Vía: techinsider.io

Urb-i

Cities are built for humans. But if you look at the layout of most of them, it looks like they’re made for cars. Especially in the world’s most populated places. In São Paulo, Brazil — which boasts more than 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 (short for Urban Ideas) 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.The project draws attention to how simple changes from car-oriented to pedestrian- and people-oriented design can dramatically realign our perceptions of public space, and our ability to use it.

Examples of public space transformation from car-oriented to pedestrian friendly. Viewed through google streetview. The gallery is constantly growing, and using the interactive world map, you can search for street transformations all over the world.

“We hope to inspire people and make it clear that it is a necessity to make cities more livable and pedestrian orientated,” said Yuval Fogelson, one member of the four-person team at Urb-i.  “We hope to help form the opinions of people in the discussion of the transformation of the public space, that after all belongs to all of us.”

Urb-i

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