Tactical urbanism: When zebra crossings go rogue

What should we do in the face of dangerous roads? Accept the risks as an unfortunate reality of life or, in the face of relentless apathy from the authorities, should the otherwise law-abiding person take matters into their own hands and resort to tactical urbanism?

A century of protest against road harm

Protests against road danger are as old as the car itself. Some have proved more effective than others. In America a century ago, cars were a relatively new phenomenon and the public reacted to a soaring death toll with natural outrage. Newspapers labelled killer drivers as ‘remorseless murderers’ and likened the threat they posed to an epidemic disease. In Detroit, angry mobs dragged dangerous drivers from their cars.

The car industry proved powerful enough to push back against these protests, but 50 years later and 3,000 miles away in The Netherlands, a similar backlash gained too much momentum to be stopped. The Stop de Kindermoord movement galvanised a country and politicians were forced to act in the face of widespread protest.

Tactical urbanism

There's nothing new about 'tactical urbanism'. San Francisco was the birthplace of the parklet over 50 years ago - a concept slowly spreading to towns and cities around the country as an attempt to challenge the car's dominance of public space.

Elsewhere, communities refused a zebra crossing by their local authorities installed their own. Faced with dangerous traffic outside their campus, and armed only with pots of paint and a healthy disregard for authority, students at UCL in 1959 daubed the road with zebra crossing markings. Within months, the local council had installed a real one.

It's more than a little depressing that over half a century later, getting safe crossings installed is far from easy...and it's a problem the world over.

Crosswalk Collective has installed 15 to 20 'crosswalks' throughout Los Angeles, with members of the public nominating hundreds more. Members pay for supplies themselves, with donations sometimes offsetting expenses.

According to David Zipper writing for Bloomberg, '...in the right setting, unauthorized street infrastructure additions can lead to one of two outcomes — and both are constructive. One possibility is that the city removes it, in which case media attention and resident backlash put pressure on local officials to be more responsive to safety requests. (That coverage may also compel more residents to join street safety groups). The other option is that city officials take the hint and accept what residents have built. Eight years ago, Seattle transportation planner Dongho Chang won the enduring appreciation of local cyclists when he responded to a pop-up bike lane first by thanking activists for their passion, and then by making the bike lane permanent.'

For our part here in the UK, we developed our own form of tactical urbanism; the pop-up zebra crossing.

When we were approached by a group of parents whose request for a zebra crossing at a road traffic collision black spot outside their local infant school had been turned down on grounds of cost, we went about building one ourselves as cheaply as possible.

The result was a pop-up zebra crossing that could be erected in less than two minutes. If you're facing a similar challenge trying to get a zebra crossing for your school, please get in touch.

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