City Walks Live is a unique web page, created in the peak of the pandemic by Aristomenis Georgiopolis and Artemis Stiga; a software engineer and a web designer, respectively. The pair enjoyed traveling more than anything, and during the lockdown, created this website as a way to emulate that experience from home.
City Walks Live is a platform that acts as an archive of videos that simulate the experience of walking down the streets in different cities. Each video displays a walk through the city of your choice; not always focusing on a landmark or monument, but simply wandering through the streets, exploring the city as a local. The videos include ambient sounds and a sidebar on the right allows people to choose which city they want to walk through.
One of the greatest strengths of City Walks Live is it’s ability to allow people to explore and travel from the comfort of their own homes. The high-quality videos shot as if you are the one walking makes the experience more immersive and engaging. The Quick Facts box in the bottom left corner helps to add to the viewers interest in the place, and allows them to gain a deeper insight into the city. City Walks Live also caters to a wide audience, from students who enjoy background noises while studying, to aspiring travelers and urban planners.
I personally enjoyed watching the videos and analyzing different architecture styles and differences in urban planning in different cities. This platform also has a category called ‘Cities during Covid’, which provides an interesting view into different city lives during the pandemic. They have a feature called ‘Group Walks’, which unlike the pre-recorded videos, is an interactive livestream with other viewers watching at the same time. We can also interact with other viewers through the chatbox, during these group walks.
One weakness of City Walks, however, is the limited content. There are very limited cities available on the platform. Although the sources of these videos are various YouTube videos, the platform also allows anyone to submit a video to be added to the archive through a google form. While this should ideally make it easier to get videos from a range of cities, the issue, I think, is in advertising and incentivizing. Not enough people know about this website, and those who do know about it are not motivated to add their own input.
City Walks plays a huge role in cultural exploration and historical learning. I find that these videos serve as more than just enjoyable pastimes; they are a record of the architecture, design and culture of a city. This is why I believe this website to be an archive. Not only does it serve as a historical record of cities during covid, it will also become a historical learning tool in the future.
The chosen medium also plays a role in how this archive is received. As a website, it is easily accessible and changeable. This makes it a flexible and easy-to-use interface that will forever preserve the videos it currently holds.
A suggestion I would have for this website is to encourage more people to upload videos of their home city. By embracing and promoting their role as a digital archive, they can motivate people to play their part in recording history. More videos of different cities would improve the collection of the website, making it more credible and more authentic.
Another, more technical suggestion I would have for the platform is to create a home page. When you enter the website, it takes you directly to the videos and the list of cities. However, I think it would be easier to navigate the website if it had a home page that displayed all their provided services, such as the group walks, and gave us background on the creation of the website itself. The website would become more user friendly with this addition.
City Walks is an initiative that bridges the gap between history, culture and technology. It offers users a captivating journey through space and time, allowing them to explore cities from around the world. The website’s potential for education, cultural growth and inspiration are undeniable, and with a few tweaks, City Walks could become the perfect digital archive of city life.