About
URBANA is a Civil Non-Profit Partnership based in Athens, Greece, bringing together architects, urban planners, social scientists, political scientists, and educators. Founded in 2019, we work towards creating cities that are inclusive, participatory, and responsive to the diverse needs of their communities.
We envision cities where every person feels safe, comfortable, and welcomed, with a true sense of belonging in the spaces they live, work, and thrive! Our goal is to create urban environments that are fair, inclusive, and vibrant, where diverse voices shape the future, communities flourish, and people have equal opportunities to participate in decision-making processes that impact their daily lives.
At URBANA, we strive to make this vision a reality by ensuring the right to the city for all. Our work focuses on empowering historically underrepresented groups -including women, children, youth, and older people- by equipping them with the tools and opportunities to voice their needs, fostering participation in urban planning, and strengthening collaboration between local communities and local authorities.
Team
Eva Grigoriadou is the founding director and research lead of URBANA. She earned her Architecture degree from the Technical University of Crete (TUC) and later completed a postgraduate program in International Cooperation and Sustainable Emergency Architecture at the International University of Catalonia (UIC). Currently, she is a Ph.D. candidate at TUC, where her research centers on gender-sensitive urban planning and mobility.
Evelina Faliagka is an architect, urban planner and project manager at URBANA. She studied at the Department of Architecture of the University of Thessaly (UTH) and then completed her Master's in Urban Design (M.Sc.) at the Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin). Her work focuses on the perspective of care and the development of inclusive design scenarios that integrate all actors, human and non-human, who are traditionally excluded from the city.
Katerina Katsouli is an architect, urban planner and project officer at URBANA. She was educated at the National Technical University of Athens and holds a Master of Advanced Studies in Urban and Territorial Design at ETH Zürich and EPFL. Her practice works through co-creative processes across neighborhood and city scales, engaging human and non-human relations within social and ecological transitions, and supporting inclusive decision-making toward more just, caring, and accessible urban environments.
Our goals
- Integrating a gender perspective into urban planning
- Encouraging community participation in designing their neighborhoods
- Strengthening collaboration between local communities and local authorities
- Creating urban spaces that prioritize inclusivity and accessibility
Our values
Inclusion
Regenerating our cities requires collective effort. At URBANA, we foster inclusive environments that empower individuals from diverse backgrounds to express their needs and actively shape the urban landscape.
Participation
For urban interventions to be socially sustainable and impactful, they must emerge from participatory processes. URBANA develops interdisciplinary methodologies - blending social and political sciences, architecture, and urban planning - to create meaningful participatory frameworks.
Intersectional Feminism
Women continue to shoulder the majority of care work, with Greek statistics (ELSTAT, 2017) showing they dedicate nearly four times more time to caregiving than men. Traditional urban planning has overlooked these realities, limiting women’s access to economic and social opportunities. A gender-inclusive approach ensures that everyday experiences, particularly those of women and gender minorities, are central to urban design, addressing their specific experiences, needs and desires.