BMW: Activate the Future

Each Tuesday throughout the month of February, BMW released one segment of a four-part documentary entitled Wherever You Want to Go. The film covers topics including how the changing shape of our cities will determine how we move through them, what we can learn from airplanes and astronauts, and how keeping mobility fun is essential to transforming our transportation system. Commentators include Lawrence Burns, author of "Reinventing the Automobile," Robin Chase, Founder of Zipcar, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin. Watch the documentary below (all four parts together are about 25 minutes long).

Part 1: The New City



Part 2: The Future Just Isn't What it Used to Be



Part 3: Reinventing Mobility



Part 4: How We'll Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Future



For more information about the film, visit the BWM Documentaries website.

Follow Up: Times Square and the Cheonggyecheon River

Last July I profiled efforts by city officials to deconstruct automobile-centric urban design and reclaim these spaces for pedestrian use. Two of these projects, the conversion of Times Square to the world's most famous patio (complete with lawn furniture) and the daylighting of the Cheonggyecheon River in Seoul, South Korea, are supreme representations of the power of place.

The first video below describes pedestrian reactions to the transformation of Times Square, as well as the motivations on the part of NYC transportation officials and Mayor Bloomberg to make the drastic change. It also includes striking before and after shots of the automobile-dominated streets in 2005 and the pedestrian-only block it became last summer:



In this second video, urban designers comment on what the daylighting of Cheonggyecheon means for the people of Seoul, and how the creation of public space reshuffles the urban transportation hierarchy and forms the "glue that keeps the city together":