Hila Bar Ner

Hila Bar Ner is a program associate at the Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI). She is a member of The Streets for Kids program, which aims to improve the lives of kids in cities by inspiring leaders, informing practitioners, and empowering communities to understand cities through the lens of children and their caregivers and to take action on their streets to ensure a cleaner, healthier, and safer future. PriBeforeining GDCI, Hila was a Tel Aviv-based urban planner and project manager, supporting cities in developing people-focused, sustainable, and healthy urban environments. She was a project manager for developing Israel’s national planning and design guidelines for child-friendly cities under the Ministry of Education as part of Bernard van Leer’s global Urban95 initiative. At the same time, she was also pursuing her academic interests as a teaching assistant and a researcher at the Reichman University School of Sustainability, where she focused on the formation of urban sustainability policy. Before that, Hila was the project coordinator at the Urban Clinic, an academic unit focused on nurturing urban leadership and local knowledge for just and inclusive cities. Hila produced two publications on Placemaking and Public Participation. Her Master’s dissertation examined the impact of governmental, municipal, and civil society organizations on placemaking interventions in Israel.