Abstract
Urban crises and power inequalities intensify processes of urbanization that reinforce exclusion, segregation, and displacement. Within urban design, care has recently been discussed as an ethical and political framework for addressing these dynamics. However, little attention has been paid to how care-ethical principles can be translated into concrete urban design practices. This paper responds to this gap by developing four caring practices for urban design. Using dialogical inquiry through conversation as a method, the research brings together feminist care ethics with situated, practice-based knowledge from the urban design project Forno Vagabondo – a mobile social oven traveling through a valley in the Italian Alps. Through this process, four interrelated approaches are developed: context sensitivity, common maintenance, tangible interdependence, and transformative solidarity. Together, these practices illustrate how care can materialize in urban design and open possibilities for more relational and emancipatory urban futures.
Keywords
urban design, ethics of care, designing with care, practice-based research
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1759
Citation
Kreuzer, M., and Mammana, F. (2026) Toward caring urban design: developing care practices through thinking with Forno Vagabondo, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.1759
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Toward caring urban design: developing care practices through thinking with Forno Vagabondo
Urban crises and power inequalities intensify processes of urbanization that reinforce exclusion, segregation, and displacement. Within urban design, care has recently been discussed as an ethical and political framework for addressing these dynamics. However, little attention has been paid to how care-ethical principles can be translated into concrete urban design practices. This paper responds to this gap by developing four caring practices for urban design. Using dialogical inquiry through conversation as a method, the research brings together feminist care ethics with situated, practice-based knowledge from the urban design project Forno Vagabondo – a mobile social oven traveling through a valley in the Italian Alps. Through this process, four interrelated approaches are developed: context sensitivity, common maintenance, tangible interdependence, and transformative solidarity. Together, these practices illustrate how care can materialize in urban design and open possibilities for more relational and emancipatory urban futures.