The Psit Project by City Flaneurs
Ηι! We are Maria Kalogeropoulou, Alexandra Koroxenidi, Chris Ntabakakis and Evi Stoubou or in other words “City flaneurs” and we are part of Athens Co-Creation City Branding Project. We present you our proposal for our city Athens, the Psit Project!
After studying the campaigns of cities in North America (Chicago, Washington D.C., Houston and Boston) and Europe (Berlin, Liverpool, Lisbon) we tried to figure out in what way we could apply these nice ideas on our city. During that brainstorming we came to a conclusion in terms of our proposal.
The greek capital (aproximately 4,5 millions of citizens) faces many problems (lack of basic infrastructures in order to serve the needs of so many people, polution, traffic congestion, e.t.c.). Therefore, we firmly believe that a solution to one major problem of our city could function as a domino-effect to the other problems given that there is an invisible connection among all these problems; solving one problem could really facilitate the solution of the others. Being citizens of Athens we all admitted that maybe the worst problem is the transportation system.
The Psit project (personalized, spontaneous, instant teamwork) is a service that offers the users the possibility to share the costs of a route by car and therefore save money and time. This service is available on the internet (official website) and on smart phones (application).The lack of clear identity, community spirit, sense of belonging, teamwork and collaboration urged us to think of the Psit project. Our goal is microscopic as well as macroscopic. Solutions to everyday problems lead to solutions of larger problems (starting off small, growing large). Our focus is on this specific ‘’small-scale’’ problem (transportation) with its many side effects (traffic congestion, pollution).
This alternative transportation shall change the way we think and act and make our team spirit stronger. Thus, it is time for us to face the new challenges and take advantage of unexploited opportunities in order to make our everyday life easier.
All this journey was a great experience for our team, because we had the chance to acknowledge our city’s problems and come up with solutions by using the feedback that the research for other cities gave to us. All our discussions about city branding all over the world worked for us in a very useful way. One thing is for sure; our journey is not going to end. And who knows what our next stop will be…
Click here to check our classroom presentation for Psit project!
