The work of pho­tog­ra­ph­er and film­mak­er Jan Dirk van der Burg shows trails: nar­row and unpaved paths cre­at­ed by being walked or rid­den over again and again. They fol­low the organ­ic move­ments of peo­ple who move through the world on foot or by bicy­cle. In this way, they call into ques­tion the sharply and clear­ly delin­eat­ed spaces cre­at­ed on the draw­ing board by infra­struc­ture and city plan­ners. Here, trails rep­re­sent resis­tance, small ges­tures of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. They protest against this will to order and design, which blan­kets every­thing and yet makes no sense in dai­ly life. They appear wher­ev­er the plan­ners of the still car friend­ly world did not reck­on with peo­ple who have a mind of their own.

Link to Audio guide

Sur­veil­lance cam­eras have become an inte­gral part of cityscapes in many parts of Europe. But cam­eras are not neu­tral com­pan­ions: every­thing goes into these devices and is trans­mit­ted. Some­one, some­where else, watch­es, eval­u­ates, process­es, analy­ses, and doc­u­ments it all. What else? We don’t know exact­ly, because much of it is kept under lock and key. Kyle McDon­ald wants to under­stand how new tech­nolo­gies affect or influ­ence us. He uploads video record­ings of pub­lic spaces onto the inter­net, reveal­ing what is nor­mal­ly only seen by oth­ers. Any­one can com­ment on what they see online: encoun­ters, argu­ments, rain, sun. Peo­ple become objects of enter­tain­ment, some­times amuse­ment. McDon­ald thus makes vis­i­ble how this ubiq­ui­tous media arma­ment is rapid­ly rel­e­gat­ing eth­i­cal questions—why who is allowed to see what and how—to the background.

Link to Audio guide

Every last Fri­day of the month, cyclists meet in both large and small cities to take to the streets in con­voy and as sheer mass. The prin­ci­ple of this gath­er­ing uses a rule of the road traf­fic reg­u­la­tions accord­ing to which a group of at least twelve cyclists is con­sid­ered a vehi­cle and can, there­fore, pass through a traf­fic light that turns red. Those who cycle in front decide where to go. The cyclists want to draw atten­tion to the fact that even today, the car-friend­ly city from the last cen­tu­ry is still a real­i­ty in many places. Thus, Crit­i­cal Mass is a peace­ful and sol­idary protest against the hege­mo­ny of motor­ized traf­fic in urban plan­ning worldwide.

Link to Audio guide

Whim is a con­cept designed to com­plete­ly rethink mobil­i­ty for the grow­ing Helsin­ki met­ro­pol­i­tan region. It is a result of broad-based coop­er­a­tion between stake­hold­ers from the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tors, as well as uni­ver­si­ties. The idea: an all-round ser­vice for the com­plex mobil­i­ty needs of every­one who uses the city. The plan: the devel­op­ment of a uni­ver­sal app for smart­phones, designed to make the use of many dif­fer­ent, main­ly shared, or more sus­tain­able trans­port offers eas­i­er, more intu­itive, and cheap­er. The imme­di­ate goal: to make choos­ing and using pub­lic trans­port as attrac­tive as pos­si­ble. In the long term, the tar­get is to abol­ish the pri­vate car.

Link to Audio guide

In Barcelona, the idea of the superblock—an urban area made up of sev­er­al small­er city blocks and bor­dered by large streets—has been rein­vent­ed in recent years. It promis­es solu­tions for cities with high emis­sion lev­els caused by motor­ized vehi­cles. The reduc­tion of traf­fic means that the val­ue of pub­lic spaces increas­es or that a space becomes tru­ly pub­lic for the first time, and exist­ing uses are increased or new ones made pos­si­ble. Six such superblocks have been real­ized in Barcelona to date. Fears that the retail trade would suf­fer as a result of reduced access for cars have not come true. Instead, the num­ber of trips made on foot or by bicy­cle have gone up and the air qual­i­ty has improved. In recent years, oth­er cities have also begun to imple­ment the mod­el since its poten­tial becomes appar­ent every­where when you look at the city from the per­spec­tive of those who walk instead of drive.

Link to Audio guide

The Mobile Zebra Cross­ing is a portable device that can be deployed when encoun­ter­ing unwieldy street sit­u­a­tions. Its pur­pose is to make it easy for pedes­tri­ans to tra­verse in places where there are no legal cross­ing options. How­ev­er, because of the size and cor­re­spond­ing weight of the car­pet-cross­ing, it can­not be used by one per­son alone. It takes many who must be will­ing to car­ry and roll. The cross­ing of an oth­er­wise uncross­able street con­se­quen­tial­ly becomes a col­lec­tive action, a kind of protest march. While this arti­fact may seem play­ful, it also points to the stub­born­ly per­sis­tent seg­re­ga­tion of var­i­ous groups in urban space. Cel­e­brat­ing the most sus­tain­able of all modes of trans­porta­tion, the Mobile Zebra Cross­ing engages in ques­tions about how a just city for pedes­tri­ans might look.

Link to Audio guide