pedestrians: The Latest Architecture and News

Situated in one of the fastest-developing regions over the past decade—the southern part of China, including Hong Kong and the Greater Bay Area—urban growth has been driven by an overwhelming wave of commercial ambition. Projects here are often designed for maximum density, height, and efficiency, resulting in developments of enormous scale that can easily span several acres. Prioritizing transit-oriented development, these complexes frequently take the form of sprawling malls built directly above major transportation hubs. Designed to disorient and prolong foot traffic to encourage economic activities, these mega-structures have become commonplace in cities like Hong Kong and Shenzhen.

While this typology of megastructures offers clear advantages—economic efficiency, high development returns, and convenience for transit users—it almost invariably ignores its urban context and environment. These developments often turn a blind eye, deliberately so, to their environmental footprint and the city's walkability. At such overwhelming scales, the human walking experience is diminished, if not outright neglected. Pedestrians become interiorized—trapped within the insulated world of these complexes.

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MVRDV has just announced the WärtZ masterplan, that repurposes a former business park near the railway station into a dynamic innovation hub. Developed by AM and designed by a team including MVRDV, Orange Architects, and LOLA Landscape Architect, the scheme introduces residential homes, creative workspaces, dining establishments, and various neighborhood amenities. At the core of the new design is the newly renovated Wärtsilä hall, a former factory redesigned with a signature undulating roof topped by a hovering wooden apartment block.

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Cities are the bedrock of civilization. For millennia, they have attracted people with the promise of superior standards of living — from better economic and educational opportunities to easier access to quality public infrastructure such as housing, healthcare, and public transport. Today, however, many cities around the world are finding it challenging to live up to this promise. With urban migration accelerating at a dizzying rate – the United Nations projects that over two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities or urban centers by 2050 – existing resources and services in cities are coming under increasing pressure, rendering them dysfunctional and leading to glaring inequities.

There is no singular way to define or assess liveability; every city has a unique set of characteristics, from its history, culture, geography, and demographics, to how it is governed and what urban issues plague it. Therefore, improving liveability requires concerted efforts from multiple stakeholders including people, governments, and experts, to identify critical problem areas and opportunities, and devise contextual solutions. The TV show Tale of Two Cities, where Indian architect and urbanist Dikshu C. Kukreja sits down with global leaders, brings out great insights into what some major cities in the world are doing to create more liveable environments for their inhabitants. Here we present five examples: from Bogotá, Kolkata, Hannover, Tirana, and Washington, D.C.

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“Economic shocks, climate change, and COVID-19 have changed transportation systems in a fundamental way. We can’t waste a crisis. We can increase access to transportation while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We can achieve more mobility with fewer impacts,” argued Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute (WRI), at the 20th annual Transforming Transportation conference. For two days, global leaders reflected on the state of transportation systems worldwide at the hybrid event in Washington, D.C., which was also watched by tens of thousands online. The event was co-organized by WRI and the World Bank.

Transportation still accounts for 25 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and up to 30 percent of emissions in developed countries. Transportation is a diverse sector that includes sidewalks, bikes, cars, buses, trains, subways, ships, and planes.

This article was originally published on Common Edge.

Covid has been particularly hard on cities: downtown business districts are still struggling due to the shift to remote work; some cities have seen population declines; and crime has spiked virtually everywhere. In addition, the pandemic pushed more people into cars, setting back the safe streets movement. After years of progress, cities like New York City saw big increases in pedestrian deaths. This is a nationwide problem—with one notable exception: Jersey City recently announced that no one died on its city streets in 2022, meeting its Vision Zero plan for the city. The milestone was the result of years of work by the city and its collaborator, Street Plans, a planning firm founded by Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia. Lydon, a DPZ alum and co-author of the 2015 book Tactical Urbanism (currently being updated), began working with Jersey City on a whole raft of initiatives six years ago. I spoke with Lydon last week and asked him, specifically, how the city and he did it.

From smartphones to space rockets and self-driving cars, the power of technology in this modern digital era is enormous (and practically limitless). It has impacted every aspect of our lives and will continue to open up endless possibilities that today we cannot even begin to fathom. When applied in a socially and environmentally responsible way, technology has the power to enhance productivity, communication and sustainability, enabling global communities to function efficiently, addressing people’s everyday needs and improving their quality of life. Simply put, good technology serves humanity. And just as the healthcare or manufacturing industries have taken advantage of this, the architecture, design and construction world cannot fall behind.

