On 18 May, EcoCitizen was invited to give the keynote address at the second breakfast meeting of the European Investment Bank’s DEI champions network, held at the Bank’s Luxembourg headquarters. The message EcoCitizen brought was a plain one about inclusive infrastructure design: when a project is designed, who is it that benefits?
Who benefits?
“You need to ask the right question of all projects: who is it that benefits? In an ideal society, the answer should be everyone,” said EcoCitizen Director Adriana González.
Adriana illustrated the point with a familiar image, the queue outside a women’s public toilet, and asked why, in so many countries, the different needs of men and women are still not weighed at the planning stage, before infrastructure is built
“You need to ask the right question of all projects: who is it that benefits? In an ideal society, the answer should be everyone.”
The cost of overlooking those needs is not only social. Where different user needs are not factored in, infrastructure is underused or rejected outright. Cities that have taken an inclusive approach to planning, Vienna and Barcelona among them, show measurably stronger economic and social results.
Inclusive design in practice
Salvatore Coppola-Finegan offered examples from Costa Rica, in renewable energies and forest restoration. Maricruz Vargas closed the keynote session by setting out how inclusive design can be made measurable, turning the question of who benefits into the kind of verifiable data that informs project decisions and reporting.
EIB Directors-General reflected on the Bank’s progress in redirecting finance towards social and environmental outcomes, including climate and gender, while acknowledging that mainstreaming these considerations among front-line staff and clients remains a work in progress that calls for capacity building and upstream support.
ENGLISH 
DEUTSCH 
FRANCAIS 
ESPANOL 
ITALIANO 
PORTUGUESE