but we were of done telling the Dutch story and in that time we were seeing some great examples of how other Cities are also doing very similar things with the common denominator that women were leading the way. And so that became a very interesting hypothesis to dig into is why is it that cities like Montreal, Paris, Bogota, Tirana, Manila were forging ahead? And what was it about the women that were helping to chart that path that was making it possible?

[Chris Bruntlett]

We always said that we were kind of done writing after two books. We put our hearts and souls into those two publications, and with our day jobs taking over our travel schedules, we didn't have a lot of bandwidth to do this all over again. But, you know, we were approached by Riba Publishing, the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, about the idea of doing a more visual book that would contain 150 or so photographs of our photographs, kind of as an extension of what we were already doing on social media. And the idea became too enticing to be able to travel to these 11 cities around the world to speak with some incredible female leaders and to photograph the transformations that they were leading, the result of which is the pages of women changing cities.

[Alexei Korolev]

11 case studies. Do you have any favorites?

[Melissa Bruntlett]

Everyone asks us this.

[Alexei Korolev]

Well, obviously, that's the obvious question.

[Melissa Bruntlett]

I mean, the thing is that they're all so different. And that was the point is to try to pick cities that were all doing it a little bit differently. You know, having studied the Netherlands and now living there, everyone's like, ah, but that's the Netherlands. We can't do that here. And of course, you know, we know Paris is forging ahead, but you could see many other cities coming up with similar arguments. And so for us, it was try to have different examples of how different places were making it happen. I think there's a lot that really stand out that I find super interesting. But Montreal for me is, you know, I think it's my favorite in that I spent a lot of my life there growing up when I was young. My parents are from there originally. And so to see what has been achieved there in a place that I know, when my parents lived there in the 70s, they cycled, but that sort of started to wane. To see that come back, to see the public spaces being so vibrant and become places that my grandparents who are still alive can enjoy even though they can no longer drive, for me, that's. It always holds a special place in my heart.

[Alexei Korolev]

So we're obviously, we're in Bratislava, and your talk tonight is part of the lecture series Start with Children this year. So the spotlight is on children as well as on Bratislava. Women leaders in cities. How are they better than men in creating a safe space for children, in creating cities for children?

[Melissa Bruntlett]

Yeah, I think at the end of the day, it comes down to something we talked about in curbing traffic and this idea that we plan, design, and make policies in our cities based on our lived experience. And although in some parts of the world we're starting to see more gender parity in terms of the caring role in families, it still sits predominantly with women. And so for those women that are coming up the ranks in leadership, taking on mayoral roles, many of them are mothers or their caregivers, and they've experienced the city at a very small scale, at a child scale, to see where the limits are, how it makes barriers, not just for them as caregivers moving around with strollers or bikes or what have you, but even just children enjoying that independence that maybe some of us might have enjoyed when we were children, that informs their policy. And that's why you see places like Tirana in Albania, really looking at this child focused, child friendly approach. Because we need to be giving our cities just as much to our children as we do to everyone else. And I think women just have an inherent ability to be able to bring that experience in.

[Chris Bruntlett]

Can I make the point, though, that we're not here to tell you that women do it better. We're here to tell you that more diverse decision making tables do it better. And it's right now, men are disproportionately reflected in positions of leadership and decision making. And that reflects in the implicit and explicit biases that they bring into the urban planning process. And so part of our point was a shift closer to parity isn't just fair. It also results in a better process and a better product. When it comes to our cities, we're not here to tell you elect women and your city will be a better place. That's not the case. But there was something that we wanted to investigate that was inherent about the lived experience of a woman that she brings to her job in that position. That was resulting in a breakthrough of the status quo. And by the conclusion of the book, I think we draw some leadership qualities out of that, what we learn. But it's not to say that men can't adapt or already reflect those leadership qualities as well.

[Alexei Korolev]

I mean, those 11 case studies, it's something that has happened already, right? We look at it and we learn from it. How can other cities, including Bratislava, which is trying very hard to make itself more suitable for children, your vision, you know, your book, how can it be put to practice?

