Collective listening as a core capability in planning towards 15-minute suburban cities

Purpose and goal

We are all concerned about mobility, especially within the neighborhoods we live in. And we all have our ideas about how to improve mobility within our neighborhoods. But we don´t have the same ability, social network or resources to find support for our ideas. To accelerate transformation, we need to slow down planning processes and learn to listen to ideas about mobility from people around us. For us, listening involves an iterative process through which one considers mobility in practices, reflects on conflicts between these practices, and considers possible changes.

Expected effects and result

This project tests a framework to strengthen the capacity of civil servants and social entrepreneurs to guide citizens, organizations and institutions through processes of collective listening. We will create guidance materials to discover 15 minute suburbs. Material will be about practice, governance structures, tools, values and strategies. We will create a toolbox for listening to 15 minute suburbs. The tools will show how to work with 15 minutes of radio, 15 minutes of atlas, 15 minutes of walking.

Planned approach and implementation

We will focus on super diverse suburbs and create 3 listening experiments enabled by 3 listening tools (“15 min radio”, “15 min atlas” and “15 min walk”). Experiments will involve different groups of citizens living in the suburbs, officials who work with planning around 15 minutes and decision makers.