“I wish to see…” Using photography and narratives to communicate visions of desirable and sustainable cities

Action to transform urban environments is urgently needed and building more sustainable cities is at the core of different international frameworks. However, there is little research around what individuals would consider a sustainable and desirable city. To better understand this, submissions to an international competition were analyzed. Photos, related keywords and narratives describing the participants’ visions of the topic were analyzed with the aim to understand core narratives and key assets of desirable and sustainable cities worldwide. Findings show that keywords could be clustered into nine thematic groups, comprising the built environment, nature and climate, social factors including justice, community and culture. In addition, feelings values and perceptions were hugely important to participants. This component was also particularly relevant in the longer descriptions. The thematic clusters coincided largely with results from a second survey derived from findings of the competition distributed to policy-makers during COP27. However, the keywords used by policy-makers were more jargon and included less references to feelings and perceptions, making it potentially difficult to build compelling narratives people could relate to. Research results show the need to focus more on soft factors like feelings and perceptions to build compelling narratives of sustainable and desirable cities that speak to target audiences. This could be transformed into improved communication for people and policy-makers and lead to better conversion into action.