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It is expected that by 2050, the rapid depletion of raw materials will leave the world without enough sand and steel to build concrete. On the other hand, the cost of building continues to soar, with an increase between 5% and 11% from last year. And with respect to its impact on the environment, the construction industry still accounts for 23% of air pollution, 50% of the climatic change, 40% of drinking water pollution, and 50% of landfill wastes. Evidently, the construction industry, the environment, and the human race are facing several challenges that are influenced by one another, but it is the human being who is at the greatest disadvantage.

As a response to global challenges such as climate change, discrimination, and physical vulnerability, designers and engineers from across the world have developed innovative construction materials that put the human wellbeing first in urban, architecture, and interior projects.  

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UNStudio has unveiled images of the first finished stations on the new Doha Metro Network, one of the most advanced and fastest driverless systems in the world. Phase one of the Qatar Integrated Railway Project (QIRP), involved the construction of three metro lines (Red, Green, and Gold), with 37 stations currently having been completed.

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With a very bold and pioneering move, the UK for the first time is prioritizing cyclists and pedestrians. The city is making pressures on skyscrapers by issuing new rules on the design of the high-rises in order to prevent the creation of wind tunnels.

Clay Cockrell, a psychotherapist from New York (where there are so many psychotherapists that they could have their own neighborhood) takes her sessions outdoors. These sessions specifically entail walking, in places like Central Park or Battery Park, or wherever else the client prefers to go, as the location of the consultation is totally flexible. Though her method and fees are relatively similar to any other psychotherapist, the one marked difference is the environment in which the doctor-patient interaction takes place. The typical sofa, leather chair, Persian rug and prop library are all replaced with the street´s pavement, gravel or the park where the patient chooses to go.

Walking is much more than covering a certain distance by foot. It is also one of the most basic tools to achieve what is commonly referred to as “clearing the mind.” Walking is a free resource, easily accessible and almost always available, and facilitates the return to a calmer world where the mind can make connections free of interferences with the body, and the body, in turn, can connect with the ground that it walks on and the environment it is surrounded by.

Pedestrians, the most vulnerable users of road space, will now be more visible to drivers in the Netherlands with the inauguration of a new luminous pedestrian crossing this past November in Brummen, west of Amsterdam.

Designed by the Dutch firm Lighted Zebra Crossing, and installed free of charge for the municipality, this crossing makes pedestrians more visible at night or during bad weather. Each of the lines has two plates of lights that at night remain illuminated at all times and not only when there are people on them.

Over the last few years, the way Americans move around has changed remarkably, especially among young people. Previously the automobile was people’s preferred, if not the only, option. Now they are choosing to walk, bike, or use public transport according to recent studies.

This difference in preferred transportation methods has generated many benefits not only for residents but also for cities, in both economic and social terms. 

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Shade isn't hard to find in Jerusalem's Vallero Square, thanks to these giant urban flowers designed by HQ Architects that bloom in the presence of pedestrians. "Warde," as the installation is called, is a set of four inflatable flowers at the entrance of the city's market square and adjacent tram station that "open up" whenever pedestrians walk by or the tram is approaching.

With the construction of their High Line-adjacent residential building 520 West 28th Street, Zaha Hadid Architects have constructed a temporary construction shelter to protect pedestrians in the event of any falling construction materials. However, as is often the case with Zaha Hadid designs, this is a construction shelter unlike any other, serving as a protective shelter but also as an artistic installation.

Named Allongé, the installation is "is inspired by the connectivity and dynamism of movement along the High Line," allowing visitors to the High Line to move through 34 meters (112 feet) of sweeping metallic fabric supported by a curvilinear steel frame, offering a spatial experience that foreshadows the presence of Hadid's building at the site.

In this TEDxTalk, the follow up to his popular TED Talk, "The Walkable City," urban planner Jeff Speck delves more deeply into his "General Theory of Walkability." The theory maintains there are four ground rules for increasing pedestrian traffic in urban areas: walking must be safe, comfortable, interesting, and - most importantly - there must be a reason to walk in the first place. Counterpointing this with America's fixation with accommodating the automobile, Speck shows us how beneficial a pedestrian city can be, both functionally and aesthetically.