---
title: "A “Smart Street” in London Is Transforming the Future of Shopping"
description: "A London shopping street is being used to gauge the potential of future technologies that include electricity-generating walkways and air-cleaning filters."
date: "2017-07-14"
modified: "2017-07-14"
authors:
  - name: "Tom Ward"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/tomward"
url: "https://futurism.com/a-smart-street-in-london-is-transforming-the-future-of-shopping"
categories:
  - "Energy"
  - "Science & Energy"
tags:
  - "air pollution"
  - "city power"
  - "london"
  - "renewable energy"
---

# A “Smart Street” in London Is Transforming the Future of Shopping

![london pavement environment city power](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/smartst.png>)
*\<em\>Image: \<a href="http://www.harrydobbs.com/" target="\_blank"\>Harry Dobbs Design\</a\>\</em\>*

A street in London is being used as a petri dish for a futuristic technology that could make shoppers' experience safer and more enjoyable. Among the installations on Bird Street, a small shopping street just off Oxford Circus, are [Pavegen tiles](<http://www.pavegen.com/>) which convert the force of footsteps into electricity to power bird noises and street-lighting as well as [Airlabs](<http://www.airlabs.com/>) filters that clean the polluted city air. [Airlite paint](<http://www.airlite.com/>) that uses light-activated molecules to break air pollution down into innocuous salts is also being tested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78-BOz_S8N0

What is perhaps most promising about these technologies are their ability to be integrated into everyday city life as streets, decoration, or city benches — because of this they do not intrude on or complicate the running of the city. Experiments like these are vital to discover environmental solutions that can be easily integrated into existing infrastructure.

These kinds of solutions need to be implemented alongside changing our living habits in order to repair some of the damage [humans have caused the planet](<https://futurism.com/humans-caused-100-of-the-past-centurys-global-warming>). Innovation and individual responsibility have never been under more time pressure in the light of [warnings from Stephen Hawking](<https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-we-are-close-to-the-tipping-point-where-global-warming-becomes-irreversible>) and others that we will soon cross the environmental threshold and become unable to repair our world.