Top 5 Most Influential Streetfilms of all time (as we celebrate 20 years!)
On May 1st, 2005 I was hired to start making videos for Open Plans, a new NYC non-profit about best-practice transportation policies & urbanism around the world. The six years prior I produced short videos for my half hour cable-access show bikeTV about biking around NYC with friends and making theme shows on my vacation travels like Portland, OR and the San Francisco Bay area. Back then I knew with the burgeoning digital technology I could craft ample fast-turnaround, informative videos while thriving working independently in all aspects of production.
Little did I know my love for what I was having “fun” doing would morph in to a career. As you may have seen I recently posted my 1,111th film of all time (though there are probably a thousand small bits/quick shorts I don’t even count in that total). To celebrate my body of work, this blog post will focus on the top five films I produced and launched into the world that I feel have helped shape cities for the better. Let’s count them down!
#5 - Cycling Copenhagen Through North American Eyes (2010)
While Streetfilms was in Copenhagen for the Velo-City 2010 conference, we wanted to showcase its biking greatness. Since there were an abundance of advocates, planners, and city transportation officials attending from the U.S. and Canada, I thought it'd be awesome to focus on their reactions to the built environment and contrast to bicycling conditions at home. This film greatly inspired those worldwide where biking needed a boost and a visual best-practice to showcase.
Crazy Note: Back then we needed to send DVDs (old school times) to festivals requesting to screen it theaters and communities. We did a run of 250 copies and ran out DVDs in just a few months! One of a bunch of Streetfilms that has crossed the 1 million views plateau.
#4- The Innovative Way Ghent, Belgium Removed Cars From The City (2020)
In April 2017, Ghent instituted a Traffic Circulation Plan which completely changed the way nearly every resident gets around the city by creating six zones cordoned off with concrete or controlled by cameras which they deployed remarkably fast and cheap. It’s been a complete success, so much so I went back last year to craft this follow-up. Thanks to my Streetfilms the story finally blossomed beyond Belgium and western Europe.
Ghent was inspired by other cities ingenuity (particularly Groningen, which I visited in 2013) and this success has others cities consider ways to detour or shut down their city centers to pass thru vehicles.
#3 -Barcelona Superblocks (2018)
When Barcelona announced it’d be radically reinventing parts of its city by developing a Superblock system by transforming targeted street grids to prioritize people and communities over car movement, I waited to see documentation. But after 18 months there was little except a few articles with photos, so I decided to make the journey to translate how it worked. Remarkably I only spent 48 hours there, but the ensuing film was watched 1/4 million times and transportation advocates worldwide embraced the idea.
In some ways, what many cities have been doing with open streets, car-light networks, neighborhood greenways and even what has been going on NYC’s Broadway are derived from it. Currently there are a 1/2 dozen Superblocks up and running, but sadly the program to do hundreds more has been slowed by the newest batch of elected officials.
#2 - Utrecht: Planning for People & Bikes, Not for Cars (2019)
Our epic on Utrecht is the only Streetfilm over 2 million plays, and 2000+ days since it debuted it still averages about 100 plays per day! Despite so much deserved attention on Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands, I found Utrecht to be the most livable, comfortable city of all.
Thanks to watching documentation and videos posted by Bicycle Dutch’s Mark Wagenbuur I took the advice of many to come take a look at how the city had prospered. Over the years I have had many hundreds of people write, post or tell me in person they visited Utrecht due to my film, including Doug Gordon from “The War on Cars”. But even more amazingly I know or heard from dozens who m-o-v-e-d(!) there thanks to watching it.
#1 - Bogotá Ciclovia (2007)
This 2007 visit to Bogota, Colombia led to a trio of groundbreaking videos (open streets, Bus Rapid Transit & bicycling) was really the first that put Streetfilms on the map. And the debut video documenting their highly successful ciclovia program (80 kms of street closures every Sunday and holidays) was the inspiration for open streets/ciclovias everywhere. When we published our film at the end of 2007, it helped gain events in NYC, Portland, Chicago, San Francisco and many more.
It was our first Streetfilm to eventually cross one million plays, which back then was an absolutely enormous number. Believers in so many cities rallied their elected leaders, neighbors and advocates to try it out closing their streets on a weekend by screening our film or showing our film in presentations. Much thanks to our good friend Gil Penalosa for arranging us to come down and giving this enthusiastic dude a chance.
(Bonus) Vital New Streetfilm Changing the World As We Speak: Paris School Streets (2024)
If you look at a lot of work I’ve done in the last few years, it has focussed on open streets, daylighting intersections, making wider & safer bike lanes and outdoor dining. But I truly believe the School Streets momentum being generated by what’s going in Paris is what will be the story of the past few years and the next ten. And again: since there were no existing films to show the amazing transformation on the streets, I went to Paris.
Though only watched a bit over 31,000 times, a huge percentage of these people are planners, urbanists and the people you’ll find in the transportation field on LinkedIn. One day, I hope we’ll see these in every city in front of most schools. They are vital for the safety of our youngest members of society and also provide a place for families to gather.
And seriously go on Youtube, it is basically still the only video out there!
