street

Watch Streets Evolve From Car-Focused to People-Focused

- Adam Clare

they-keep-tabs-on-urban-transformation-blogs-and-architectural-projects-so-they-know-where-to-check-on-google-street-view

Streets were for people, then cars took over and ruined cities. For the last hundred years cities transformed themselves from walkable places to sprawling buildings which were designed for heavy car use. Now, cities have seen how that’s a mistake.

A design firm, Urb-i, has used Google street view to catalog how cities are making themselves good places to be. Hopefully this trend of making cities human-focused instead of car focused continues!

In São Paulo, Brazil — which boasts over 10 million residents — a third of the people travel by car, another third takes public transit, and another walks. Yet cars take up a majority of the roads and public spaces.

Seeing that, a Brazilian urban planning collective called Urb-i set out to demonstrate that imbalance and show off examples of more people-friendly design. They scoured Google Street View images to find the most stunning public space transformations from around the world. The results give us hope that our cities are becoming more beautiful places to live.

See more.

Artists Bring Peace to the Streets

- Adam Clare

le-policier-amoureux (digital)

Street art about peace is getting special attention in London these next few weeks. Artists from all over the world are going to explore the idea of ‘peace in our streets’ and what it means to them. It looks like it’ll be a great exhibit.

If you’re in London you should check it out.

The show will be titled Peace from the street up! and will feature work inspired by the theme of ‘peace in our cities’. The artists, some of whom come from conflict-affected regions, will reflect on opportunities for peaceful change in an increasingly urbanised world.

“Urban and street art has a long history of engaging with important social issues and harnessing peaceful social change through creativity and humour. We thought it would be fascinating to invite urban and street artists from around the world to reflect on what peace in their cities could look like.”

The exhibition will be part of Alert’s second Talking Peace Festival, a month-long series of events designed to spark conversations about peace through creativity. Exhibition and auction information, and a full list of participating artists will be available on www.talkingpeacefestival.org.

Nifty Looking Glow in the Dark Paths

- Adam Clare

Saving energy is always a good thing, and sometimes that means turning out the streetlights. As a result, pathways go unlit and this can be problematic for cyclists and pedestrians. Enter a new surface treatment that glows in the dark for free night time illumination known as Starpath.

Seeing that local city councils were increasingly shutting off park lights at night to save money, Pro-Teq developed Starpath to maintain public safety without the financial and environmental costs of overhead lighting. It’s a common problem; in the U.S. for instance, cities generally count streetlights as their first or second biggest energy drains.

But the glow-in-the-dark spray also comes with additional benefits: Its non-reflective surface doesn’t seem to contribute to light pollution, which not only inhibits views of the nighttime sky, but can have dire consequences for local wildlife due to the constant illumination.

Overhead street lighting does provide one important benefit to urban parks, however, and that’s the deterrence of crime. It’s not yet known if Starpath would provide enough light to do the same.

Read more here.

Thanks to Fraser

Charlottetown Transforms a Street for People

- Adam Clare

Residents of Charlottetown, P.E.I. decided to make their city nicer, more sustainable, and more fun by transforming one of their streets from car-dominated to people-friendly. They’ve made a great video showing what they did and hopefully it’ll inspire other communities to realize that streets are for people and we should use public space to celebrate the public.

People were really excited to join in on the one-day project, says one participant in the video. “People would just be walking by and like, “Oh, what’s going on?” I would tell them, “We’re transforming a street, do you want to take part?” All of a sudden, they were grabbing paint or chalk.”

Thanks to Kathryn! Who found it Huffington Post.

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