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0:01
We are all used to the streets of our cities being hectic, smelly and noisy. Always have been, always will be, right? It's up to us to find our way through the traffic. What other options do we have? More than half of us humans now live in cities that are getting ever more crowded.
0:22
But for generations, cities have been built for cars, not humans, causing traffic jams and pollution. Many cities are already very unhealthy, and the climate crisis could make them unlivable within our lifetime.
0:37
Japan is experiencing a record-breaking heatwave. India recently recorded its highest-ever temperature. Paris has just hit its highest-ever temperature.
0:48
Some people say we can rethink the cities we live in and make them better.
0:54
But what does that actually mean? How could we reclaim and reuse our own cities to make them cooler and cleaner and us happier and healthier?
1:08
We're about to see how some cities in Europe are finding solutions to their own urban issues:
1:16
The French capital Paris is experiencing a new revolution on its streets. We thought for two centuries that we were in the progress and that the future would be better than before, and now today we see it's completely reversed. You see it's a huge transformation, it's the Bastille. Before the cars were turning all around, but now you have a big pedestrian area. Barcelona in Spain is making the most of the city's unique design
1:56
And they’re learning a lot from this place: Groningen in the Netherlands. A lot of people like to see the car in front of their house. But what we do is ask people, "what kind of streets do you want?" And that is a question that still divides opinion among city-dwellers.
2:18
It's nice on the paper, it's a waste of time and money. What Paris would need would be less concept and more doers. How can we work to improve our cities if the benefits aren’t clear to everyone? The narrative should not be about "cars versus bikes". It should really be about the deeper values that people have.
2:43
You might think the Netherlands is too obvious a choice to start exploring people-friendly streets. But do you know how hard Dutch people had to fight for them? These moments of change have never been easy, and many people think that in the Netherlands this always was the case. But also in the Netherlands, it took radical change, like literally urban warfare in the 1970s, of people going to the street and demanding the streets back.
3:08
So, in the Netherlands, you had the movement that was called “Stop The Child Murders” in the 1970s, and that movement really managed to gather people to reclaim the streets, that at that time were really engineered towards providing more space for cars.
3:21
This is Marco te Brömmelstroet, aka "The Cycling Professor". He heads the faculty of Urban Mobility Futures at the University of Amsterdam, and mentors the next generation of urban planners in land use and mobility. What is missing in our current conversation about rethinking urban transportation planning? Marco also shares a lot of ideas on social media about how we use our cities.
3:48
The streets in our cities always were the remaining space between buildings. In that remaining space between buildings, everything happens. Social life happens. Trading happens. Children could play. People could meet. And people could travel through them. But this changed radically in the 1920s, one hundred years ago, and that was the pressure that was introduced by the motorized vehicle. Cars came in large numbers to that street and basically put pressure on the way
4:13
that we were thinking about the street and literally colliding with all these other purposes that were were happening in that space. And to respond to that, a whole new domain of thinking was introduced, So, traffic engineering was born in the 1930s and developed a language around seeing streets as places where people want to go as fast as possible as individuals. And because of that, it started to solidify into institutions and into laws, into behavior.
4:37
It solidified into concrete, asphalt and technology. And finally, it solidified our imagination. For we now take it for granted that we think about our streets as places that are primarily there for vehicular throughput.
4:51
In every city in the land, children are dodging traffic wheels at their play. Too frequently, their merry shouts are accompanied by the ominous clang of the ambulance bell. The combination of a ball, a bicycle, of roller skates and a city street represents a deadly menace to children’s safety. The way that we develop our streets with this logic makes our streets unsustainable, unlivable, unsafe and maybe even unjust. So, we don't think about streets as places in terms of justice.
5:17
And that's how we thought about them until the 1920s. They are no longer a place where our children can play or can find out how they autonomously can go through the city and become an adult citizen. And this is something that society now is slowly starting to realize is unacceptable. We need new narratives, and as soon as you start using them, we see that people suddenly start seeing the street for what it really is, and they start understanding that they have something to fight for.
