A Street for Hope: New Functions for the Landscape of Car

Abstract

Hope Street is currently under its final construction step before public opening. Located between two Children's Hospitals, one of them considered a regional reference for cancer treatment, the street formerly named Alberto Montezuma was at first destined to receive a plan for tree planting. With the support from Fortaleza's Municipality, this initial plan turned into an opportunity to reach results beyond green amenity. By rethinking the street as a green infrastructure, it evolved to a truly innovative concept of multifunctional lane. The design methodology was very inclusive by assessing the expectative of all decision makers, but it payed close attention to the wishes of children under cancer treatment. When asked to draw the ideal street of their own, most of them had a rainbow on their sketches. The rainbow was transferred from these drawings to the street design blueprints as a symbol of balanced diversity among all possible uses and visions of a remodeled public open space. It also became the identity of a street where hope is multicolored: red for the desire to reunite the healthy and the impaired and also drivers, bikers and strollers; orange for the wish to renovate energy for the hospital staff on the duty of healing; yellow for the optimism to restore recreation on streets; green for the concern of urban forestry as a possibility of reconnection between man and nature; blue for the belief in the need of joy to recover from illness; indigo for the restoration of nature processes in stormwater management; and finally violet for an achievement of change through transdisciplinary cooperation.