Initiatives / Experiments / Visions
Highway to well
Author Name
Vlad RADAProfession
StudentCo-authors (team members)
Henrietta KOVACS, Margareta Gabriela LUCA, Natalia Sara LUCA, Flavia MĂRGINEAN, Flavius MITACollaborators (team members)
UrbanizeHubLocation
Timișoara, România
Project description
The project was born and developed within the Urban Mobility Lab 2020 hackathon organised by UrbanizeHub. It approaches the problem of weakly connected and poorly maintained pedestrian routes in the city of Timișoara. The neighbourhoods around the central nucleus, including historical neighbourhoods with great touristic potential like Fabric and Iosefin, have unsatisfactory pedestrian connections with the Cetate quarter. The further we go from the centre, the more serious the problem is. Since the city has been designated the European Culture Capital 2023 new and better pedestrian connections are required, as there is expected an important influx of tourists. We have come up with a model for identifying, designing and implementing possible new pedestrian routes and a visionary strategy applied to Timișoara. We have chosen, as the starting point of this strategy, an elevated segment of the rail line that goes around the city centre, along which a pedestrian mobility corridor would be generated. This should be achieved by cleaning and grooming the area and installing some light, reversible structures that would sustain a wooden deck. The idea would go through a testing period within a pilot project. After this period passes, and if the idea proves its viability, the structure could be easily further expanded along the railway and on several other routes that we have identified and included in the general strategy. The larger vision behind this strategy is that of a city traversed by these pedestrian highways, where this transport method is prioritised.
Author's presentation text
We are a group of students, spontaneously formed within the competition organised by UrbanizeHub during the autumn of 2020. We formulated and elaborated this idea during the two days of competition when we managed to coordinate and to obtain a satisfactory outcome, even though it was the first time when we worked together. The real, tangible perspective that we could influence the future of the city and actively participate in remodelling it made us approach the subject with high enthusiasm and collaborative capacity.
