Pasos Seguros (Safe Paths) is a project that took place in 2019 in Montería (Colombia), supported by the @bid_ciudades . They started redesigning their urban landscape, recovering urban space, and prioritizing pedestrians over cars.

The connection between the pedestrian area and bike lanes of the historic centre and the big park next to the Sinú river was fragmented by the roadway ‘’Avenida Primera’’. With this project, some creative solutions were proposed for 3 different intersections, implementing finally the experiment in the intersection with the street 32. This way, security and road safety education were promoted as well as urban inclusion.

Pasos Seguros not only brings more accessibility to the public spaces and road security for the active modes, but also suggests a green pathway. Citizen participation and engagement was key, integrating for example the local culture (‘’porro’’ dance and the ‘’vueltiao hat’’) in the geometric composition.
Tactical urbanism remains as a quick reaction tool for the urban challenges that the cities face continuously and helps us designing new public spaces able to cover the needs of everyone.
After the experiment evaluation, the citizens of Pasos Seguros felt empowered and learned about what type of streets they want.

And you? How do you think streets should be?

Photos by: BID ciudades sostenibles, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana