Helping neighbourhoods adapt to urban change

 

Miklošičeva Street in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, closed for renovation. Improvements included wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling, greenery, improved seating and more positive social interaction. It met the European Union's carbon neutral and smart city goals for 2030. It also met significant public protest and opposition. 

by Mateja Mihinjac

Imagine strolling down a vibrant boulevard shaded by mature trees, where pedestrians and cyclists move comfortably through public space. People pause on benches to watch the world go by, while cafés spill onto wide terraces filled with conversation. Instead of being just another road, the street becomes a place to meet, linger and enjoy urban life.

This is the vision behind the redesign of Miklošičeva Street, one of the busiest and most important streets in Slovenia's capital city, Ljubljana.

 

A VISION MEETS RESISTANCE

Miklošičeva Street is one of Ljubljana's busiest corridors, linking the city's main railway and bus station with Prešeren Square and the historic centre. In June, the City of Ljubljana launched a two-year pilot project to transform the street into a greener, safer and more people-oriented public space. The redesign includes wider pedestrian areas, improved cycling infrastructure, additional greenery and outdoor seating, while reducing through traffic to encourage walking, cycling and social interaction.

In one of the busiest corridors, construction redesign creates chaos for
those working and walking downtown.

The project supports Ljubljana's Integrated Transport Strategy 2025–2032 and the EU Mission for 100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities by 2030.

Yet, almost as soon as construction began, public opposition emerged. A public petition calling to "Return Miklošičeva to its previous state!" quickly gained attention. 

Critics argue that it will increase congestion, restrict access to businesses and homes, create confusion for all road users, and that the project has not been developed in sufficient dialogue with the local community. Whether these concerns prove justified remains to be seen. 

The more interesting question is, however, why the opposition became so visible only after construction had begun when the plans had been publicly available for months?

Resistance to new urban development is not unique to Ljubljana.

 

When a massive new sports stadium was introduced in Denver this year,
hundreds of residents attended information sessions as part
of a "public participation" process.

RESISTANCE IS PART OF URBAN CHANGE

When New York City proposed pedestrianising Times Square in 2009, critics predicted traffic chaos and economic decline. The city responded by introducing a temporary pilot, collected data on traffic, safety and retail performance, and used the evidence to guide the final redesign while publicly shared findings. Many of the early fears proved unfounded.

Copenhagen followed a different approach, gradually expanding its cycling network over several decades. Incremental improvements allowed both the infrastructure and the public to adapt, helping the city become one of the world's leading cycling capitals. 

Not every renewal project succeeds. During research in one North American city, I observed strong opposition to new downtown bike lanes despite evidence of their potential benefits. Political pressure eventually led to some of the lanes being removed.

These examples suggest that opposition is neither unusual nor evidence of poor design. Usually, it is a predictable part of urban transformation. The real question is this: Why does resistance occur and how cities can help the residents navigate it?

Road redevelopment in Ljubljana's Miklošičeva Street  

 

WHY DO WE RESIST?

Behavioural psychology offers some insights.

Status quo bias – Our tendency is to prefer familiar conditions over uncertain alternatives. Samuelson and Zeckhauser argue that the status quo acts as a psychological anchor, making any departure from established routines feel like a loss rather than a potential improvement.

For those who live, work or regularly travel along Miklošičeva Street, the redesign disrupts familiar routes and long-established habits. What planners see as progress may initially feel like unnecessary disruption to people using the space every day.

Loss aversion – Behavioural design research has resulted in Prospect Theory showing that people \ experience the pain of losing something more strongly than the pleasure of gaining something new. 

Both loss aversion and status quo bias show up with remarkable frequency in urban redevelopment – AI-generated imagery from ChatGPT for this blog 

In street revitalisation, this means people often focus on what they might lose such as parking, familiar routes or established routines. They tend to ignore or overlook benefits yet to materialise, such as safer streets, more greenery or livelier public spaces.

Thus, opposition may be less about rejecting the future than about letting go of the familiar present.

 

 

PUBLIC CONSULTATION & ENGAGEMENT TRAP

On Miklošičeva Street public consultation did take place before construction began, although it attracted far less attention than the opposition that followed. In March 2026, the City of Ljubljana and the Ministry of Environment, Climate and Energy invited residents to learn about the project and provide feedback through a half-day public event and an online survey. 

So, why did opposition become so visible only after construction began?

Behavioural psychology provides another answer. For one, the plan seemed abstract until changes became visible. When road markings appeared, parking spaces disappeared or familiar routes changed, status quo bias and loss aversion arose as powerful motivators for action.

Another answer is the nature of public engagement itself. I argued previously, that informing and consulting residents is not the same as involving them in shaping decisions. In our upcoming book Hope Rises, we call this concept the engagement trap.

Meaningful participation requires more than asking for opinions. It requires enabling residents to identify problems, create a shared vision and help design solutions. Only when that happens will change become something the residents co-create and feel part of the process. This is why SafeGrowth often deploys methods such as Search Conferences to help this co-creation process. Search conferences are interactive, future-oriented and carefully guided planning sessions with community members. They are widely used in fields such as public health, and we have deployed them in cities around the world. 

