On Tuesday, 4 March 2025, the Design Sprint “Urban Streams as Spaces of Neighbourhood Coexistence” took place in Thessaloniki, as part of the Placemaking for Climate Mitigation project. The workshop brought together 29 participants, including professionals, experts, students, and residents of neighbourhoods with nature-based solutions, with the aim of exploring how streams can become shared spaces of care, participation, and everyday social life and climate mitigation.

The Design Sprint was implemented in collaboration with STIPO organisation and the MSc in Spatial Planning for Sustainable and Resilient Development, and was structured around participatory design methods that combine technical knowledge, lived experience, and collective creativity.

From a participation gap to place-based action

The starting point of the workshop was a common challenge identified across Greek cities: the limited engagement of local communities with urban streams, despite their environmental and climate importance. Rather than approaching this as a lack of interest, the Design Sprint framed disengagement as the outcome of fear, safety concerns, poor accessibility, and unclear participation pathways.

The session opened with an introduction to green corridors and nature-based solutions, followed by a presentation on the Doxa stream as a local example. Participants then worked in five groups, each developing a persona representing a different neighbourhood profile: a working parent, a retired resident, a small business owner, a university student, and a primary school child.

What the personas revealed

The persona work highlighted that people’s relationship with the stream depends strongly on whether it is connected to their everyday needs and routines. Across all age groups, safety, cleanliness, and accessibility emerged as shared prerequisites for engagement. At the same time, motivations varied significantly: social interaction, children’s play, professional visibility, CV-building, or family wellbeing.

Equally important were the barriers identified. Participants expressed concerns related to lack of time, bureaucratic complexity, ideological distance, and a sense that “nothing really changes.” A key insight was that participation cannot be assumed; it needs to be carefully designed, emotionally meaningful, and aligned with people’s lived realities.

From ideation to prototyping

During the ideation phase, groups formulated “How might we…?” questions focused on activating different social groups and generated a wide range of ideas. These included school-based activities, clean-up actions, clear walking paths, intergenerational events, alternative meeting formats, cultural activities, and playful uses of the stream space.

In the prototyping phase, ideas were transformed into tangible concepts. Groups used role-playing, sketches, and physical models to present scenarios such as:

• how an idea can move from a parent to a school and into the neighbourhood,
• principles for short, engaging community meetings,
• the stream as a safe space for children’s exploration and biodiversity learning,
• assemblies designed to appeal to young people through music, action, and social connection,
• patial models showing how a neglected stream could become a family-friendly public space.

Across all prototypes, a shared message emerged: activation starts with simple, everyday actions, such as playing, meeting, drinking coffee, listening to music, rather than abstract planning processes.

Key insights for policy and design

The Design Sprint highlighted two central pillars for effective participation around urban streams, nature-based solutions and climate mitigation. First, participation needs to be functional, flexible, and inclusive, responding to different time constraints, motivations, and capacities. Short, well-facilitated processes with clear goals, shared responsibility, and visible outcomes foster trust and engagement.

Second, children and families act as powerful catalysts for neighbourhood activation. Play, schools, and family-oriented activities create bridges between generations and help reframe streams as spaces of collective care rather than technical infrastructures.

Overall, the workshop confirmed that urban streams are not only environmental or hydraulic systems. They are social and civic spaces where climate action can become tangible, local, and collective. When approached through placemaking and co-creation, streams can evolve into places of coexistence, stewardship, and shared responsibility, starting from the neighbourhood level.