[Melissa Bruntlett]

Well, I think looking at what has been achieved in the various countries, contexts around the world and essentially using women changing cities as a bit of a menu of like, okay, well, we're not going to plant all of the trees that they did in Paris, but hey, we can create school streets and so we can do that in some areas. We can maybe take some flavors from Paris and from Barcelona and from Tirana and from Montreal and start to mix them in to create nice school streets. And at the same time we can maybe build out our cycling like they are doing in Manila. Maybe we'll do it as a, you know, an activist role to begin with that can be expanded from there and sort of use it in that perspective, not as a copy paste, but just as a book of ideas of what has been achieved at various levels of permanence versus flexible and then figuring out which recipe makes the most sense for your city and giving it a try. I think, and that's the biggest thing from all of the case studies is giving it a try.

[Alexei Korolev]

But in order for that to work, you know, you need to have a sort of a receptive sense. City hall, like here in Bratislava, that would look at the book and say, okay, hey, let's try some of this. How do you get through to the stubborn ones?

[Chris Bruntlett]

You have to show them the possibilities, I think. And it's, you know, there's this growing thriving online community of people that are sharing their best practices. There are conferences like Start With Children, like the Vela City Conference that are sharing the success stories and the best practices. At the end of the day, as you say, the decision makers at city hall need to decide that this is direction that they want to take. And that starts with just seeing the possibilities because they're probably not necessarily curious or they're busy doing their day to day work that they're not thinking at that horizon or that timeline or that scale.

[Melissa Bruntlett]

I think a lot of the work that we do is also helping advocates understand how to help those decision makers make the difficult choices. And sometimes it's a matter of thinking, okay, well how are we communicating with them? What are we saying? Like this isn't good enough, do better, do better, do better. Or are we saying, hey, what you did here worked really well, Maybe we can try it here, or maybe there's another way that we can go about it and try to work along with them, but then also championing the people that are facing the backlash because we know in cities around the world, as soon as somebody pushes back those politicians that are a bit more fearful of, you know, pushing against what they believe is the status quo are going to back off. And we need to tell those people, no, keep going, we're here. We support you. That silent majority, as you like to call it, Chris, is always there and we need to let them know that they're there supporting these kinds of decisions.

[Chris Bruntlett]

It was very important for us in the book to spotlight not just examples of top down leadership, but also grassroots initiatives like advocates who started a bike lane in Manila or a mobile app in Delhi. That really sparked a conversation and showed what the possibilities are. Because I think the great cities happen at the sweet spot in the middle where there's top down leadership and also bottom up advocacy. That's effective, that's consistent, that is relentless to make change happen. And that's the story we tell of the Netherlands in the 1970s. But it's also now happening in cities around the world in the 2020s. And we just, yeah, we're lucky enough to share their stories and try to amplify them to as many people as possible.

[Alexei Korolev]

So we just had a bike tour around Bradislava. What are your impressions?

[Chris Bruntlett]

I mean, it's very much a work in progress, I think. You don't build a cycling livable city overnight. It takes time, it takes decades, it takes generations. There are pieces of infrastructure they've built that are very, very high quality and they've gotten the details right. At the intersections with the traffic lights, with the even garbage bins that are tilted towards the cyclist.

[Alexei Korolev]

Yeah, but then you turn a corner and there's nothing.

[Chris Bruntlett]

Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing is these are links in a network and until that network is complete, you're not going to reach your true potential. The adage being that the best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time and they are slowly chewing away at that elephant. It's going to take a lot of time and effort. But with the leadership, with the dedicated civil servants, with the advocacy community, I have every confidence that they will get there eventually.

[Melissa Bruntlett]

I think the other really important thing too, and what we've seen, of course, a lot of times we do these tours and we're shown all the wonderful stuff in the city center within, like where it feasibly is often more easier for cities because that's where there's usually more money and more people that are in favor of these kinds of transformations. But to be able to ride out and see the link out to, you know, further afield, as we did just. Yeah, as we did to where, you know, there Is, you know, more of what you would not consider a very. In most other cities, they might not think about putting cycling there, but to connect that cycling to the trams into the city for those people, where, you know, driving would have had to be the default and probably an economic default that some families don't want to see. That they're already putting that in place is huge. And it's when cities ask, well, where do we do we always have this problem with gentrification. Well, you have to build the cycle lanes not just in one spot but in many spaces and then start to create those links. And I see those links here. It was nice to cycle on them.

