Sep 12, 2023
As urbanisation continues to shape the world, cities are struggling with traffic and pollution due to the number of cars. It’s no secret that the space around us is designed for car infrastructure, with city landscapes often dominated by roads and car parks.
We’ve given most of the space meant for people to private cars. And we’re so used to seeing cars, that we’ve lost the ability to imagine our surroundings differently.
But what if you could replace cars and see your neighbourhood if space was given back to people?
We teamed up with Snapchat to find the answer.
When it comes to lenses, Snapchatters have seen it all — from turning into cute animals to becoming cartoon characters. But our lens is different.
Our Snapchat AR lens lets city dwellers turn the stagnant metal on our streets into lush green spaces with flora and fauna in just 1 tap. By opening the Snap Camera and pointing it at any car, the car disappears, and you can see your city becoming a nicer place.
For the first time, it allows everyone to experience their neighbourhood through a fresh lens.
Literally.
While CGI-rendered urban transformations are common, they usually showcase the most car-congested or popular streets, thus needing more relatability for most of the urban population.
Recognising this gap, we built an augmented reality lens that can be used by anyone, in any city, in any space, in real-time.
To build the lens, we worked with Snapchat’s trusted partner, Go Spooky, whose expertise lies in creating innovative augmented reality experiences. The team started the process by teaching machine learning to recognise cars by feeding it with 150+ car models.
Once trained, the model could accurately identify cars in Snapchat’s camera view. When a car’s detected, the AR lens replaces it with a set of crafted 3D assets — trees, benches, coffee tables, and Bolt scooters and e-bikes.
“We believe the ability to experience a glimpse of your neighbourhood without cars will help drive a change in the mental image people have of cities today”, adds the Snapchat team.
Our hope is that the Snapchat lens will be more than just an entertaining AR filter.
We believe that by seeing their neighbourhoods transformed, people will imagine a more vibrant, greener, and pedestrian-friendly city. A city that they can proudly call home.
Because sometimes you just need to see it to believe it.
Check out our other blog posts in the series to further explore why most cities don’t feel like home and how urbanists suggest we fix them.
