Making room for young women in our cities
What began as a simple question — 'how can the design of urban spaces contribute to the mental health and well-being of teenage girls?' — has since evolved into a methodology shaping projects across our practice.
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Social Impact and Co-creation Lead
Our research project, Urban Minded, began in Copenhagen in 2022 with the aim to challenge and diversify the narratives about young women within the built environment. Rather than generalizing their needs, attention was turned to their rich and nuanced lived experiences to help inform a toolkit to drive inclusive design. Over the course of a year, our team engaged with 25 teenage girls aged 14–16 through walk-and-talk interviews, video diaries, and creative workshops. In collaboration with SDU National Institute of Public Health and funding from the Ramboll Foundation, the findings were distilled into two open-source guides: a Process Guide and a Design Guide.
Urban Minded in practice
Last year, Urban Minded moved to Esbjerg, a port city on Denmark's west coast, with an ambition to take the methodology off the page and into the city itself. Over seven months, our team engaged with more than 50 girls aged 13–15, gathering the kind of insight and perspective that rarely makes it into a design brief. Girls who play in rock bands and girls who go thrifting. Girls who felt the city wasn't really built for them and said simply:
"There needs to be room for us in the city."
Those voices shaped four design strategies around movement and flow, lingering and belonging, play, and affordability that fed directly into the design of a new public garden next to Esbjerg's youth culture house, in collaboration with Catapult Projects and Dorte Westergaard. Built with the help of local girls, the space carries their personality, not an interpretation of it.
"Physical surroundings, including urban spaces, play a significant role in shaping our well-being and our relationships with the city, who uses it, how, and whether they feel they belong there. Yet public spaces frequently fail to consider the perspectives of girls and young women," says Maya Shpiro, Social Impact and Co-creation Lead. "The lived experiences of teenage girls in Esbjerg guide this project. By engaging them in the entire process, we can prioritize their needs and wishes, while also empowering them to feel a sense of ownership over their city."
Phase 2 is now underway. Supported by Villum Foundation and in collaboration with Esbjerg Municipality, KOMPAN, and Plastix, we are redesigning an unused urban space in Esbjerg's city centre. With three of the girls who participated in Phase 1 now part of the project's client group, we plan to integrate play elements that take inspiration from the girls’ experiences and are intentionally suited for playful urban experiences at any age.
“For real, lasting change, we need to build a coalition of change-makers—a movement that champions inclusivity at every level. This project is a good example of what can be ignited when sectors unite with purpose. Using our Urban Minded research framework we can put unheard voices front and center. Why can’t we have a new standard for equity, wellbeing and creativity at the heart of urban life? The impact of this initiative will resonate beyond Esbjerg and should be a model for cities around the world,” says Jakob Strømann-Andersen, Innovation and Sustainability Director
Scalable impact
Urban Minded was always intended to travel. The methodology has continued to inform engagement work on other projects including the new Community Building for the University of the Faroe Islands, where the same ethnographic approach was adapted to understand how students, staff, and neighbours relate to academic space.
By researching, testing and learning, we aim to create scalable models for cities worldwide.
Stay tuned as we continue to bring Urban Minded to life!
"When you’re a kid you’re just following your parents but when you grow up you get to see and know the city more and explore it for yourself."
Teen girl participant
Interview for Urban Minded in Copenhagen
