Make space for people

The corona virus locked us in our houses, but not for long anymore. From Lahore over Texas to Helsinki, people can’t wait to reclaim the streets. Global movement #makespaceforpeople believes that its time to decolonize the city of cars. They have our support!

#makespaceforpeople is a global movement, with its roots in Brussels, advocating for more space for people during - to enable physical distancing - but also after the Covid-19 crisis.

Merely two Facebook posts in an Urbanism & Placemaking group. That’s all it took for over 240 people (and counting) from Lahore, Sydney, NYC, Texas, Helsinki, Budapest, Brussels, London, Vienna, the Philippines and many more to join the movement as #makespaceforpeople Ambassadors.

People from all over the world with a variety of profiles, going from trained urbanists & architects to activists, enthusiasts, students but all of them sharing the same dream: Redistribute the space that was colonized by cars, so people can move in active and safe ways through their local cities.

After the first video conference, #makespaceforpeople Ambassador Kick-Off meeting, the expectations and needs of all the different members became clear and could be summarized in three objectives:

• Exchange knowledge, experiences & good/bad practices about their local reality
• Build a repository/collection/book that collects information on (Tactile) Urbanism and Urban Activism
• And last but definitely not least was the need to learn how to set up creative and effective actions/campaigns to push our policymakers to take the much needed steps towards redistributing the public space.

In the next days, different task forces will be created depending on the skills and interests of the Ambassadors. Furthermore, due to the difficulty to perform collective, physical actions in public space, the activism will rely mostly on combining online activism with creative actions, transforming photos from different cities into an attractive visual illustrating the need for more space for people. It goes without saying that more creative actions will emerge in the next few weeks. (Check out the first video from Brussels!)  To be continued…

Want to join? You can like and follow the Facebook page, send your own pictures into the stratosphere of good or bad practices of people cueing in the streets with #makespaceforpeople or become involved in the Facebook group.

Links:
#makespaceforpeople FB group
Make Space for People Page