Where in the world is…

compiled weekly by Brittany Morris

ART

• Copenhagen. Helsinki. Tokyo. Montreal. Melbourne. Since the first Nuit Blanche all-night art festival in Paris in 2002 cities around the world have taken part in this creatively expressive event. Last week’s Nuit Blanche in Toronto transformed the city into an open art gallery.
• Bringing meaning to place, Wolfstrome connects people to community through communication and cultural placemaking. Wolfstrome’s Lightwriting in Durham, England is a recently-awarded installation that expresses a place-specific narrative through typography and information design using public art as the medium.

PLACEMAKING

• If you found yourself in La Paz on the first Sunday of September this year you would have noticed something missing on the streets – and not just on one or two main avenues – you wouldn’t have seen a single car on the road between 9am and 6pm in this South American city that touches the clouds. Turning streets into soccer pitches, the fourth annual Day of the Pedestrian and Cyclist reclaimed the public streets of La Paz and neighbouring El Alto for pedestrians and cyclists. See it in photos and words here.
• São Paulo-based non–profit Bela Rua creates projects to transform ordinary public spaces in Brazil’s metropolis’ into colourful places that inspire good moods and community.
• Every first Sunday of the month in Amsterdam, urban citizens ‘adopt’ benches to craft a shared public space offering anything from a slice of pie to salsa lessons; creating what the organizers BankjesCollectief call “the largest outdoor café in the world.”
• Have you ever waited at a bus stop for what seems eternity and often devoid of conversation, imagining how much better waiting for the bus could be? Project for Public Spaces had, and transformed Pittsburgh’s bus stops into vibrant public spaces through placemaking and community engagement collaborations.

NATURE IN THE CITY

• From Mr. Rogers to Jane Jacobs, neighbourhoods are often the living room of a city. Read about why neighbourhoods matter for city-building and creating resilient and liveable cities, and where we are going wrong here.
• Working towards 20% more urban green space in Australia by 2020, the 202020 Vision campaign advocates the need to include more trees and plants in city design and the Australian urban landscape.