Interim Plazas in the Land of Piazzas
Two squares in Milan invaded by parked cars get a complete makeover into pedestrian-priority spaces thanks to tactical urban design.
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In 2023, ten cities across four continents started designing their streets for kids. Collectively, the cohort reclaimed over 40,000 SqM of public space that prioritizes children and caregivers, engaged over 4,000 children in the process, and trained 140 practitioners.
Two squares in Milan invaded by parked cars get a complete makeover into pedestrian-priority spaces thanks to tactical urban design.
GDCI has developed an educational tool focused on the Streets for Kids (SfK) program, which looks at cities through the lens of children and their caregivers.
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.
The NACTO Designing Cities Conference brings together 800 officials, planners, and practitioners to advance the state of transportation in cities. Join us in Los Angeles on October 1 – 4!
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.
GDCI was featured in Landscape Architecture Frontiers Magazine [April 2018]
GDCI published an article on the Global Street Design Guide in Polis' Thinking Cities magazine.
GDCI Newsletter provides updates on our cities work, events, upcoming webinars, featured projects, articles, street shapers, and much more.
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.
Our network of global experts made invaluable contributions to the Global Street Design Guide (GSDG), and we are now looking to establish an expert-network to support the production of the Streets For Kids GSDG supplement.
Urban residents have long practiced a form of tactical urbanism: repurposing underutilized places using temporary materials and transforming them into more dynamic public spaces.