Swimmable Cities International Movement Advocates for the Right to Swim in Urban Waterways

Written by Antonia Piñeiro
Published on July 14, 2025

Swimmable Cities is an alliance of 153 signatory organizations across 59 cities in 22 countries, supporting the global movement for swimmable urban waterways. In the context of increasing urbanization, climate change, and biodiversity loss, the initiative aims to reclaim rivers and harbors as public spaces for communities to enjoy and benefit from bathing. It advocates for urban waterways to be made safe, healthy, and accessible for both swimmers and wildlife, calling for cross-border collaboration to develop improvement strategies and collect data to evaluate "swimmability." This call becomes especially relevant amid rising global temperatures and growing inequalities in access to public infrastructure in major cities. The movement's 10-point charter begins with the affirmation of "the right to swim," celebrating urban swimming culture and recognizing the historical significance of water.

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The Swimmable Cities collective was launched in the lead-up to the Paris Olympic Games in July 2024, where Olympic athletes participated in a marathon swimming event in the Seine. A year after a much-discussed trial swim raised questions about the river's health and safety, the City of Paris inaugurated three official public bathing spots along the Seine, open from July 5 to August 31, 2025. The initiative is part of the Paris Plages program and follows a major river-cleaning effort, demonstrating "the City of Paris' desire to reconcile residents with their river, in line with the ecological ambition of the Paris 2024 Games." In the context of increasingly hot summers in the Northern Hemisphere, the spirit of the Swimmable Cities movement is reflected in this project as well as in others worldwide, including New York City's first river-based water-filtering pool at Pier 35.

In June 2025, Swimmable Cities partnered with the City of Rotterdam, Netherlands, for its inaugural summit, held from June 22 to 24. The three-day event brought together municipalities, government agencies, community groups, and cultural institutions to focus on practical solutions for enabling urban swimming. Experts, activists, and decision-makers from the international urban swimming community were invited to commit to the Swimmable Cities Charter by 2030. Hosted in Mecanoo's scenic Maritime Center, the summit also featured a symbolic "Swim for Peace" in the Rijnhaven, Rotterdam's newest public swimming spot. Key topics included the Right to Swim (the first principle of the charter), Nature Rights, water monitoring technologies, policy reform, public-private investment, sustainable urbanism, and water literacy.

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The Right to Swim asserts that safe, healthy, and swimmable waterways should be accessible to all. Other principles in the charter emphasize the importance of vibrant urban waterways for the livability of cities, urban swimming culture as a meaningful form of collective expression, and universal accessibility that respects religious, cultural, and gender diversity. Additional points address enabling conditions such as democratic participation in the management of swimming places, the creation of new economic opportunities, and the civic responsibility to protect the health of local waterways. The full charter is publicly available on the Swimmable Cities website.

Beyond raising awareness of the challenges and principles outlined in the charter, the movement and the summit aim to support the conditions necessary for a new wave of urban waterway regeneration. They advocate for the fast-tracked adoption of best practices across borders. Central themes include governance and design, waterway restoration, community engagement, investment, education, and international cooperation. Since its launch in July 2024, Swimmable Cities co-founders, Matt Sykes (Melbourne), Ana Mumladze-Detering (Vienna), Chris Romer-Lee (London), Sibylle Van Der Walt (Metz), Tim Edler (Berlin), and Jerome Castex (Marseille), have worked closely with policymakers and communities to challenge misconceptions and promote a more equitable distribution of knowledge and solutions.

The movement's efforts align with the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030), a global initiative to prevent, halt, and reverse ecosystem degradation, including that of oceans. Among the projects launched during the summit was an international research initiative to establish a global baseline for waterway swimmability. This interdisciplinary effort aims to define "swimmability" as a key indicator of urban livability, incorporating water quality, accessibility, biodiversity, and social value. Its goal is to develop tools to measure progress, identify and share best practices, and accelerate the transformation of neglected waterways into vibrant, swimmable public spaces.