City Layers’ Post

Transcript

Navigating the city should be easy for everyone, but for many it's not. Climate change, overcrowding, barriers to mobility and pollution make urban life difficult, especially for vulnerable groups like children, seniors and those with health or functional challenges. These groups make up nearly half of city populations, yet they lack tools to voice their needs or access information vital for their well-being. To tackle this, we developed a new and inclusive method that empowers citizens to map their spatial needs and urban challenges, focusing on accessibility, safety, connectivity, and more. We created a collaborative mapping platform that focuses on subjective community insights to help cities understand the citizens spatial needs. The City Layers platform captures citizens spatial insights and transforms them into layers of urban intelligence. What sets this platform apart is its ability to overlay multiple data layers, creating interactive maps that highlight urban vulnerabilities. The process is quick and engaging. Choose a location, share a photo, evaluate the place, and add improvement ideas, all in seconds. Thanks to Impetus, we've empowered over 300 citizens across 3 European countries using the City Layers platform, from mapping mobility obstacles with the visually impaired to gathering urban insights from high school. The platform has proven valuable in visualizing urban challenges, with a special focus on children. We use drawings and games to make participatory mapping both fun and meaningful. We're especially proud of our collaboration with Kalamata Municipality in Greece, where citizen mapping is used to reimagine the City Park. Partnerships like Community Creates Mobility have enabled expert workshops with researchers, businesses, public sector and vulnerable groups. The result? And accessible city dashboard, turning community insights into real time themed maps. Built on more than 1000 community data entries, these maps assess specific sites and their quality of life and offer clear Rd. maps for urban improvement. By winning the EU Sparks for Climate regional Championship and being selected among Europe's top climate solutions, we became a university spin off on a mission to advance citizen driven spatial planning. Our efforts to bring research closer to the public at the EU Researchers Night in Grass and in different venues in Vienna earned us a spot at the Citizen Science Award 2025. The multidisciplinary Layered City team blends expertise in citizen science, urban planning and spatial data analysis. Together, we're on a mission to build better cities, layer by layer.