Sensitive Urban Walk in the Cocody District from Hôtel Ivoire

Pitch

West African cities are experiencing rapid growth, leading to increased congestion, road safety risks, pollution and difficulties in accessing public transport. These changes particularly affect pedestrians, women, young people, people with disabilities and residents of peripheral neighborhoods. In response to these challenges, technical and institutional solutions would benefit from better integrating the daily experiences of users and communities.

Civil society organizations play an essential role in this process. Through awareness-raising, advocacy, training, experimentation and mediation, they highlight needs that are insufficiently addressed and contribute to dialogue with public authorities.

The session aims to transform an urban walk into a collective research exercise: participants will explore a mobility hotspot in Abidjan on foot, compare their perceptions with actual practices and produce an initial participatory and experience-based representation of the site.

Workshop Agenda

1. Briefing and Group Formation – 10 min – Presentation of the route, safety instructions, observation framework and ethical guidelines for interacting with users. Participants will be divided into small groups and assigned specific areas of focus.

2. Exploratory Walk and Data Collection – 30 min – Observation of the route, brief exchanges with users and identification of key issues. Groups will document concrete situations through notes, sketches, keywords, photographs or recordings, with consent.

3. Collective Mapping – 20 min – Using a simple base map, each group will locate its observations and represent the atmosphere, obstacles, resources, stakeholders, flows, conflicts of use and invisible forms of solidarity.

4. Presentation and Prioritization – 15 min – Joint review of the map, identification of three key findings, two opportunities for immediate action and one question to address to the relevant authorities or transport operators.

Speakers

• Quentin LEFEVRE, Designer and Urban Planner
• Houlèye SALL, Project Manager at the NGO COCIMOD

Workshop moderated by Maimouna N’DONG ETROIT, President of the Senegalese Citizens’ Collective for Sustainable Mobility.