City Walks Live - Givemas Day Nine

In a time of travel restrictions and border closures, there are many families, friends and loved ones living abroad. After spending two years with uncertain answers about the future of tourism and travel, lots of people are itching to get away and adventure overseas. Some to visit those they love, others to simply experience another culture and country that they’ve always wanted to.

Based in Athens, programming husband and wife duo, Aristomenis Georgiopoulos and Artemis Stiga were two frequent travellers, enjoying their holidays and summer vacations before the pandemic hit. When the option of travelling was taken away from them, they began to rethink how they could reinvision what ‘travel’ means.

As two creatives with working backgrounds in web design and computer engineering, the pair brought to life their newly conceived passion project City Walks Live.

City Walks Live is an online platform that allows users to virtually travel across the globe, all from the comfort of their own home. Simply click the sidebar and you can visit the Netherlands, Spain, Hungary, South Korea, Scotland, Hawaii, Russia, Mexico, Australia, Norway and more. Immerse yourself in a digital walkthrough of city centres, backstreets, promenades and hear the natural bustle of those that live there day and night.

We sat down with Aristomenis and Artemis to discover more about how City Walks Live came to be.

Thanks for chatting to KOS Magazine about City Walks Live! How did you both feel when something like travel that was a large part of your life was no longer an experience you could look forward to?

Artemis of CityWalks.Live

We were fortunate enough to have had a long trip in Japan right before the first quarantine, so that kept us going for a while as we were full of that experience. 

On the other hand, the pandemic brought more quarantines and long no-travel periods that made us miss not only visiting new places, but also our families who live in different cities than we do. We missed it very much and we were impatient for the beginning of travelling again.

What was it like in those early days establishing the site? How did the submissions of travel walkthroughs across the globe begin?

We worked a lot on it. We planned, tested, and changed many things until we got to a point where we were happy with the result. We wanted to enrich the experience someone can get from it and always had in mind what could be enjoyable, entertaining and bring value to the visitor. 

Then we came up with the idea of giving the options to take walks in the same city on day or night and pre and post covid period. Also, there is the option to mute the sound and listen to your own music or hear the city sounds and almost meditate to  them, like listening to some lullaby sounds. Our favourite is the second option, but we understand that some people may prefer it the other way - that’s why we created it.

We embedded the videos from YouTube, where other users upload them. Then we categorise them on our platform and create all the above options using computer (and human) logic.

Since you started this venture, what cities have been your favourite to virtually experience or revisit?

Well, we have a lot of favourites, but some of the latest are Changsha in China, Chefchaouen in Morocco (where we also have been) and Hanoi in Vietnam (where we wish we can go)!

Aristomenis of CityWalks.Live

Travelling is one of the most profound enhancers of human connection. How have you seen the ‘Group Walk’ tour feature on City Walks help virtually bring people together?

The idea behind it is group travelling, like many people do. You can plan a trip with friends or through some travel office and meet people on the trip. Like that, we wanted to offer people the option to experience the same route together and be able to talk with each other and discuss travelling and the things you all watch at the same time.

And from what we see on the chat, this works. People talk about whether they have visited, or not, the specific city and make comments about various things while walking.

A large part of what makes your virtual arena unique is in the shaping of your users' perspectives, in particular the 'In Her Shoes' feature of city walks.live. What motivated you to create that feature as a part of the site?’

That feature was created in collaboration with Lux and Wunderman Thompson. They had seen our platform and their idea about showing a man and woman’s perspective as they both have the same walk on the same city could be shown really well on City Walks. 

So, we started a collaboration we are really proud of, since the social message is strong and allies with our beliefs about safety and equality. 

Through In Her Shoes, users are able to experience street harassment first hand. Why was Cairo, Egypt the first city you used in the stand against casual sexism?

Cairo was chosen because casual sexism is still very visible (there) and we guess it makes sense to show the dramatic difference between a woman and a man’s experience. 

Many women have to deal with lots of aggressive gazes and rude comments, while a man can peacefully walk around. That is alarming in 2021, where some behaviours that should belong to the past, still exist today.


In what ways have the footage submissions of these various cities helped shape your view of the world and the way different people and cultures exist, both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Sometimes it is like watching a documentary. The information is so direct and true that we feel like we are in every city. That in many cases has made us want to see more, explore more and live more. 

We recently just started travelling again in Greece and we felt more hungry to visit new places. Big cities and small villages. We know we all are a bit more careful not to get sick...but we are tired of restricting ourselves anymore. It is time to start exploring the world again!

If you’d like to check out City Walks Live or financially support the work they do, you can buy them a coffee by clicking here. Happy travels!

WORDS: NATALIE WILLIAMS
PHOTOGRAPHY: CITY WALKS LIVE