[Andrew Tuck]

Lexie also had the chance to speak with another friend of the show, Petra Marco, who is the head of the Metropolitan Institute of Bratislava, as well as the driving force behind Start with Children. Let's listen in to some of their conversation this year.

[Alexei Korolev]

Start with Children. You've decided to change the format a little bit. What's the thinking behind it?

[Petra Marko]

We wanted to take a little bit less intensity this year because we have the mayoral election year, we're focusing on getting the work done on the ground very much. And because we opened our architecture center Touba in October last year, we wanted to test a lecture series which is also live streamed so our international audience can tune in. And we're having the second one of those right now, tonight here in Tuba.

[Alexei Korolev]

So what's the topic? What's the theme this year? I mean obviously children.

[Petra Marko]

It's a series of themes. So last year we had an umbrella topic which was all about housing and child friendly housing. But for the lecture series we are taking it one theme at a time. We have started with community housing with Kenny Ash from the UK and we will have Christian Willadsen from Copenhagen who's been at GEL for 20 years and later at BRIC and he will talk about how sustainability can become part of everyday behavior and how can you embed that in master planning and creating mixed use city quarters. Following that we will have Eva Kyle, she's the gender mainstreaming urban planner from Vienna. She has spearheaded gender mainstreaming in the city of Vienna which looks at women's daily patterns and social needs and how we can plan the city according to those patterns and that creates a better city for everyone. And after Eva Kyle we will have Matt and Fiona. They are a London based co design and youth engagement practice and they're working with children and teenagers and I think starting with children and then actually thinking about older children and once they stop going to the playgrounds or the doorstep play and the community courtyard. To where do teenagers feel comfortable in the city? How do we create spaces for them? How do we engage them in conversations about their neighbourhood? And tonight, Chris Bruntlet and Melissa Bruntlet, who are mobility experts and authors of the book Women Changing Cities, all about women mayors and women transport leaders across the world. There are not that many of them, but actually the impact that they're making is great in cities like Barcelona, but also further afield in Manila or in Sydney or in Bogota. So that's really interesting, I think, and timely topic. I just came back from Barcelona on Sunday where I was speaking last week at a transport leaders conference and I went to see the superblogs and I know them inside out from books and I've read all about the theory and how amazing the transformation was. But seeing them in real life and actually experiencing that scale of change where it's not just about a few of those crossings in the Serda plan in Aixample district that have been pedestrianized, but actually between those squares you've got, you know, hundreds of meters of roads which have been part pedestrianized or shared surface and added greenery. And I've seen so many, particularly elderly people who are using these as parks and you can see that the local businesses are as well. So this was actually quite astonishing given how short a space of time politically, Ada Kolau, the former mayor and the deputy mayor, Janet Sands, that they were able to really make that big transformation and put a lot of capital investment. Because it's not just tactical urbanism, it's not just colorful spots and few planters, but many of the superblocks have been transformed permanently. So you have really great, you know, nice detailing, smooth paving and barrier free added furniture and so on.

[Alexei Korolev]

So last time I was here, last time I spoke to you was for the opening of Tuba. What else has changed? How has Bratislava changed since then, since October, since we last spoke?

[Petra Marko]

We are halfway through a big revitalization of a series of public squares linking also to the square in front of the old Market hall, the venue of the Stardust Children Conference. So it's actually a good year to do it if we want to do the conference next year there again and have the nice square there. There's a series of public space projects which are being completed. We've built more cycle paths, we have announced new cohorts of the application program for City for Children. We're already working with 32 primary schools by now. And now we've got another open call and we have already over 20 schools interested. So we want to scale up safe streets around schools and school streets and play streets. So this is an ongoing topic and it's being scaled up. We've made quite big strides in our preparatory work for the new Metropolitan Plan for the City, which is based on six principles which it's going to take too long to describe.

[Chris Bruntlett]

All right.

[Alexei Korolev]

Women changing cities, obviously a big topic. Do you count yourself among those?

