A people-centred, collaborative approach to building liveable and resilient neighbourhoods
Hello Grove community!
We’re excited to introduce Neighbourhoods of the Future (NOTF) — a new initiative and framework that brings liveability, safety, sustainability, and community agency to the heart of urban neighbourhoods.
What is NOTF?
NOTF is a practical, place-based approach aimed at strengthening the everyday experience of cities at the neighbourhood scale — where people walk, live, interact, work, and care for shared space. It draws from evidence-based urban design, climate responsiveness, and community-centred participation to help shape neighbourhoods that are more:
Climate-adaptive and environmentally resilient
Co-designed with residents and institutions
Inclusive and welcoming
Why this framework?
Urban transformation often happens at large scales — cities, regions, systems — but real change is felt and lived at the neighbourhood level. NOTF is being designed to:
Translate big urban goals into tangible neighbourhood action
Bridge lived experiences with strategic planning
Enable communities to lead and influence local design and decisions
Provide communities with tools (physical through partners and solution providers and digital for mapping their surroundings) to empower them to lead neighborhood actions.
The idea is to create a flexible framework that can adapt to diverse contexts while staying anchored in shared principles.
What are we trying to achieve?
With NOTF, we aim to:
- Operationalise neighbourhood-scale interventions that improve mobility, public space, safety, and climate resilience
- Build evidence and share learning on what works in diverse neighbourhood contexts
Create avenues for partnerships, collaboration, and co-creation
Support local change agents with frameworks, tools, and facilitation
Where we stand — from concept to action
We are moving beyond the conceptual phase into strategic and operational implementation by:
- Finalising the framework and principles
- Starting partner conversations and ecosystem alignment
- Mapping potential pilot neighbourhoods
- Planning engagement formats and co-design processes
Future posts here will share progress updates, learnings, opportunities to collaborate, and calls for engagement.
We welcome collaboration
If you are part of a community group or an individual involved in local initiatives—or know champions working to improve their neighbourhood—and are interested in learning more, contributing, piloting ideas, or collaborating, we would love to hear from you.
This is just the beginning — neighbourhood by neighbourhood, towards more liveable and resilient urban futures.
If you’re part of a community group, or an individual passionate about improving your neighbourhood, we’d love to connect. Reach out to us—or introduce us to others who share this interest and would like to collaborate.