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Who gets the space on a city street?

A street has a limited width, but many possible jobs: moving buses, accommodating bicycles, providing access, and giving people somewhere to walk or spend time. A hypothetical redesign can reveal how changing one allocation affects the others. The preferred answer depends partly on what the street is meant to accomplish.

3–7 min

Questions you could explore

  • Would you judge the alternatives by vehicle movement, people’s access, or something else?

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Cities and transport

What happens to water before it reaches the tap?

Clear-looking water and drinking water are not necessarily the same thing. In Uisce Éireann's representative surface-water process, clarification, filtration, and disinfection deal with different parts of the treatment problem.

4–5 min
Cities and transport

What do the two parts of an Eircode tell you?

Ireland's seven-character address code combines a routing key with a unique identifier. The operator's public example, A65 F4E2, shows how a shared first part and an individual second part do different jobs.

2–3 min
Cities and transport

How does a canal lock lift a boat without lifting machinery?

A boat inside a lock rises when the water around it rises. By filling or emptying the enclosed chamber, a conventional lock brings the boat to the level of the next stretch of canal. The gates contain the water; they do not hoist the boat.

3–5 min
Who gets the space on a city street? | Speech Topic | speaking.app