It is said of the person who has lost everything that he has to sleep under a bridge.
A few decades ago, gates, spikes and pylons began to proliferate that did not even allow the unfortunate people to try to survive under bridges.
However, it seems that things are changing.
More and more cities are considering taking advantage of these often neglected places - the shady area under the walkway - to build community leisure areas.
Beyond giving identity to these “non-places”, the City Councils try to try formulas that reconcile all the inhabitants of the city - adolescents and the elderly, drivers and pedestrians - and also seek to densify cities to avoid the expansion that enlarges the cities. distances and makes the use of the car more necessary.
To improve without growing, the harshness of the
skate
parks
facilitated a first use of those neglected spaces in the city.
It happened for example in the port of Melbourne, in Australia, and also in the heart of Vancouver.
In the Canadian city, the recent announcement of the disappearance of the viaducts - scheduled for 2021 - made the
skaters
, the users of the park, fear for their disappearance.
What they did then was inform themselves.
And that simple citizen gesture caused the City Council to launch a double proposal: it would improve the facilities until its transfer (presumably in 2021) and, at the same time, it would look for a nearby place of similar dimensions to relocate the infrastructure that the skaters used with the promise of a life not less than five years.
Skatepark in Downtown Vancouver (Canada).
Skateparktour
Examples such as Vancouver, low-cost but extremely close and caring, have been happening in Nashville (Tennessee), in Melbourne, in Seattle and in Madrid - during the period when Manuela Carmena was mayor.
In West Java, Indonesia, under the Pasupati Highway, the Shau team of architects built the Taman Film park (made of artificial grass) demonstrating in Bandung that, in addition to living in desperation, it can be enjoyed under a bridge.
The initiative came from the mayor of the city.
Ridwan Kamil wanted to take advantage of the dead spaces that remained under the large infrastructure.
He gave each architect a theme and a request: that they take advantage of the topography, that they build a space for games and that they also set up an
all'aperto
cinema
to show films.
The success has been dazzling.
Taman Park is a contagion-proof cinema, and the artificial grass pavement helps maintenance.
How?
Users remove their shoes to enter.
In the end, the end of the world is not under the bridge.
Many footbridges on the planet hide urban spaces that have been converted into living rooms for living together.