5:41
I think there is a political or societal movement of people that are sort of waking up to this idea that you can actually tell different stories and narratives. Like, for instance, shifting from: "We are closing streets off for one day". Instead of that saying: "We are opening streets for one day". And suddenly we see what that does with people. And that people start realizing: "Oh, wait a minute, we have been accepting our language, our narratives about the streets.
6:05
What if we challenged them?" And I think that we see, globally, this movement slowly gathering momentum. And now what it needs is a couple of seeds of places that show what can happen if you really recapture that narrative. One person already planting seeds is Jan Kamensky. His animations invite the viewer to imagine how streets could look if space for cars were replaced with space for people. For Jan, sharing these utopian visions is a playful way to question how we think about our cities.
6:36
I no longer wanted to wait for the increasingly urgent social change, but to make a contribution myself. And as a communication designer, I decided to make streets without cars visible. And I realized that there was so much space to create and show possibilities of what we could do with the streets without cars. could do with the streets without cars.
7:07
Bicycles, or Fiets as the Dutch call them, are key to their sustainable city concept. We asked the Cycling Professor to explain how. The Netherlands and Amsterdam is a good example of what happens if cycling gets a respected place at the table of traffic engineering. What they show us is what happens if you take cyclists or human behavior as a central element in design, instead of ‘how can you make humans behave according to your design?’
7:33
And in Amsterdam, we have some places where we experimented with what happens if you eradicate the traffic light logic on an intersection?
7:50
So, this intersection was redesigned because there were so many cyclists compared to car drivers that the municipality considered what would happen if we take out the traffic lights. And the traffic lights actually ensured that car drivers could go through, but didn't really make it safer. So, they did a test. They took out the traffic lights, and one of the peculiar findings of the alderman that did it was:
8:09
If you take out the traffic lights, people start to behave like active citizens again. So, they are not looking at the lights, but they are looking at each other and negotiating with each other how to use the intersection.
8:22
Of course, Amsterdam could have turned out rather differently if they hadn’t blocked US-inspired city makeovers like the Jokinen Plan in the 1960s.
8:33
Other Dutch cities like Utrecht have been rolling back car-centric planning. Goodbye urban highway, welcome back original city canal!
8:47
Then there’s Groningen. It chose human-centered planning in the 70s and is now ranked as one of the happiest places in the world.
8:56
We met two of the people responsible for keeping it that way.
9:02
Back in the seventies, the center of Groningen was totally different than today. The central part of the city, the Grote Markt, our central square, was a place where cars drove around when you went from the south of Groningen to the north of the province. In the seventies, we decided that has to stop. We chose to make a city traffic plan where our center was divided in four parts, and it was not possible to move from one part to the other with the car,
9:25
only with foot or bike. It was a totally new concept of thinking about our city. We were one of the first cities in Europe to rethink the use of the city center.
9:42
The concept in Paris, I think, is the way we design our city already. The concept that in 15 minutes, you have to reach your work, your school. You reach your center, reach your shops. It's the way we designed, over the last 25 years, our city center. This example in Paris or in Groningen is very useful for a lot of cities in Europe, but also in the rest of the world. Now central Groningen has been calmed, city managers like Ingrid Bolhuis are turning their attention to the outskirts.
10:10
This is the Bedumerweg, a street with a very functional design. There are a lot of concrete lanes for the cars. There are side roads with a lot of car parking, and there are sidewalks with a lot of bicycle parking. So, we see a lot of opportunities for change. There are two neighborhoods which are divided by this road, so we want to bring the neighborhoods together for public space and make this an example for how the city could look.
10:41
You think of Groningen and the first thing you think is the prominent place of the bike and when you walk through the city center, but also through our neighborhoods, you see bikes everywhere. In Groningen, more than 60% of movements in our traffic is made by bike. Not the car, but the bike is the base when we make urban plans for traffic. So, I think that will be the next step in Groningen as the most bike friendly city of the world.
11:13
We're standing next to the smart route to our university campus in Groningen, and this route is an alternative for another cycling path next to a very busy road, and we wanted to give the cyclists an alternative. It's heavily used because there are normally 25,000 cyclists on this route a day. This is an example of an early ‘living street’. It was made years ago, in the nineties. People here wanted to have a greener, more livable street.