 

Our first search conference launched the SafeGrowth Network in Canmore, Alberta in 2015. These participative planning session are a powerful way to develop shared ownership and a vision for future actions – AI imagery generated for this blog.

ANTICIPATING RESISTANCE VS BEING SURPRISED 

The purpose of community engagement is not to eliminate disagreement, but to build trust, create shared ownership and help communities adapt to change. It is about helping them navigate the journey from the familiar to the unknown. That means treating neighbourhood revitalisation as a social process, not only an engineering project.

SafeGrowth views neighbourhoods as living social ecosystems. Over time they develop routines, relationships and shared habits in how people use space. In all our training, students are taught to look, listen and hear those patterns during their site visits. The book What We See describes how urbanist Jane Jacobs emphasised the power of going to the street to find those ecological patterns.

When residents help identify problems, create a shared vision and shape solutions, change becomes their project rather than the city's. Successful revitalisation emerges when communities have the opportunity to learn and grow alongside the places they call home. 

Pictures in the sky - a vision for the unhoused in Prince George

  

Judge and Senator Calvin Murray Sinclair
- photo by Archkris, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wiki Commons

 by John Lyons

John Lyons spent many years as a patrol officer living and working in northern Canadian communities. A member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for 28 years, he served as a major crime investigator. For 10 years he was an international crime analyst with Interpol Ottawa. Post policing he consulted government on health care fraud. Now he brings his extensive experience to SafeGrowth, particularly in conducting search conferences to prevent crime and build collaborative networks.

This week, a giant died in Canada. I met him many years ago when I gave testimony in an inquiry that he headed as a judge. I have remained impressed by him ever since. How we could use his wise advice now! 

I speak of the Ojibway First Nations Judge and retired Canadian Senator Calvin Murray Sinclair who died on November 4th. His passing is a deep and huge loss to Canada. Judge Sinclair was a champion of crime prevention through First Nations community development. From 2009, he was a leader in Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and he had a profound impact on how Canadians, such as myself, contextualize colonial abuse of First Nations peoples. 

He shaped my perspective on addressing crimes and incivilities by economic and socially marginalized First Nations people. The problems Judge Sinclair brought to light are still apparent in the cities across northern communities, especially in the northern Canadian city of Prince George, British Columbia, a community with problems of homelessness, street crime, illicit drugs, and drug overdoses. The blog "Innovations in responding to street drugs" described those issues last year. 

The Prince George story illustrates Judge Sinclair’s message most succinctly. Last year's blog was about the 2023 SafeGrowth Person of the Year, Jordan Steward, and her downtown safe inhalation, harm reduction site – The Pounds Project – which was largely defunded.

Aerial photo of Prince George, British Columbia
- photo by CPG1100, CC BY-SA via Wiki Commons

Today, when thousands of drug-addicted and unhoused people populate Canadian cities, far too many hail from Indigenous backgrounds. Where is Judge Sinclair’s perspective at this point in history when so many Canadian cities, like Prince George, are suffering from this social pain?  

WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN?

First, one of the persistent paradoxes we know that emerges from top-down government responses to the unhoused, especially with people from marginalized communities, is the problem of inaction and the false belief that one-size-fits-all. True to form, this paradox has now reared its head according to news stories about conflicts between the city of Prince George and the provincial government. 

Second, having spent a great deal of time in Prince George, I have learned that it is not enough to treat the problem as an eyesore disrupting downtown businesses. The city must go beyond displacing these troubled souls to accommodations outside the city centre. This blog has previously described cities like Wheat Ridge, Colorado and Victoria, British Columbia that experienced the futility of simply rehousing the homeless without wraparound services.

 

Housing encampment in Prince George

Third, bottom-up strategies were already emerging in Prince George, for example the harm reduction that Jordan Steward attempted through her Pounds Project. That is what should be expanded and supported. We know that relocating the unhoused and drug addicted must involve far more than pushing the problem around the city like some perverse board game. We also know, from prior blogs, that successful projects already exist in places like Finland.

All these examples teach us that any relocation plan needs to consider setting up safer physical environments using strategies like 1st and 2nd-generation CPTED. They must also reinforce historic Indigenous culture. If there is to be any hope of redemption, that is the way to make things right. 

The Grand Medicine Society in Ojibwa syllabics. Judge Sinclair combined his wisdom as a member of this traditional First Nations society and as a Judge,  Canadian Senator, and a Companion of the Order of Canada.  

LOCAL ACTION PLANS 

Over the years I have joined members of the SafeGrowth team in delivering search conferences precisely to create local visions of new approaches and to build local capacity to make them happen. This approach produces success. For example, last year SafeGrowth facilitator, Professor Tarah Hodgkinson finished a successful search conference for safety planning in Brantford, Ontario.  

I see the value of empowering those in the community by teaching skills in crime prevention, neighborhood planning, community investment, and rehabilitation. This is how you build local capacity. Diffuse government programs rarely fit the local context, as suggested by recent provincial/municipal government conflicts in Prince George.

Judge Sinclair was a member of a traditional Ojibway medicine society and his Ojibway name was Mizanay Gheezhik. That translates to "the One Who Speaks of Pictures in the Sky”. If there was ever a time when we needed a new vision of something bigger and better – new pictures in the sky – now is the time! 

Judge Sinclair, we miss your vision.