Schools are the most evenly distributed public spaces in Europe. Nearly 88% of EU households live within a 15-minute walk or cycle of one. That is some highly valuable hidden potential to be unlocked – what if these places could be community areas, too? How can they be transformed to make whole neighbourhoods safer, healthier and more inclusive? This is exactly what ROUTES (Reimagining Open schoolyards and Urban sTreets as Equitable Spaces) is after.

At the end of July 2025, on a picnic table in Delft after a full day of activities part of our Remaking The Street Summer School, a few of us and friends from collaborating organisations planted the very first seed of an idea that eventually became a successful Horizon Europe project application, featuring 16 consortium organisations across eight countries alongside four observer cities.

Drawn to the idea that, across Europe, schoolyards and school streets are treated as separate entities, governed by different policies and authorities –a fragmentation that prevents school environments from reaching their full potential as exemplary common spaces– we began imagining ROUTES as a project that would directly tackle that fragmentation, exploring how combined urban interventions can serve as 24-hour common spaces that foster safety, social cohesion, active mobility, inclusivity, and well-being.

Over four years, from September 2026 to August 2030, citizens, students, parents, teachers and local authorities will co-design tactical, integrated interventions in eight living laboratories across four pilot cities. The project will then measure the effects of these interventions on neighbourhood safety, inclusivity, social cohesion, mobility behaviour and subjective wellbeing.

ROUTES combines methods from urban analytics, citizen science, environmental psychology, behavioural science, tactical urbanism, and co-design. The resulting evidence will be translated into practical tools, indicators, and policy guidelines that make it possible to scale successful transformations across Europe.

The consortium includes top-tier academic institutions such as Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Technical University of Munich, Aalto University, Poly-technic University of Tirana, and École Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'État (ENTPE); and urban change agencies, research centers, and public bodies including Humankind, BYCS, Transform Transport, IVN Instituut voor Natuureducatie, Telraam, Qendra Marrëdhënie, and the National Territorial Planning Agency of Albania. Central to the project are living laboratories in the pilot cities of Bratislava, Espoo, Rotterdam, and Tirana, supported by observer cities Braga, Kocaeli, Lund, and Nantes to ensure broad European relevance and exchange.