OK, this one is off the beaten path, but bear with me. This article from Wilson Quarterly is about a traffic engineer, Hans Monderman, but it also covers some topics that I think are related to vital thinking meat concepts. Monderman was an advocate of removing the signage and barriers that separate automobile and pedestrian/cyclist traffic; the idea is that if you’re not instilling a possibly illusory sense of safety and containment in drivers, they will be more aware of their surroundings and drive more cautiously. (And in fact there is some evidence that a decrease in signage and a greater integration among the various transportation modes—driving, walking, and cycling—can reduce accidents. One thing I know from my many years as an urban walker and from listening to urban cyclists is that staying alive on foot or on a bicycle involves a keen awareness of what the drivers surrounding us are doing. It seems to me that one of Monderman’s points was that everyone is safer if drivers are also keenly aware of the presence of pedestrians and cyclists in their midst.)
The article touches on themes like how we perceive space, time, and distance, how we conceptualize danger, and how we alter our behavior based on our surroundings. Given the importance that we as a society have placed on the automobile over the past couple of generations without thinking about or even being aware of all the ramifications of a car-centric society, I think it’s good to look at how things (specifically, our cities and towns) got to be this way and how they might be otherwise. And hey, this is the only article on traffic design I’ve run across that mentions the writing of Marcel Proust and John Ruskin. Bound to be interesting, right?
