Six thousand delegates from the global CHANGE cities network converged on Melbourne last week for the network’s biannual summit – and Publica CIC contributed to the conversation.

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave is in Cannes at MIPIM, sharing Publica’s bold vision for Marble Arch.

At this year’s Women’s Night Safety Summit, Ellie Cosgrave and Gaia Crocella presented Right to the City, Publica CIC’s live action research programme exploring how women, girls and non-binary people experience the City of London after dark.

How can cities better support women’s safety and sense of belonging?

Planning permission has been granted for the redevelopment of Bankside House into a landmark, new student residence for the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), delivered in partnership with Equitix and BOUYGUES UK.

Lucy Musgrave OBE RDI, Founding Director of Publica, has been appointed to NLA’s Sounding Board for 2026. She joins a group of 25 senior urban leaders, including Nabeel Khan, Strategic Director at the London Borough of Lambeth; Binki Taylor at The Brixton Project; and Dicle Guntas, Managing Director of HGG London.

Ellie Cosgrave, Director of CIC and Research, has been appointed to two advisory bodies for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

What would Louisville feel like if we shone our light, energy and joy on the issue of women’s safety?

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave OBE RDI has been reappointed by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as one of the Mayor’s Design Advocates for the 2025 – 2028 term.

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave OBE RDI shared her expertise on design principles, policy, and delivery at the House of Lords Built Environment Committee, statingways we can make sure the next generation of new towns are well-designed places.

Director of CIC and Research, Ellie Cosgrave, and Senior Urban Researcher, Gaia Crocella, explored what safety in public space really means for women and girls in the first episode of Diverse Dialogues The Podcast with Kuljeet Sibia.

What comes to mind, when you try to imagine a safe city? This is the question Senior Urban Researcher, Gaia Crocella, posed at Open City’s first debate of the year, “Designing a Safer City”.

City Hall has appointed Publica as part of an innovative design team led by architecture and landscape practice East to design and deliver the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s transformative and ambitious plans to regenerate Oxford Street.

Publica and The City Hub and Network for Gender Equity (CHANGE) are pioneering new standards for violence prevention that centre inclusion, dignity, and belonging to design cities where women, girls and non-binary people can thrive.

Plans to restore and convert Custom House into a new 179-room hotel have been unanimously approved the City of London Corporation.

The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), together with partners Equitix and Bouygues UK, has submitted plans to transform Bankside House into a best-in-class student residence in the heart of London’s cultural quarter.

Our team have been listening and amplifying the voices that make up our spaces, stories, and neighbourhoods with the London Festival of Architecture.

Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation’s (OPDC) Public Realm and Green Infrastructure SPD, developed collaboratively with Publica, received the Award for Plan-Making in the Planning Awards 2025. 

Westminster City Council presented the new Westminster After Dark Strategy 2025-2040 at the After Dark Community Briefing, in collaboration with London Heritage Quarter BID. Senior Researcher, Daniel Blyth shared findings from three Women’s Night Safety audits in Victoria, highlighting the recommendations already being implemented.

What does it truly mean to care in property development? The social value panel sessions at UKREIIF 2025 explored just that.

Over the past five years, the UK has seen concerted national action to recognise how the urban design, planning and the broader built environment sector shapes women, girls and non-binary people’s sense of safety and belonging in public spaces. On 26th March, Publica CIC, in collaboration with The Crown Estate, Collective Architecture and UCL Urban Lab hosted a national conversation to discuss the future of feminist urbanism in the UK.

Senior Urban Designer, Gaia Crocella, and Senior Researcher, Daniel Blyth participated in the LUCI Cities & Lighting Summit 2025 in London, co-organised with the City of London. Together with other experts from the urban lighting community, they explored the future of urban lighting and its role in shaping vibrant, inclusive cities.

Publica’s Founding Director Lucy Musgrave presented our international Campaign for Inclusive Cities at the inaugural London VAWG International Summit at City Hall attended by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, Deputy Major Kaya Comer Schwartz and the 17 cities in CHANGE’s network. 

Publica’s Founding Director, Lucy Musgrave; Director, Anna Mansfield; Senior Urban Researcher, Gaia Crocella; and Urban Designer, Lou Elena Bouey, spoke with Architecture Today about Publica’s approach to developing transformative public spaces and the CIC’s Campaign for Inclusive Cities.

Publica CIC and Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust won Camden Council’s Youth Safety Multi-Media Competition, at the launch event of Youth Celebration Week. 

Publica’s Founding Director Lucy Musgrave has been appointed a Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) by the Royal Society of Arts, at the 2024 RDI Address.

Publica CIC’s Senior Design Researcher, Gaia Crocella, and Urban Designer, Lou Elena Bouey, presented their transformative vision for London - Her, Their, Everywhere: Reclaiming The City As A Feminist Laboratory - at the NLA’s Reimagine London event, powered by PechaKucha. 

Listen to associate Tess McCann and urban design professor, Bahar Durmaz-Drinkwater discuss the recent launch of the Soho Heritage Audit on The Soho Society Hour. This session took place 3rd October 2024.

How can we reimagine a better London for all, a 24-hour city that is future-proof and equipped to adapt and thrive in the face of immense challenges?

This is the question raised by the NLA in their new major ideas competition, Reimagine London. Publica CIC’s proposal, ‘Her, Their, Everywhere: Reclaiming The City As a Feminist Laboratory’ creatively rethinks the experience of the city by centring the experiences of women, girls and gender diverse people in a pioneering vision for London’s public realm.

There is an industry-wide consensus for a more ambitious inclusive vision for our cities and communities. We know how to act to ensure our cities are sustainable, resilient and just – putting communities at the centre of the new urban agenda, but this requires new, practicable skills.

