Made up of a team of designers, planners, and urban strategists, the Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI) supports city practitioners around the world to help design and implement street safety redesign projects. GDCI launched in 2014 as a NACTO program. It rapidly grew from a small startup incubated within NACTO to one of the most influential leaders on global city streets and began operating as an independent program in 2022.  

GDCI focuses on empowering local officials and communities to become changemakers by equipping cities with the knowledge, tools, and tactics needed to improve urban mobility and fundamentally change the role of streets in our cities.

In the time that NACTO hosted GDCI, it transformed streets around the globe. It published the Global Street Design Guide and Designing Streets for Kids, worked directly with 30+ cities, trained over 5,000 practitioners, received over 100 endorsements from cities, organizations, and countries worldwide, and received the Prince Michael International Road Safety Award in 2021. 

GDCI inspires a shift toward safe, sustainable, and healthy cities through transforming streets.