Johnson, Mackenzie Smart Cities and Shared Streets

In 2012, Fab Lab Barcelona at IAAC created the Smart Citizen. The Smart Citizen is a project that ordinary citizens can use to gather information on their environment to make available to the public for community engagement and co-creation. This project has helped communities address environment problems in the air, soil, and sound pollution. The project connects citizens to their environment to create more effective relationships between resources, technology, communities, services and events in the urban environment.

The city of Leon has become a smart city with the deployment of a network of 400 sensors to monitor noise, mobility, and street lighting. The project includes 20 Urbiotica U-Sound sensors that continually monitor noise levels and alert about possible disturbances. This will help with the noise pollution within the city.

In Drachten, Netherlands Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer, has been redesigning lots of the roads in the city. He believed that traffic regulations allow people to not pay as much attention to what is happening around them. In a central crossroad in a shopping center there were no traffic signals, and no one had the right of way. This had significantly reduced the number of collisions in that intersection. He believes that having less regulations on the road increases personal responsibility and causes people to have to pay attention to their surroundings.

In Norrkoping, Sweden in 2004 an intersection near a college town was redesigned into a shared street. They replaced traffic lights and road indicators with a distinctive paving pattern that suited cyclists, pedestrians, and drives. The traffic there moves slower but is still used by thousands of cars daily. It has caused less congestions and accidents as well as increasing foot traffic.

In Seattle in 2014, Bell Street Park was opened. It was designed to encourage pedestrians, cyclists, and cars to share the space. They took the curbs out, added furniture, leveled the pavement, and removed car lanes. It created a space for people to gather around food trucks, equipment, and gardens. It has increased the property values in the area and has caused drivers to be more cautious in the area. They are currently planning more to add more shared streets to the city.