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Co-Designing more inclusive cities: Insights from the Limassol Workshop

What does an accessible city look like when seen through everyone’s eyes?
This question guided the recent co-design workshop “Walk the Talk, Roll the Route: Co-Designing Accessible Urban Spaces”, held in Limassol under the URB.ABLE project. Hosted by RESET and facilitated by Maria Paipai, the session created a space for citizens to rethink mobility, accessibility, and inclusion together.

Exploring the city through different lenses

The workshop invited participants to step into the shoes and wheels of diverse urban personas. Through the Accessibility Walkthrough Lab, attendees navigated public spaces as individuals with different mobility realities, uncovering barriers that often go unnoticed in traditional planning.

This experiential approach highlighted key challenges:

  • difficulties in navigating uneven surfaces or poorly designed crossings,
  • the lack of clear visual or digital cues,
  • and the importance of understanding how small details can dramatically affect someone’s independence.

Youth voices shape a mini mobility Manifesto

Building on this shared experience, participants co-created a Mini Mobility Manifesto, capturing what young people value most in accessible mobility:

  • safety as a foundation for participation,
  • inclusion as a non-negotiable design principle,
  • and digital access as a bridge rather than a barrier.

These insights reflect a growing recognition that accessibility is not limited to infrastructur and it also touches information, perception, and the ability to move confidently through public space.

Know-how from the InclusiveSpaces project

Behind this workshop lies the methodological backbone developed in the InclusiveSpaces project, where MaaSLab works to integrate inclusive design into urban mobility systems. The tools, personas, and co-creation formats tested in other cities provided a solid foundation for URB.ABLE to build locally relevant approaches in Limassol.

Toward cities that work for all

Workshops like this remind us that re-imagining mobility isn’t about some, it’s about all of us. By engaging communities directly, cities can better understand the lived experience of mobility and move closer to creating environments where everyone can participate fully and independently.