11:39
It used to look like a normal street with parking on one side. Now it's turned into this, so it's an example of how we want to do the rest of the city.
11:50
In Groningen we made a choice to make more space in our streets for green, more space for people. So, the consequence is that we have less space for cars, and that's not always an easy choice, because a lot of people in Groningen are dependent on the car. Also, a lot of people like to see the car in front of their house. But what we do is ask people: "What kind of streets do you want?" And that's a different question than: "Where do you want to park your car?"
12:13
Then everyone says: "Well, now, in front of our house and I don't want to pay for it!" That's what everyone who owns a car will say. We ask: "What kind of street do you want?" And a lot of people say, ‘Oh, we like to see a street where children can play, there are are some trees, where it's nice and easy to meet your neighbor". And when you start with that question, the discussion will change.
12:32
What if people in other cities were asked what kind of streets THEY want? With some cities, it’s easy to imagine a difference, as Jan points out. This is an animation in Brussels, and I use a historic postcard which is over 100 years old to show that city streets were possible without cars in the past and they will be possible in the future as well.
13:01
Now I had the idea to bring back the wideness into the city and to show the connection between humans and nature obviously is real, but we forgot about it. And yeah, this is a human friendly place again. Squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea and the mountains, Barcelona has the highest car density and one of the highest population densities in Europe. But thanks to a quirk of 19th century planning, this iconic European city is undergoing its own special transformation.
13:36
The city government wants to convert a million square meters of road surface into space for local people.
13:44
The city's unique grid pattern dates back to 1859 and the pre-car redesign by Illdefons Cerdà. This layout is the key to Barcelona's plans: Groups of individual blocks are closed to through traffic, but as in Groningen, they remain open for local use, and for commercial and emergency needs. Barcelona basically built their superblocks idea on that idea of Groningen of forty years ago. The idea that you can still allow car traffic to go everywhere as long as you lower the speeds of cars
14:16
and you don't allow through traffic. So much of that car traffic you will find is not necessary, and car traffic that is necessary can still go to places where they want to be. But as soon as you do that, you start unlocking that street for the people that live there. They suddenly realize how much space they actually reclaimed. How much space they now have to sit, to meet each other. And how much space and freedom the children suddenly have if there is no longer car traffic everywhere.
14:40
And that also frees up the parents, because they no longer have to chauffeur the children everywhere, because there is much less danger around. We visited a Superblock near the Sant Antoni market to see for ourselves. They're actually known locally as 'Superillas' or 'Super Islands', which seems to fit better. Their originator, Salvador Rueda, told us the goal was to cut traffic noise pollution without clamping down on car use.
15:53
A new generation in Barcelona is growing up knowing that the streets can belong to everyone, thanks to the BiciBus, or Bikebus. Every Friday the children cycle to school with traffic stopped on their route.
16:17
And on this cold winter's day in Barcelona, most people out and about were happy about the changes to their neighbourhood. I think it's great to have safe spaces outside, where you can hang out with people, or like me, read a book, and just enjoy the city.
16:59
Janet Sanz is Barcelona's deputy mayor for ecology, urbanism and mobility. She says the pilot projects' successes inspired her team to think bigger.
17:34
The government is prioritizing community participation, but vocal critics remain.
17:41
Olga runs a Porsche garage in downtown Barcelona, and misses the freedom to drive.
18:05
Nuria heads the Barcelona tourism association and isn't happy with the planning process.
18:36
Mònica Xufré leads a citizens group opposing tighter traffic laws, such as banning diesel cars made before 2006.
18:57
The city government is convinced it has enough public backing and is pushing on.
19:31
Marco te Brömmelstroet sees Barcelona facing the same debates as Dutch cities in the 70s and 80s. What we see in all these changes, and in general in change, is that people resist. We have to take that seriously because they resist because some people will lose something. Again, the example of children. Children have been losing their freedom for decades, but they don't have a voice. So the people that will currently lose... Well, first of all, their loss will be relatively small.
