New urban city guide marries cutting-edge culture and design pedigree

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Citroen has launched an online "urban culture" city guide series, to track trends in the major European capitals of Berlin, London and Paris.

The DS3 Street Mapper, part of a campaign to promote the new Citroen DS3 city car, is a nine-episode series focusing on life in the cities through the eyes of their trendiest inhabitants.

The project is reminiscent of the art-inspired popup stores that Nissan created in the capitals to launch the new Cube. It also shares some similarities with the CNN MyCity_MyLife project, which shows global "cool" destinations through the eyes of celebrities who live in the locales.

Citroen says that it is reinventing the city guide with a street mapper, showcasing the "eventful lifestyles and favourite places" of the cities' most creative personalities. New episodes will be shown every week between now and May 28 at the Citroen Street Mapper website.

Episode one follows the life of Philip Gaedicke, the basketball-loving co-founder of design store Soto, who shows viewers his pick of art galleries and restaurants in Berlin. In Episode two, artist and skateboarding fanatic Nick Jensen tours London in a DS3, visiting the city's skateparks, art colleges and galleries.

Citroen will be hoping that the guide will attract the interest of a young, urban market to the DS3 supermini, which faces tough competition from urban brands such as MINI and Smart. However, the brand is also hoping to play on the pedigree of the DS - the original 1955 model was a global phenomenon and catapulted Citroen to the forefront of automotive design innovation.

The DS3 is priced from £11,700/€15,400. The DS4 and DS5, completing the new DS line, will launch in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Website: http://www.ds3streetmapper.citroen.com/