Ten years ago, just as I was about to start my Master’s degree in Urban Development and Planning, I launched a blog called Parcitypatory – towards the participatory city. I had just finished a Bachelor’s thesis on sustainable slum upgrading and the Millennium Development Goals, and I remember attending my first big conference, European Habitat in Prague, happily surprised about how many people cared about sustainable cities. I started planning how to get to Habitat III in Quito later that year.
Making it to Quito shaped my whole career, especially attending the Urban Journalism Academy. I met new friends, colleagues, and connections and decided to keep showing up to conferences, to keep writing about cities, and to continue trying to understand what makes urban life better.
The blog years
Parcitypatory started as a place to share stories about participatory urban planning: what it looks like in practice, which methods work, and why it matters. The pieces on participatory methods still get questions from teachers and students around the world, which tells me the gap they were filling has not entirely closed.
My favourite section was always “Voices from”, a place for stories from cities like Paisley in Scotland, Kibera in Kenya, or Yokohama in Japan, beautifully illustrated by my now-husband. As I moved from Mexico to Germany to the UK, the blog was a constant companion, a lens through which to understand every new city I arrived in. One of my favourite examples is observing the neighbourhood ballet, a term coined by Jane Jacobs, in Mexico City.
The shift to journalism and consulting
After my Master’s, I began freelancing: first as a copywriter, then increasingly as a journalist and communications consultant. Landscape architecture became an unexpected passion: the discipline’s commitment to bringing high-quality, accessible green space into cities felt like urban planning’s quieter sibling, and I ended up writing two books in German about its best projects.
Green spaces in cities remain one of my favourite topics, as do blue spaces. But I love how my work can bring new perspectives as well, from looking at participatory budgeting or climate finance in cities to analysing sanitation, community communication, and even rolling discos for children.
Finding clients who wanted to write seriously about cities took time, networking, and patience. GIZ, Cities Alliance, KfW, UNESCO, and UN-Habitat came gradually. Each project taught me something about how international organisations communicate and where the gaps are. I always learn from stories where cities did things right, for example in this GIZ ebook on urban climate action in cities in Ecuador, Jordan, Namibia, and Serbia, or in this Cities Alliance position paper on sustainable construction.
Urban solutions journalism
I couldn’t name it when I started out, but Parcitypatory has always been about solutions journalism: reporting not just on urban problems but on the responses to them, rigorously and without pretending the answers are easy. From the Urban Journalism Academy at Habitat III to learning from and mentoring for the Solutions Journalism Network, I have come to realise that this is the name for my passion. My own version focuses specifically on cities.
Since last May, I write on Substack, but the Urban Solutions Journal builds on my blog. It records stories from cities that experiment, adapt, fail, and often get things right as well. Here are some recent pieces I am proud of:
What is next
Conferences like Urban Futures and the World Urban Forum are important checkpoints in my professional life. Next week, I will be reporting from Baku at the 13th World Urban Forum. I have also been invited to host the Urban Solutions Journalism Academy there. In this interactive workshop, I teach journalists and planners how to write about urban solutions and innovations in a constructive way. Drop by if you can and if not, there will be more online sessions later in the year.
My next steps include both journalism (and teaching journalism) and collaboration. I am particularly interested in working with other independent consultants in the field of communicating urban planning and landscape architecture to build something collectively that none of us could build alone. If that sounds like you, get in touch: laura@parcitypatory.org.
And if you are here for the journalism, stay: Baku is next.
