Open Call: Street Moves 2

What would our streets look like if they were not designed with cars as the focal point? The innovative project ‘Street Moves’ is seeking designers and design teams to lead the transformation of our public street spaces. Through this Open Call, three teams will be selected to explore site-specific methods and innovative street solutions.

Street Moves is run by ArkDes and funded by Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, as part of the mission to make all Swedish streets sustainable, healthy, and full of life by 2030. Sweden aims to meet the goals of Agenda 2030 and achieve net-zero fossil fuel emissions by 2045. In this effort, public actors are expected to lead by example. We need new tools to test what works, and we need to act quickly. Street Moves utilizes site-specific, inclusive, and exploratory design processes to test new ways to meet these challenges and design street spaces not centered around cars.

Since Street Moves began in 2020, four municipalities—Stockholm, Gothenburg, Helsingborg, and Umeå—have started transforming their street spaces. Through this Open Call, three design teams will be selected and paired with three additional municipalities. Together with the municipalities, the chosen design teams will design and test site-specific solutions on selected streets. The process will place great emphasis on involving a wide range of stakeholders—such as local needs owners, restaurateurs, resident representatives, local associations, and interest groups—in dialogue and sketching work. The task is both to test a design in the street space to facilitate dialogue about the street’s function and to create new contact points between parties that do not typically collaborate.