NLA Coffee Conversation: Emotions in/of the city

As cities evolve to prioritise play, belonging, safety, and wellness, an essential question emerges: where do emotions fit within the built environment?

Emotional literacy is the ability to understand, express and manage your own emotions, as well as recognising and empathising with the emotions of others.

This conversation invites practitioners, researchers, and residents alike to explore how emotional literacy can be embedded into urban design, policy and practice to create healthy, safety and inclusive cities.

Across the session, we will examine how places can combine the broad spectrum of needs of local urban life and alongside increasing global connections, consider whether spaces such as hospital waiting rooms, memorial benches, and airport arrival gates provide safe spaces in the city or are simply spaces of efficiency and imagine a healthier, more human urban future.

Timed between January’s fading health resolutions, February’s celebration of love, and the forthcoming Happy City Index 2026 results in March, this conversation arrives at a fitting moment to reconsider what truly makes a city “healthy” in every dimension.

Coffee Conversations are about demystifying the built environment sector, sparking conversation across ages and sectors, helping build soft skills, confidence, and new ways of seeing the city - without it feeling like a formal workshop or networking session. People will be able to select a sticker at the start which identifies the level to which they want to engage in the conversation, from sharing thoughts to being a listener in the conversation.