Streets are places of communication and socio-cultural links. This consciousness of conceiving the street as a space for life and social interaction, as it was before motorised traffic, has been on the rise again during recent years. Increased retro-agglomeration and new construction, however, reduce open spaces within the city, which can be regained by extending the uses of sidewalk areas. Thus, various possibilities are opened up for residents to use the street space of a thoroughfare or a neighbourhood for other purposes than moving traffic. The “Say Hello” Strip gives urban dwellers part of the public space for their own, individual purposes. By furnishing and planting the strip in any way they please, they make the city’s diversity visible, enabling exchange between the residents, whose joint area the “Say Hello” Strip is. The strip works both as an area and in the three-dimensional sense, and may thus incorporate a building’s ground floor or the entire façade. Today, even minute interventions in the direct urban surroundings by private persons are not subject to a unified procedure, so that every initiative has to expend a great amount of energy to receive permits for its projects. The “Say Hello” Strip would stipulate unification and therefore simplification of sidewalk and façade usage by private initiatives.

"Say Hello" Streifen | Booklet