Gil Penalosa

Petra Marko • Starting with Children: From Everyday Places to Transforming Cities

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:00:00 +0000

‘Starting with Children’ offers a practical way to connect placemaking with deeper systemic change: moving from designing individual places to shaping a more inclusive city for all.

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Adriana Akers and Clara Bitter • Thriving Foodscapes: How urban design shapes what we eat

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

What we eat is shaped by more than personal preference, nutrition knowledge, or price. The design of our neighborhoods—where food is available and visible, how safely and comfortably we can reach it, and whether public spaces support gathering and eating together—also influences our daily food choices.

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Anna Zivarts • When Driving Isn’t an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Zivarts shines a light on the frustrating, dangerous, and sometimes deadly situations that nondrivers face every day and outlines steps to center the voices of nondrivers and make transportation more inclusive. Drawing from both her own experiences as a low-vision, non-driving parent and those of nondrivers across the US, Zivarts amplifies voices rarely heard or acknowledged by the people making decisions about transportation design and funding.

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Krista Nightengale • BUILDING BETTER BLOCKS

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Krista Nightengale, Executive Director of Better Block, discusses how after more than a decade of transforming streets and vacant lots into places people want to spend time, the organization has learned a few things about community engagement, urbanism, and life. This talk explores the lessons, successes, and (a few of the) failures that have shaped Better Block's approach. Along the way, Krista challenges some common assumptions about economic development, walkability, community engagement, and what it really takes to create places people love.

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Jim Burke • The Unexpected Power of Open Streets

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 11 Aug 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Jim focuses on the community building aspect of opening our streets. The programming, mutual aid, cultural celebrations, that then lead to connections, friendships and the “small town vibes” that have resulted from “opening” our streets in the densest city in the US has been something to behold and incredible to experience.

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Doug Gordon & Sarah Goodyear • Imagining a Life After Cars

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Cars as we know them today are unsustainable—but there is hope. Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon, hosts of the podcast The War on Cars and the authors of the bestselling book Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, will unpack the scale of damage that cars cause, the forces that have created our current crisis and are invested in perpetuating it, and the way that the fight for better transportation is deeply linked to the fight for a more equitable and just society.

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Mark Nieuwenhuijsen • Can Public Spaces like Barcelona’s Superblocks Make Cities Healthier?

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 16:00:00 +0000

New urban concepts such as the Barcelona Superblocks, the London low traffic neighbourhood, the Paris 15 Minute city, the Freiburg - Vaugban Car free city or a mixture of these that may go some way in reducing the health burden related to current urban and transport practices. They will reduce air pollution and noise, heat island effects and increase green space and physical activity levels. Particularly the Barcelona Superblock model is promising, but the development in Barcelona itself has come to a standstill. Why, what happened and can it be applied in other cities?

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Dr William Bird and Stephen McPeake • Tech and Games that Create Health

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Intelligent Health’s flagship programme is Beat the Street, which sees communities transformed into a giant game where players achieve points and prizes by walking, wheeling and cycling around their local area. Using gamification, community challenges, and real-world rewards, Civic Dollars has successfully engaged people of all ages and abilities while encouraging healthier lifestyles and stronger social connections.

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Jay Pitter • Black Public Joy: No Permit or Permission Required

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:00:00 +0000

How much safety, belonging and delight do you feel when you walk through a park? Hang out in a coffee shop? Ride the subway to work? Explore a new neighbourhood? Now, how much do you know about how history, urban planning, culture and even your personal upbringing impact those feelings, and overall access, to public joy? For well over a decade, Jay Pitter has been thinking about public space and the ways it can be designed to not only contribute to social equity but also inspire joy for everyone.

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Anna König Jerlmyr, (F) Mayor Stockholm • The Rise of 7000-step city

Gil Peñalosa — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:00:00 +0000

Guest: Anna König Jerlmyr, Former Mayor of Stockholm

Key Takeaways

Movement is a basic determinant of human health that city design can either support or suppress.
The 7000-step city is a design concept that makes movement the default choice in everyday life choices.

Summary

Urban form and built environment shape physical and mental health:
- - Walking is not just about sidewalks, but also about comfort, safety, mixed use, shade, active frontages, places to pause, and public transport integration.
  - Hidden stairs, fast elevators, car-first streets, blank walls, lack of benches, and poor shade make walking seem secondary.
  - Walking, nature, social contact and exploration are factors impacting emotional and social well-being and happiness.
Investment in walkability and greening must not stay concentrated in already advantaged areas but instead be inclusive and equitable.
Small interventions such as benches, stairs, crossings, school-yard improvements, parks and street redesign can all extend healthy years.
Copenhagen, Paris, Bogota, and Singapore are all best-case examples that designed cities around people’s everyday rhythm and capacity to enable walking as a lifestyle choice.

How can Cities apply these learnings?

Strengthen mixed-use neighborhood planning so that people have reasons to walk.
Prioritize neighborhood-scale interventions in places where inactivity, loneliness, heat exposure, and poor access are most severe.
Connect parks and green corridors into a citywide walking network.
Integrate walking into public transport planning so that the first and last parts of a journey are designed as part of the system.

Ideas for future research

How to measure the combined effect of walkability on health, loneliness, and social participation?
How do bench spacing, shade, and resting opportunities affect mobility for older adults?

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