“Most of us don’t travel the whole world. Our ideas about people in other places and cultures are built up from images that we see in news, movies, natural documentaries and tourist ads. But those images often portray the unusual and extraordinary; they show dramatic events, romantic nature and unusual cultural traditions. People in other places appear to be very different from ourselves. This is unfortunate, as the basic human needs are identical across all cultures. You need a home and you need to eat, sleep, wash, play and pee. On Dollar Street, it’s not the extraordinary, but the common that fascinates. When sorting homes by income, people across the world live in surprisingly similar ways.” (Anna Rosling Rönnlund)
In this TED Talk, Anna Rosling Rönnlund discusses Dollar Street, an interactive tool depicting the world as a street, ordered by income, which may provide new ideas about how people from other places and cultures live.