Reflections from CityMove Community of Practice from Steve Rose, Head of Insight
What happens when urban planners, public health leaders, climate advocates, and community champions from across Europe and Latin America come together in one room (and, at times, one park bench)?
You get a vibrant, cross-sector exchange like the recent CityMove Community of Practice gathering – an energising blend of collaboration, challenge, and shared ambition for healthier, more active cities.
Held at Erasmus University Rotterdam on 2 July, the event brought together professionals from Slovenia to Colombia, Estonia to England, all united by a common goal: making cities better places to move, play, live, and thrive.
The sessions explored familiar themes — physical activity, public space, and policy realities — but through fresh, intersectional lenses. We kicked off with personal reflections on our roles and challenges in promoting movement in cities. Using the CityMove Theory of Change as a touchpoint, we mapped our priorities and perspectives, revealing both overlaps and tensions in our work.
A key highlight was a deep dive into what and how we measure success. Can we move beyond narrow health indicators to capture lived experience, citizen voice, and systemic change? A proposed indicator framework sparked lively debate, particularly as we tested it in real-life Rotterdam scenarios. An unexpected outdoor lunch came with a surprise activity: testing a specially designed all-abilities exercise bench by IPITUP, reminding us how inclusive design invites everyone to move.
We wrestled, too, with the realities of cross-sector policy work — how decisions get made, and by whom. Tools like MCDA (Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis) offered potential, but perhaps more powerful was the recurring theme of health creation: a unifying, relational goal that transcends silos and invites co-creation with communities. This was a central message in my own contribution — that acting with rather than for communities creates deeper, more sustainable change.
Our citizen engagement workshop with Healthy Cities was a standout. Comparing citizen input with hard urban data revealed critical gaps — and unexpected alignments. It reinforced the interactive listening as a mechanism to measure but also as an active ingredient of change.
The three big takeaways:
- Reframe conflict as difference. Not everyone will agree — and that’s okay. A shared goal (like healthier cities) can hold many voices without needing full consensus.
- Start with strengths. Asset-based approaches open up space for creativity and connection, rather than reinforcing scarcity and problem narratives.
- Redefine success. Health is more than what we typically measure. It’s relational, experiential, and often invisible in traditional indicators. We also need not define an end outcome or output but instead focus on the ways of working and conditions we create that foster the necessary change in whatever direction the energy of the community will then take it towards their own version of health creation.
CityMove continues to be a powerful platform for learning and collaboration. This gathering left us not only with new tools and ideas but also with renewed commitment: to build bridges, share power, and move our cities — and ourselves — toward healthier futures.
