Changing the world by activating the street

French street artist "JR" tells his TED Prize story on TED.com

On a creativity roll the past few weeks and the ride feels great. So often we hear crime and disorder have deep roots and digging them out strains our patience and resources.

The last few posts - guerilla classrooms, soundscapes, bubble wrap -  provide elegantly simple solutions how to activate a street to make it safer. In science the elegant and simple theory is called parsimonious. In neighborhood safety it seems to go hand in hand with creativity.

The video below shows JR, a French street artist who created a new kind of street art. He not only activates the street; he travels to distant, sometimes dangerous, countries to tell the story of the unseen.

This is social action at its most elegant, simple, and creative. Parsimony par excellence.