Alexis and Murat Şanal are SANALarc duo, an Istanbul-based practice that focuses on immediate presence which informs design and city-making practice with an aim to empower the citizens in participating and demanding their voices present in decision-making process. We spoke with Alexis on tools she developed to empower communities.

Your office is based in Istanbul, which we know faces enormous challenges regarding urbanization. SANALarc, however, devised some tools and models on how to reach people and communities to participate in the structuring of public and open spaces. Please explain your involvement and practice with urbanity-related topics.

Istanbul has been our greatest teacher. The city constantly reinvents itself, responding to ever-changing dynamics, while its extraordinary geography and cultural diversity define its unique character. Istanbul is unlike any other city in the world.

Many of the world’s most populous cities, including Istanbul, have urban morphologies so distinct that standard urban design guidelines often feel irrelevant. Yet these cities are lived in, loved, and walked by their citizens. Designing public spaces in such contexts requires tools that are non-linear, adaptable to unique complexities, and accessible to the people who live there.

Through our architecture and urban design practice, we’ve seen how critical components of city-making often get overlooked or compromised, especially the elements that matter most to people. Citizens, of course, expect cities to function well. But they also want their cities to support their economic potential, celebrate family life, and nurture creativity and cultural expression. Physical infrastructure and technical solutions often dominate design briefs, while the ecological, social, and economic vitality of a place is left as an afterthought. Our work aims to center these priorities, giving citizens and communities a voice in shaping the spaces that define their lives.

Can you explain the uses of the cards you devised, the City Making 101: How they are played, whom they are for?

The cards feature 101 urban design topics, organized into six categories. Players begin by taking on a role and sorting the topics into three piles: Important, Not Important, and I Wish. These roles come with guides to help players adopt a particular perspective, while a moderator introduces a specific public space and design challenge.

Over three rounds, players negotiate priorities—identifying absolute must-haves (Important), conditional ideas (I Wish), and discarding the rest. The result is a comprehensive design brief that municipalities, designers, or engineers can use to guide their work. Players are also encouraged to add new topics or adapt the guidelines to suit their needs.

What’s fascinating is how the random selection of cards sparks conversations and peer-to-peer learning. The outcomes go beyond physical and ecological considerations to include social, economic, and governance aspects. This holistic approach ensures that design reflects how people live, work, and interact in a place—urban theater, economic opportunity, and cultural expression all come to the forefront.

Role-playing is a particularly powerful aspect of the game. It encourages participants to think beyond typical ideas and stale discussions, fostering imagination and creativity. This often leads to unexpected and innovative solutions that enrich the final design brief.

In the game, we provide several guides through stakeholder cards. Workshop participants gain a deeper understanding of investors, seeing them not just as typical neoliberal developers but also as representatives of the municipality’s city manager, who acts as the largest project investor, universities as major property owners, or the role local family businesses play as neighborhood project investors. The common roles of archetypal mayors or citizens evolve to include public servants, like police officers and park maintenance workers, while the definition of ‘residents’ expands to encompass children, baristas, and familiar neighborhood activists.

Please comment on your guiding sentence: “Let’s Get Self-Organized” and the role of Wedgetopia initiative.

Cities are among humanity’s greatest creative and collaborative achievements. When citizens are well-organized, they can become powerful advocates for their communities, driving bold and transformative public space projects. Municipalities and professionals, in turn, can serve these citizen-led aspirations, creating spaces that resonate deeply and foster a sense of belonging across generations.

When communities engage in shaping the design briefs for their cities, they co-create places that are loved and meaningful. These spaces become integral to their identity, reflecting their values and serving as stages for public life. Informal, collective acts—like street food markets in Seoul or Parisian farmers’ markets—are vivid examples of how everyday urban life can create extraordinary connections. These seemingly small activities form what we call the “wedges of ordinary utopias,” contrasting with monumental public projects while being just as impactful in creating a sense of place.

Wedgetopia is about celebrating these small, transformative acts. It’s a call to action for design professionals to collaborate directly with citizens, fostering a new civic imagination. In cities like Istanbul, where collective action often emerges in response to challenges or protests, “Let’s get self-organized” encourages proactive engagement. It asks professionals and communities alike to articulate clear aspirations for the future—laying the groundwork for the next era of urban transformation.

Istanbul has shown us that cities are flexible, ever-changing entities. They respond to their geography, politics, and people. With this spirit, we aim to empower citizens to shape the city they want to see, embracing their role in its continual evolution.

In essence, you develop tools that empower communities facing challenges—often expressed through protests—to clearly articulate their demands and be recognized as proactive, engaged participants, rather than being dismissed by officials.

We develop tools for communities to address challenges to be engaging and enjoyable, encouraging participants to share their experiences, insights, and aspirations. Our goal is to ensure that the voices of participants are integrated early on and continue to be heard throughout project developments, avoiding scenarios where the community’s only option for expression is to protest or stop projects they were not consulted about initially.

These tools help articulate community requirements while connecting urban design issues to empower citizens during the co-design process. Participants are brought in as co-clients helping to draft the design brief. With a vocabulary of practical and nuanced terms of urban design, everyday citizens are enabled to envision how a project can enhance not just the functionality of mobility, safety or playgrounds, but also take actionable steps to significantly improve their everyday experiences of community, urban nature, cultural engagement, and overall prosperity, including emotional connections to place.

For instance, Gedikpaşa Park originally served as a municipal facility for local shopkeepers’ parking needs. However, through the participation of NGOs, municipal social services, local merchants, and visitors, it evolved into a community market that includes laundry services, a glass-making studio, public restrooms, and a plaza for various community programs.