Reinventing the Street Experience

Philippe Baudillon, énarque, has had a distinguished diplomatic career including positions in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in several ministerial cabinets. He was the managing director of the Paris bid for the Olympic Games in 2012 (2003-2005) and CEO of France 2 Television (2005-2008) before becoming president of Clear Channel France in 2008.

The reputation of the city street has long been ambivalent. From ancient times to the threatening events in the twenty-first century, it has been seen as a potentially dangerous gathering spot. Everything was done in our industrial world to reserve the street exclusively for fast mobility by leaving immense space for cars and transportation. It is now time for us to reinvent the street, to help it recover its original identity as a place for social exchanges. Thanks to technology (terminals, screens, geo-tracking), it is possible to regain the street's true meaning, to reclaim its dimension as a place for encounters, events and discoveries, to rethink it and integrate the concept of "slowness"… A new kind of design and a new kind of experience are appearing at the heart of questions about smart cities and civic tech. Reimagining the street means fundamentally transforming our way of life in order to serve the public.