19:58
As we see from many examples. We still have to allocate the traffic required for people that really need it. But all the other things that are lost: The freedom to go through a city with your personal private vehicle as fast as possible... Yeah, you will lose that. But because of that, so many others and even yourself, you will win so much as well. And we need to unlock all these people that currently don't have a voice. The silent majority that's actually losing out already for decades.
20:24
Even in car-mad Germany, the narrative is shifting. But Jan Kamensky can find plenty of examples in his hometown of Hamburg in need of change.
20:46
So, we are now at the Holstenplatz in Hamburg, and 100 years ago, this already was a beautiful place. What we see now is a total mess. This place is dominated by cars and traffic, and with my animation I wanted to show a transformation into a human-friendly place, which is enjoyable for people.
21:11
Jan has also turned his utopian imagination to one of the largest, oldest cities in Europe, the one with the continent's highest population density. It's also a city that has come up with its own ideas of a livable city and has started turning the dream into reality: The French capital. Paris is so inspiring for us because it shows that if you develop a new narrative, It can actually convince people. But the narrative should not be about "cars versus bikes".
21:41
It should really be about the deeper values that people have. And the 15-minute city gives us this narrative. It talks about a meaningful life that is not requiring fast mobility. This means that the relation that citizens have with the streets, with the city and with each other can radically change. More about the 15-minute city later. First why. Anne Hidalgo became mayor of Paris in 2014 with her pledge to make the capital more livable.
22:08
Parisians were ready for change after years of deadly summer heat. In a period of six weeks from late July to the end of August, over 15 thousand people were killed in France by heat exhaustion, dehydration and heat stroke. Most of the dead were elderly. On one day alone, a day that’s now known as Black Monday, three thousand Parisians died. Dozens of schools will be closed in France on Thursday, with temperatures forecast to soar above 40 degrees Celsius. Paris has had its hottest day- ever
22:40
Climate scientists say such heatwaves are likely to become the new normal in the coming years.
22:46
Why should Paris be so under threat from rising temperatures? For Roxane Meigniez of the capital's Climate Academy, it's down to typical city design.
22:57
These heatwaves are more harsh in dense city centers such as Paris because of the urban heat island effect. Which is basically the fact that in city centers temperatures are higher than in the surrounding countryside. This effect is due to a variety of factors, and a lot of them can be linked to urban planning and how the city is evolving and is designed. In Paris especially, we have very narrow streets and often high buildings,
23:24
so the sun's rays reflect a lot on various surfaces and that accentuates the increasing temperatures. This also means that you have less wind, and we need wind for cooling effects. Green areas and water bodies are quite scarce in urban settings and in Paris in particular, so it adds to the heat effects. Of course, heat emissions that are directly due to human activities such as the emissions from vehicles, from industries, many of these causes can be tackled by different urban planning.
23:56
It's now 8 years since Anne Hidalgo launched her revolutionary project. We asked some Parisians what they had noticed. I don't think there are less cars, but I think there are more bikes. Obviously if you build more bike lanes, there will be more bikes. It's not that if you have more bikes, you have to build more bike lanes. It's the other way around. If you build them, bikes will come, and maybe in a few years, there will be less and less cars,
24:22
and it's obvious that you just can't take your car for five minutes. So yes, I think it's completely possible. Few people in Paris are better placed to talk about bikes than Altis, a cyclist who broadcasts his rides live on Twitch and keeps his large social media following up to date with the changes. Altis took us on a bike ride to see what had happened to the streets of Paris over the last 8 years.
24:48
There you can see a lot of yellow on the road, it kind of means: "Experiment". They are not sure if they are going to leave it like that. They're just testing whether it works or not. If it works, they make the change. Sometimes it doesn't work, and they do something else. Here we are in Rivoli. You can see now that all of this space is now for riding by bike. Before, it was just cars everywhere. They started by adding this little lane, and afterwards, they expanded to this place.
25:16
So now it's a very nice place to ride.
25:40
So here we are in La Bastille. You have to imagine before, all of this place was for cars. Cars would pass and turn all around the square. Nobody could really walk or live here. Now they have removed that and you can just enjoy this place for living now.