[Petra Marko]

Well, I should like to think so. In the future, if I look back, it would be great to be able to say that I've rolled the sleeves up and helped my city. Bratislava is the city where I grew up and where I was born. And after almost 20 years living abroad, I've come back and I had a really great sense of responsibility to bring back some of the experience and what I've learned to my home city. And leading the Metropolitan Institute has been really big learning curve. And we are at the table of making that transformation happening in the city, in urban planning and participation in streetscape revitalization of public spaces. So I was very inspired by the book because it talks about women who've gone through that experience and particularly the political leadership experience, which is, I think, very challenging from women. We know that they get much more scrutinized that they get really hard time for some reasons, many reasons, I think the society is just not prepared. But at the same time they can be a force for change. I think what's inspiring for me from the book is that women generally go for these roles because they want to make the change and they don't care whether they are going to be re elected. And you can really get that sense from the interviews with these 19 women that Melissa and Chris talked to across the world. Perhaps because women waited for so long to get a seat at the table. Once they have it, it's really about making the change while you can, because we know that political cycles change. The story about Angidao going Paris is perhaps the most known, but she has faced fierce criticism and she has withstood it. She's created a city cabinet with 60% women. She even got a fine for that from the government and she probably paid it because if it was the other way around, apparently in French law, there wouldn't have been any fine. So it's really quite astonishing to see how challenging and difficult these roles can be for women. But actually when they surround themselves with the right people, and when you get at governance level, more women and more balanced and more diverse teams, you actually get more balanced and diverse and better solutions because those people bring in different experiences. And it's not just a singular way of looking at things, which I think creates the opportunity to make changes even in difficult circumstances.

[Andrew Tuck]

My thanks to Petra Marko and before that Melissa and Chris Bruntlett as well as Alexei Korolyov for sending us these conversations. You can find out more and register for the conversations still to come in this [e-mail]. The World Urban Forum was established in 2001 by the United nations, and every two years since 2002, the conference has popped up in cities everywhere from Kenya to Canada to Colombia, discussing urbanization and its impact on communities and economies and policies. This year's conference was held in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, and Monocle's senior foreign correspondent Carlos Rebelo was there to take in some of the most interesting conversations from the event, as well as host a few herself. She sent us this report from WF13.

[Carlotta Rub]

There's one figure that has been on everyone's mind here at the World Urban Forum forum in Baku. 2.8 billion. That's the number of people estimated to live in inadequate housing, roughly one in every three humans on Earth. It's clear that housing has become one of the defining economic, social and urban challenges of our time, which perhaps explains why this was a record breaking edition of the gathering. Over 41,000 people went through the gates at the Baku Olympic Stadium, representing a whopping 176 nations. I asked Anna Claudia Rosbach, the executive director of UN Habitat, the organizers of the summit, for her thoughts on this year's edition.

[Anna Claudia Rosbach]

The level of participation, the political side and also technical, is very high. We had for the first time heads of states, 11 at Wolf, 90 ministers and all these roundtables that we are putting together in discussions. We have researchers, academics, we have community leaders, we have local and regional governments, representatives and authorities that are helping to lift the debate. There's a lot of momentum. I believe we are speaking the same language. We all now realize we want the same thing. So everybody wants to have cities that thrive. Everybody wants to have people housed in a safe manner. I think this is a result of large trajectory of wolves and other mechanisms where this global urban community came together. I think being able to build an understanding of things that haven't worked before. We spoke for example, with the IFIs, with the development banks and we realized, yes, indeed, there's less investment towards housing. Yes, we don't have as many bankable projects as we wish, but we also don't have the fund, the Way the funding is designed is also not directed to that. All the speakers, the participants, they are bringing to the table, their practice, their illustrations. And this helps us to see the possibility of change. Because if we only talk aspirational and we don't see things moving, then it's frustrating. And I think this wolf is giving hope because we see there's an alignment in terms of language. We are together, we have the same objectives, same aspirations. Things are moving now.

[Carlotta Rub]

One of the nations that was seeking to connect with international partners was Pakistan. Dr. Mouzadiq Malik is the country's minister for climate change and environmental coordination. And he told me how Pakistani cities are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

[Dr. Mouzadiq Malik]

We're trying to do our best. Our forest cover is not very large. We're trying to grow our forest cover. We're also trying to plug these trees. We're also trying to indigenize trees because initially, many moons ago, we started to plant imported trees and then they were not well suited to our environment and to our culture. Now we are focused on making sure that whatever we are doing, we're doing in a sustainable manner. We're doing in a manner which is more indigenous to that soil, to that land, to those rivers, to that music, to that culture. So it's all coming together slowly. One of our provinces, Punjab, has come up with a very large program in which they have, I think already built about 100,000 affordable houses for lower income people. The government in Sindh, after the flood devastation gave out on a very large scale. Home keys, they're building them up with the assistance of the bank bank and they're giving those keys away to very poor people. So we're doing all of these things, but we have resource limitations. So no matter how much we do, we feel there's a long way to go.

