HER City is one example of how public joy can function as powerful advocacy in action—and it’s a project close to my heart, rooted in my long-standing work around gender-responsive design and safety. Led by international placemaker and author Jay Pitter, HER City is a joyful advocacy initiative exploring how urban design and social attitudes shape women’s safety, leisure, and play in public space. Drawing on Jay’s gender-responsive placemaking expertise—including her keynote for UN Women’s Safe Cities and Public Spaces Global Leaders’ Forum—this three-part engagement invites women to reflect, reimagine, and reclaim public space together.
The initiative includes:
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An illuminating presentation tracing the history of urban design, gendered space, and strategies for creating more inclusive environments.
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A women’s storytelling circle and guided public space audit focused on safety, leisure, and joy.
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A women’s public space playdate—complete with games, songs, and collaborative action boards—where participants generate tangible ideas for transforming public space into a site of abundance and delight.
At its heart, HER City reframes public space advocacy as joyful, participatory, and deeply political. By centering women’s experiences and imaginations, the project demonstrates how cultivating joy—not just mitigating harm — can reshape the built environment and allow all women to seize the full abundance of the city.
Public Joy Advocacy In Action
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Public Joy Site & Policy Audits
Assessing public spaces, policies, and programs through a public-joy lens to identify barriers and generate actionable strategies for inclusion, delight, and belonging.
Public Joy–Centered Planning & Development
Creating visionary urban, cultural, and mobility plans that embed joy as a foundational outcome — shaping everything from streetscapes and parks to cultural districts and citywide strategies.
Public Joy Governance Frameworks
Advising governments, municipalities, and institutions on how to embed joy into governance structures so it becomes a guiding civic principle shaping decisions, budgets, and policies.
Public Joy Storytelling & Cultural Memory
Honouring community histories and lived experiences through storytelling, art, and collective memory —grounding joy in identity and place.
Public Joy Activations & Advocacy
Designing and leading participatory activations—from joyful pageants to cultural campaigns—that animate public spaces and shift policy conversations toward belonging and delight.
Public Joy as Social Prescription & Cohesion
Positioning joy as part of public health and social cohesion strategies—connecting it to wellbeing, mental health, and collective resilience.
Public Joy Inquiry & Knowledge Transfer
Expanding the field of public joy through research, teaching, and knowledge sharing—nurturing future practitioners and shaping public discourse.
Rooted in decades of placemaking, research, and storytelling, my work advances public joy as a framework for creating thriving, just, and imaginative communities. Through this lens, joy is not a distraction from serious urban challenges—it is how we meet them. Public joy informs how we design vibrant public spaces, shape policies and institutions, support collective wellbeing, and strengthen democracy itself. It calls on each of us to cultivate our own joy and to act as stewards of one another’s, creating cultures of shared care and connection. This approach recognizes joy as deeply tied to the built environment, public health, and civic life, shaping the conditions that allow us all to flourish—from workplaces and schools to streets, parks, and plazas.