26:03
So here you can see we are close to the Seine. This place was only for cars. Now traffic has been completely cut and only pedestrians and cyclists can use this space, so it's bringing a lot of life.
26:25
The '15-minute City' idea was developed by urban planner Carlos Moreno to give Paris a solid ecological, economic and social foundation in future.
27:44
So, if the '15-Minute City' idea is a cornerstone of the current plans to transform Paris for good, you'd expect the city to be abuzz with talk about it, right? Er, no. First time I've heard of ‘15 Minutes’. No, I don't know the project ‘15-Minute City’. I don't know that project. I don't know the ‘15-Minute City’ concept. I mean, this thing is just for communication. It was a good concept, but it doesn't mean anything. "15 Minutes" in Paris, what does it mean? I don't know.
28:15
They closed the street recently to cars, so now it's open to kids or people like me doing skateboard. Yes, it is positive for the neighborhood. It's the very beginning of something. I think it's not much yet, but it's the beginning. And there are other beginnings. A two hundred- and fifty-million-euro makeover of the Champs-Élysées. We spoke to the architect entrusted with breathing new life into the heart of the capital. Paris is an old European city, and like most cities,
28:48
in the 70s it was overwhelmed with cars The case of the Champs-Élysées is an interesting example of this problem. It's a very symbolic area in Paris, very famous. Yet the incredible thing is that the Parisians hate this area. Why? Because it's an area that used to be, for the past century, a place where you would go for a walk, with your children. It was a nice moment, it was the most elegant avenue in Paris, that local people loved...
29:12
And we figured out that for 20 years, no one wanted to go there - except tourists. The car, or course, is one of the key problems to give this space back to people and pedestrians, because all of this has been treated as a highway entering Paris with two times four lanes going up and down. And you have the pavement, Parisian style, that is very noisy. So, if you go to the Champs-Élysées today, it's like "brrrrrr". It's one of the noisiest places in Paris.
29:40
Reducing the role of the car and getting this space accessible to people is one first action. Of course, we cannot completely ban cars. It's a big debate in Paris. The mayor has been banning cars from the Seine River. There has been a lot of political conflict about that. So, I think we have to be careful to be a bit scientific about that, and less ideological. So that's very important, we want to be very methodological and scientific and not fighting pro or against cars.
30:10
The other aspect that we also want to introduce is understanding better the way nature in the city works as an ecosystem. The planet's changing, we're going to have a lot of warm spots in Paris. And this avenue is a very hot spot. So how can you use natural elements to cool down the city? But that is a simple conclusion to a larger and more scientific study which is to say: "How can we have tomorrow the scientific knowledge to reduce our carbon footprint on Earth
30:38
that works for all the cities, because that's where 85 per cent of the damage is done on 2 per cent of the surface of the planet. Changing the city is not something you do overnight. This vision that we propose is starting in 2025 and is maybe going to be done in 2035.
30:56
It might sound like Paris is taking the long view, but for a city that counts its age in millennia, 15-20 years is a very short spin of the wheel. Much depends on whether the people of Paris are ready to support this latest revolution on their streets.
31:15
Barcelona's overcome early opposition to score some quick wins, but here too, the hardest work is still to come. 50 years after starting to reclaim their streets, Dutch cities such as Amsterdam and Groningen must still work hard to put humans ahead of cars. What will other cities do about their automotive love affair? While individual vehicles choke our streets, pedestrian activity and bicycle use can be rare and unsafe. Can people living in the megacities of the 21st Century
31:48
expect policymakers to tackle pollution and mitigate climate change? The best time reclaim our streets was yesterday, but I think the second-best time is today. And it is so important because many challenges that we face as society in terms of global sustainability, but also local livability can no longer be solved if we do not reclaim our streets as public spaces. Places that there not only to support the throughput of vehicles but to support the thriving of our societies.
32:18
We'll leave the last word to Jan and the dangers of greenwashing our traffic problems away.
32:25
If you've got this far - thanks for watching! Please tell us in the comments about living in your city, and make sure to like and subscribe to REV if you want to see more films like this!
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