wUrk architectuur, stedenbouw en landschap made the Vestdijk in Eindhoven greener

During the last Dutch Design Week in 2019 I was impressed by how the Vestdijk street in Eindhoven changed from a car street into a walking and #biking street full of trees and colurful plants? They people call it a “street”park nowadays.

It’s very inspiring how Eindhoven, together with the Rotterdam based wUrck architecture urban landscape, transformed a gray city street into a green, lively living room. The greening makes the city more #climate-proof and #nature-inclusive. And just as important, the greening ensures that people are tempted to take this route by bike and to go for a walk here. People meet. Social cohesion is strengthened.

We invited Gijs Wolf from wUrck and Samuel van de Vijver (urbanist at city of Antwerp) and others to show us at the DDM2021 next year how they can make the Beukelsdijk and Beukelsweg in Rotterdam greener, safer, more accessible and socially stronger. See also this post from augustus 2018.

The most beautifull transformation is for me the transformation of downtown Broadway in 2010. In that time Michael R. Bloomberg was the mayor of New York . In the past I organised there a few times an illegal cannonball style bicycle race whereby participants had to cycle as fast as possible over Broadway from Marble Hill to Holland Park during Rush Hour. It was a lot of fun but sometimes very dangerous.  After the turned big parts of Broadway into parks it was impossible to go on with that race but the result is awesome as you can see below. See also the slider below.