Paris has taken urban sustainability to the next level with the most recent addition to its team of municipal workers. Rather than investing in another fleet of gas-guzzling lawn mowers, the city has acquired four large sheep to take care of its green spaces. Known as “eco-grazing”, the sheep won’t just be mowing the city’s lawns — they’ll be fertilizing them too!
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We sure do love city-related apps. Some of them are for common and community good, some others are just for fun, others are both. Combining street art with crowd-sourcing, 1AM Mobile is such an app. This new, free community-driven photography application developed by San Francisco-based First Amendment Gallery aims to present the world’s street art on one platform.
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Sander Vandenbroucke’s fantastic film Brussels Express is a short documentary that explores the trials and tribulations experienced by the first bike messengers in Brussels, Europe’s most car-congested city. With colourful racing caps, stylish shoulder bags and speedy road bikes, Karl-Heinz Pohl and Karel Rowies of Pedal BXL aren’t just passionate about their innovative Brussels business: they are dedicated bicycle advocates in Brussels, a city overrun by cars and frozen in gridlock.
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Have you seen the Mobiators roaming around Amsterdam? It’s likely you’ve encountered urban nomads before, but you probably quickly shrugged them off as punks, hippies, architecture students or circus performers just doing their thing.
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In order to further improve bicycle culture and infrastructure, the urban authorities in Zürich teamed up with a team of designers to launch a true coffee drive-in for cyclists.
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We’ve all been there. Our coffee maker, printer, or blender brakes, and it costs way less to buy a new one then to go through all the trouble of fixing it. Responding to this incredibly wasteful phenomenon and the volume of raw materials and energy needed to produce and transport new goods, Martine Postma, an environmental activist in the Netherlands created the world’s first Repair Cafe.
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Spring is late in Amsterdam this year, but we can finally see some greenery around the city. Let’s go outside for some urban foraging! Plants growing on the sidewalks that are either an urban wildlife or belong to someone (be it public or individual) may come out to be a great source for your daily nutrients. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, nuts or even snails are only some of the products that one can harvest and enjoy for free.
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Everyone can turn their home into a little private restaurant with EatWith, a new web-based service that enables people to rent our their kitchen table to strangers. EatWith gives travelers the opportunity to eat with a local in their homes and experience local culinary traditions. As the founders explain, “being a guest in someone’s home is a great way to get an authentic local perspective in a different city or country”. And that’s what every modern traveler wants, right?
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We’ve always been passionate about modular and flexible furniture concepts that allow for multiple functions. Here we’ve got another great example that combines two apparently incompatible functions. Industrial designer Darryl Agawin came up with ‘No, Sweat!’, a piece of office furniture that completely converts into a gym set-up. The three-element workspace furniture set that can be easily changed when one’s in desperate need of a work-out.
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To celebrate our fifth birthday we’re hosting The Pop-Up City Live, an experimental and colorful night for urban innovators at De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam on Tuesday May 21st in which we will bring The Pop-Up City to life on stage. We’re happy to give away three pairs of tickets to our readers!
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