[Carlotta Rub]

Baku is a city that has undergone a remarkable urban transformation. And one of the places where that's most visible is by the boulevard. For Elnur Mehmedov, who has heads the sports department at Azerbaijan's Ministry of Sports, that urban renewal comes hand in hand with trying to get more people to embrace the city's waterways.

[Elnur Mehmedov]

It's about to educate the people, educate the people how to swim. And another point is about the infrastructure. And during the last 30 years in Azerbaijan was built many Olympic complex. And most of them they have the swimming pools. And one of the points is to make for the population reachable, you know, and another point, of course, about to use the open sources, the sea, about the rivers and in this case we're organizing the many events and the many events to attract, to bring the people back to the river, to the sea. And I'm sure that with such kind of process, after the some years you come back to Baku and we will have a chance also to swim in the Bolivar as well.

[Carlotta Rub]

But if there's one person who can explain why swimmability matters in a summit related to housing is Matthew Sykes, the co founder and program director of Swimmable Cities.

[Matthew Sykes]

Swimmability is a key part of the livability of neighbourhoods, places for people to be able to cool off. And being able to swim is one of the great ways to do that. But as we think about a warming climate and the heat waves that and more cities are experiencing, cities need to have swimmable waterways. They need to be safe, healthy and accessible. And unfortunately for many places, that is a barrier. So we're changing this narrative and we're talking about being able to walk, we're talking, being able to cycle. Those aspects about water access for swimming is such a key part of this. So I guess what we're doing is putting this urban swimming infrastructure onto the agenda so that decision makers can now start to put, put that into the program when we start to think about the upstream investments that are going into sewage and stormwater infrastructure, into waterfront developments, renewal projects, green infrastructure like floating wetlands. Now we need to see urban swimming sites as part of that agenda, as part of the normal, everyday urban planning agenda for cities around the world.

[Carlotta Rub]

Alongside Wolf, there are several marquee events and one of them is the UIA Award, organized by the International Union of Architects in partnership with UN Habitat. This is a prize that promotes design excellence and the role architecture has in addressing some of the world's most pressing challenges. After the awards ceremony, I had a chance to catch up with Sandhya Naidu Jarnardahan, who's the managing director of Community Design Agency in India. Her practice won on the adequate, safe and affordable affordable housing category with a project that worked together with the residents to turn a former slum into a thriving neighborhood.

[Sandhya Naidu Jarnardahan]

The way we went through with the reimagination process is we started at the community level. From the very beginning, we were very intentional about ensuring that social spaces were something that would be integrated in the new redevelopment, whether it is through wide corridors in front of the homes or through these courtyards, which have been landscaped and designed very beautifully so people can come together and also like small pockets of spaces in each of the floors where even now when you go visit, you see women just sitting there. You know, relaxing and having conversations after they're done with their household chores. And then in the evening, kids are playing in the corridors because they're wide enough and they're maintained really well. And then to kind of, you know, bring in that human scale, we made sure that even if it's a multi story building and the families are moving into a multi story building from having lived on the ground floor, how do you ensure that the inclusion of planting and the inclusion of bamboo screens and all of that gives that very soft texture? It kind of relates back to how their homes were before with like fabric that is used as screening and, you know, different materiality that comes into play.

[Carlotta Rub]

Another figure that stuck with me this week was this one. The world would need to Deliver Approximately, approximately 96,000 housing units every single day in order to fix this crisis. It's an extremely daunting number. But after a week of being surrounded by people from all over the world working hard to make cities better, I return home inspired and hopeful that this is just the beginning. For Monocle in Baku, I'm Carlotta Rub.

[Andrew Tuck]

That's all for this week's episode of the Urbanist. You can follow us for new editions of the show every week. And you can subscribe to Monocle magazine for reports on all things design, architecture and urbanism too. Just visit monocle.com this episode of the Urbanist was produced and edited by David Stevens. I'm Andrew Tuck. Goodbye and thank you for listening. City lovers.

[Alexei Korolev]

Sa.