Publica and Volterra launched a new interdisciplinary partnership that combines urban design and qualitative research with socioeconomics and quantitative research, presenting opportunities in community wealth building for public and private sector partners.

Publica has recently volunteered with Open City’s ‘Young City Makers’ programme, working with pupils from primary school in Westminster to re-imagine Marble Arch as a child-friendly public space. This project was supported by the John Lyons Charitable Trust.

Dr Ellie Cosgrave, Director of CIC and Research, delivered a pivotal presentation at the Cities Change Annual Summit for Learning and Innovation for Gender Equity in Barcelona. Ellie shared Publica’s best practice from London and Manchester, focusing on our CIC’s campaign for women, girls and gender diverse people’s safety in public spaces.

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave has been appointed a trustee of Grand Plan, a charity that awards grants of £1,000 to people of colour to bring a creative project to life.

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave gave the keynote speech at Connected Places Catapult’s National Summit 2024. In the presentation, Lucy addressed the need to harness urban innovation and place leadership in a ‘whole-system approach’ to ensure that the transition to net zero is one which is inclusive, participatory, and celebratory.

In the third episode of London Explained, The London Society’s documentary podcast series, Lucy Musgrave and Tess McCann join journalist Dave Hill to tell the story of Marble Arch and the area around it.

Publica has worked on a number of significant public realm projects in the West End across the past decade, and 2023 marked the formal completion and opening ceremony of Hanover Square, a foundational project that is very close to our heart and a story of collaboration, restoration and transformation.

To coincide with and celebrate the completion, Publica created a short film with production company Atomized Studios.

Anna Mansfield joins the Building Talks… Creating Communities podcast, a four-part series hosted by Architectural Editor Ben Flatman, which interviews four leading figures from the worlds of architecture, planning and urban design, to understand what drives them and how they see the future of placemaking.

Publica’s Community Interest Company is delighted to announce the appointment of three new members to its board, Binki Taylor, Eve Holt and Elizabeth Rapoport, to join founding director Lucy Musgrave in supporting Publica’s campaign for inclusive and collaborative city-making processes.

We know that addressing the climate crisis requires systemic change across all industries. This is especially true in the built environment sector, which is responsible for 42% of UK emissions. Last Thursday’s event marked the latest stage of Architects Declare’s journey to create a national policy framework for the UK that addresses the reality of the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency and creates a regenerative built environment, enabling society and nature to thrive.

Publica's Hanover Square Public Realm Improvement Scheme has been commended in the Public Spaces category for the New London Awards 2023, run by NLA London and supported by the Mayor of London.

Ellie Cosgrave, Director of CIC and Research has attended events and discussions centred around representation in the built environment, discussing ways in which we can bridge the gaps between government, community, and design.

Publica is delighted to announce that we have joined many others in the sign up to the Diverse Leader’s Pledge to help make the built environment sector more representative through recruitment, progression, and advocacy.

Celebrating the unveiling of Landline, a major new work by Sean Scully RA, marking the formal completion of Hanover Square.

Publica is delighted to have been appointed to three lots on the Mayor’s Architecture + Urbanism (A+U) Framework, to support his mission to create a better, greener and more sustainable London for everyone.

Gender inclusive cities starts with awareness and inclusive design, prioritising the experiences and needs of women, girls and gender diverse people. At the end of September, Ellie Cosgrave, Director of our Community Interest Company, gave the keynote lecture at the Dag van de Stad conference in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

Publica CIC launches a new campaign delivering practical tools to address violence against women and girls in the built environment, supported by more than 15 of London’s leading land owners, developers, and Business Improvement Districts.

Ellie Cosgrave recently joined a panel discussion on ‘How can we Design Cities for Women?’, briefly presenting Publica’s most recent work for The Mayor’s Good Growth by Design programme, Women and Girls Safety in Public Space.

Publica has completed a brand identity strategy for the Fleet Place Estate in the City of London.

For the 2021 edition of the Venice Biennale, Publica took part in the Future School exhibition at the Korean pavilion, and also featured in a publication that ran alongside the Garden of Privatised Delights exhibition at the British pavilion.

As part of the Greater London Authority’s ongoing campaign for a 24-hour London, Publica and Didobi will be delivering one-to-one support to boroughs looking to, and already working on, evening and night time strategies.

Satu Streatfield, Publica’s Specialist Associate Night-time and Lighting, discusses women’s safety in public spaces in a talk hosted by New London Architecture, focused on the ways in which urban design can play a role in making those presenting as female feel safer in the public realm.

Founding Director Lucy Musgrave presents Publica’s 10-year portfolio, in a keynote speech titled “Learning From London – The Making of Good Public Realm” as part of the Hamburg Urban Development Seminar.

Lucy Musgrave OBE spoke at the Glasgow City Council’s Connecting Communities programme, as part of a public conversation focusing on the city’s sustainable transport future.

The September 2020 issue of Architecture Today has published an article from Lucy Musgrave as part of the My Kind of Town series.

Publica’s Founding Director Lucy Musgrave joined the panel for two of the Mayor of London’s Good Growth by Design Roundtables this summer. As one of the Mayor’s Design Advocates, Lucy was invited to discuss the challenges that the pandemic has brought, but also the opportunities to provide long-term benefits in London’s built environment, in response to COVID-19 .

Join Catherine du Toit of 51architecture on her journey through the city, piecing together habitat, diversity, migration, water, sound and greenery in an urban setting for Publica’s first virtual …And the City lecture.

Following the release of Making London Child-Friendly, a conversation with Mayor’s Design Advocates and research contributors Lucy Musgrave and Dinah Bornat explores how cities can be designed with children in mind, drawing upon leading case studies and their personal experience.

Director Anna Mansfield, has joined the Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn’s Infrastructure Advisory Panel.