According to the director of the Global Designing Cities Initiative at NACTO, their Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety offers “more safety for children, the elderly and the entire community in general”. Temporary street interventions have the power to transform the way people appropriate public space. This changes people’s relationships with the place and also with each other – it shows that it is possible to redesign streets by putting people first.

Pedestrians are the second largest group of fatal traffic accidents in Fortaleza, Brazil, registering a total of 31% of the total traffic fatalities in 2020. To turn the situation around the Municipality of Fortaleza, with the support of the Global Designing Cities Initiative, created a series of interventions from 2017 to 2022 to redesign multiple streets to make them safer for pedestrians and other vulnerable users.

One of the examples is the area of approximately 300 meters near the Dragão do Mar Center of Art and Culture, on Almirante Jaceguai Street in Fortaleza, Brazil, which was revitalized with the use of vibrant asphalt art, planters, benches and other low-cost urban furniture (photos 1, 2, 3). With this, pedestrians, children, seniors, and people with disabilities now have more space, better accessibility and road safety advocacy on streets.

As a result of the Cidade Da Gente project “for the eighth consecutive year, the city of Fortaleza, Brazil, reduced the number of deaths in traffic in 2022. The number has been decreasing since 2014, and over eight years, Fortaleza leaders have reduced the number of deaths in traffic by more than 50%” – graph on photo 2, GDCI.

Do you feel inspired by this project?

Photos by: @global.streets & @nactocities, Marcos Moura, Unifor