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GDCI marks this World Children's Day with the release of two new booklets, “How to Engage Kids in Street Design” and “How to Evaluate Street Transformations Near Schools.”
The Plazoletas Bogotá Program continues to provide safer streets for people across the city. Two new interim Plazoletas are now under construction, to be inaugurated in January 2020!
Within an ambitious city-wide vision to promote road safety and sustainable mobility, the City of Fortaleza, Brazil, took another major step towards making its streets safer and more walkable—this time, in the heart of the city’s commercial center.
Under BIGRS, the MCGM and Mumbai Traffic Control Branch (MTCB), with the support of the Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), is carrying out this transformation work to increase pedestrian safety while making traffic flow more efficient, around the busy transportation hub.
On August 17, 2019, the interim intervention was launched with programmed activities throughout the day. The team led a walk-through of the site, hosted an outdoor Zumba class in the newly created plaza, and invited a local music school to perform.
In June, our team attended the MOBILIZE Summit and facilitated a tactical urbanism workshop. Attendees helped transform an intersection, contributing to a larger low-speed zone project in the neighborhood of Praia de Iracema. Using low-cost materials, the redesign includes curb extensions that are proven solutions to reduce speeds for cars and increase safety for all road users while enhancing the public space.
The Borough of Penha, GDCI, and the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS) are working together to develop the design and program for each Car-Free Friday event.
Two squares in Milan invaded by parked cars get a complete makeover into pedestrian-priority spaces thanks to tactical urban design.
In late 2017, the GDCI team partnered with city officials, the Albert Sabin Children’s Hospital, the World Resources Institute (WRI), and Vital Strategies, through the Bloomberg Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), to transform the safety of the streets surrounding the hospital. This area, in Fortaleza, Brazil, is now equipped with safe pedestrian infrastructure that has reduced the number of people walking on the roadbed by 86%, and greatly improved accessibility to the hospital.
The City of Fortaleza, Brazil, launched a new Cidade da Gente (City of People) project in Dragão do Mar in August 2018. City contractors and local volunteers applied bright colors and bold patterns to the 5,000 square meter site over three days, and used 1,000 liters of paint to improve the streets’ geometry. The redesign makes streets safer and brings revived life and energy to the neighborhood.
Bogotá recently took another step towards creating safer, sustainable, and more inclusive streets by officially launching the Plazoleta Program which aims to create pedestrian plazas by reclaiming underutilized spaces all over the city.
As we approach the 2018 Road Safety Week in Mumbai, India, we decided to revisit GDCI's collaboration with MCGM and MTP from last year, where a week-long trial and Mithchowki in Malad, was conducted to reclaim ~1650 sq.m of underutilized roadbed on the street for pedestrians and support a space that is more legible for all users.
Urban residents have long practiced a form of tactical urbanism: repurposing underutilized places using temporary materials and transforming them into more dynamic public spaces.
