“Back Streets”

The Back Streets project was conceived out of concern for the safety and vulnerability experienced by pedestrians on the streets of Tel Aviv. In 2023, the transition from brick-and-mortar shopping to online shopping increased substantially, and an array of delivery services (e.g., Wolt and Yango) became widely available across many areas of life. This has created large-scale pressure on urban infrastructure. Today, the road network is struggling to accommodate the growing number of tiny vehicles (micro-mobility vehicles) and two- and four-wheeled vehicles, creating competition for space. As a result, traffic accidents involving pedestrians have increased, leading to a growing sense of insecurity when using pavements and public spaces alongside city streets.

To address these challenges, the project offers a system that is woven into and complements the existing urban network. Instead of competing on existing streets, this system incorporates unused areas between buildings that are currently used for parking, storage, or illegal construction to create a safe and continuous environment for pedestrians. where preference is given exclusively to pedestrians. This can be thought of as a type of “affirmative action” that does not harm the orderly conduct of existing streets while providing a natural opportunity for the development of processes typical of most cities in the developed world: hyper-logistics and digital consumerism.