One of my (many) favourite books is David Engwicht’s Street Reclaiming. Given how much of our urban space is devoted to streets, it does indeed seem wasteful to give them mostly or entirely over to the car. Award-winning Danish architect Jan Gehl writes of the traditional use of the streets for meeting, marketplace, and movement. Yes, we need to move about…but we also need to slow down and appreciate our surroundings, engage with others, and carry out some of our financial transactions in a more intimate, personal way. Recently in Bangkok for a workshop, I enjoyed a few hours of wandering the streets among the protesters, or more accurately, the shoppers and strollers who were enjoying the reclaimed streets. It was in fact difficult to find protesters among the throngs of people simply enjoying the space and the slower pace. People ate at tables set up on the street, shopped for short shorts and “Shutdown Bangkok” t-shirts, cycled slowly amidst the crowds, and snapped photos next to a giant pink heart in the center of a major street. Fancy shopping malls near the protest sites were nearly empty; life was in the streets. By the next day, the protesters had moved to a new location and things were back to normal: the occasional cycle creeping between cars, people relegated to crowded sidewalks, long waits to cross at sporadic intersections. But for those several hours on the previous day, we had a glimpse of what a city could be…and what a refreshing glimpse it was.