Our three goals

Developing equitable, healthy + sustainable cities bit by bit

At Incremental Urbanism, we’re committed to actively creating the future we want to live in. We’re continually building upon our understanding of life, form, and shared urban systems, to deliver even greater impact on equity, health, and sustainability.

We want a future where people have control over their health and where inclusive neighbourhoods and places are designed to make it easy for people to take meaningful climate action. We recognise the role of design, time and space in making cities more liveable.

Equity

We design for equity by:

  • Ensuring accessibility, inclusion, upward social mobility, and diversity by engaging with people and co-creating designs and strategies.

  • Connecting people to opportunities and programmed design solutions and homes that are affordable.

  • Making people visible through incisive research and thereby enabling better strategies, planning, design, and decision making.

  • Applying the latest ideas and technologies to address issues previously unexplored.

Healthy

We design for health & well-being by:

  • Meeting people’s basic human needs – like food, air quality, comfort and other people – by continuing to develop our knowledge on behaviour, eye level experience and the built environment.

  • Enabling active lifestyles by designing for accessibility for all.

  • Promoting and designing for active mobility as the primary transport choice in combination with public transport.

Sustainability

We design for sustainability by:

  • Delivering urban strategies that offer high-density, mixed-use, urban neighbourhoods that are liveable, sociable, sustainable and adaptable.

  • Thinking holistically about mobility and making low-carbon mobility systems the easiest choice for all people.

  • Developing climate resilient solutions and increasing bio-diversity through design.

  • Enabling circularity at a city level and retrofitting of sub-urban and urban areas.

Our global goals

Our commitment to health, climate action, and equity are aligned with the UNSDGs, especially goal 3 and 7 which are related to health and equity. Our work is focused on places, neighbourhoods and cities encompassed by goal 11, and as a small but networked organization we work in partnership in alignment with goal 17.

UNSDG 11, 12 & 13
We work in cities and communities globally. We work to make places more sustainable and resilient. We take climate action seriously and deliver innovation of the systems we share, be it mobility, food or streets by focusing on behavior change.

UNSDG 3 & 10
We work for people, for making cities and communities for people. This is why equality and the health and well-being of people is central to our work as urban strategists, thought leaders and designers.

UNSDG 17
We are a highly networked organization and cannot make change happen at a quick enough pace on our own, and with a deep enough impact. We work with others in partnership. Above all, we work with our clients to make them able to meet the ambitious goals set out by the UN to enable a holistic and integrated approach to change.

Our working approach

Incremental Urbanism is an architecture, urban design and research practice offering expertise in the fields of architecture, urban design, and participatory planning. We address local needs with a people-focused approach, utilising empirical research and analysis to understand how the built environment can promote well-being. We apply this analysis to strategic planning and human-centred design to empower citizens, decision-makers, and organisations.

The study of the change of people’s well-being over time is at the foundation for our strategic planning and design. Our approach is iterative and holistic.