Designing Better Cities Starts with People: Citian at NACTO Designing Cities 2026

Last week, Citian's Ryan Westrom and Kristine Sloan joined more than 1,000 transportation professionals in Minneapolis for NACTO's 14th annual Designing Cities Conference. Held May 12 to 15, the conference brought together engineers, planners, government agency leaders, advocates, and technology partners united by a common purpose: making cities safer, more accessible, and more livable for everyone.

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Minneapolis was a fitting host. The city is home to one of the best bike networks in the country, award-winning parks and trails, and a regional transit system that has made meaningful investment in connecting communities across the Twin Cities. Attending a conference about designing better cities in a city actively doing it made every session more grounded and every tour more instructive.

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A Community Working Through Real Challenges

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NACTO Designing Cities draws a different kind of crowd than most transportation conferences. Over 70 percent of attendees are city transportation and transit staff from public agencies. That composition creates something rare: a room full of peers working through the same problems, sharing what has worked and what has not, without the pressure of a sales floor.

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The conversations this year reflected the moment cities are in. Federal funding uncertainty weighed on many discussions, with agencies navigating shifting priorities and tighter timelines. But alongside those concerns, there was genuine energy around what cities can accomplish when they commit to people-centered design. The sessions and WalkShops reinforced a consistent message: the cities making the most progress are the ones that have built internal alignment, clear prioritization frameworks, and the tools to tell the story of their work.

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Many of the cities represented at the conference are already Citian clients. It was meaningful to connect with those teams in this setting, not to talk about software, but to understand the problems they are actively trying to solve and the outcomes they are working toward.

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On Two Wheels Through Minneapolis

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One of the most distinctive features of NACTO Designing Cities is its WalkShops: mobile tours through the host city's infrastructure, led by local experts. This year, Kristine joined a bike tour that took conference attendees through the streets and protected lanes that make Minneapolis one of the most cyclist-friendly cities in the country.

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For Kristine, attending NACTO for the first time, the experience was both eye-opening and motivating.

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"Being on a bike in the middle of a city, navigating real intersections and infrastructure, gave me a completely different frame of reference. You feel the gaps in the network, and you also feel the difference when design actually works. I came away with a much clearer sense of what cities are really trying to solve, and how important it is that the tools we build and the stories we tell reflect those real-world stakes."
— Kristine Sloan, Citian

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That hands-on perspective matters for how Citian approaches its work. Understanding what it feels like to move through a city as a cyclist, a pedestrian, or a transit rider is not separate from safety planning. It is central to it.

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What Cities Are Achieving

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Throughout the conference, cities shared real results from projects that started as plans and turned into safer, more connected places. Protected bike lanes that reduced conflict points. Intersection redesigns that brought down serious injury rates. Complete streets projects that changed how residents move through their neighborhoods.

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What made these stories compelling was not the infrastructure itself, but the process behind it: how agencies identified the right locations, built the case for investment, and then documented what changed. That combination of clear prioritization and transparent communication is exactly where Citian supports the cities we work with. When agencies can show how a decision was made and what it produced, they can secure the next round of funding, maintain public trust, and build on what they have already done.

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Safety Planning as a Community Practice

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NACTO Designing Cities reinforced something Citian sees across the agencies we work with: the most effective safety programs are not built by a single team or funded by a single grant. They are built by communities of practice, people sharing methods, benchmarking against peers, and holding themselves accountable to shared outcomes.

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Minneapolis is a model of what sustained commitment to that kind of work looks like. Its bike network did not happen in one budget cycle. It was planned, built, evaluated, and expanded over time by a city that kept asking what would make it easier for people to get around safely.

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Citian is proud to support cities on that journey, helping agencies move from fragmented data to clear priorities, and from one-time analyses to safety programs that can grow and adapt over time.

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Looking Ahead

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We left Minneapolis with stronger connections to the cities and agencies doing this work every day, a clearer view of the challenges they are navigating, and renewed energy for the role Citian plays in supporting them.

Thank you to NACTO and to the City of Minneapolis for an outstanding conference. We are already looking forward to what comes next.