I'm generally a fan of "contrarian" writers and thinkers, and those who challenge so-called Conventional Wisdom. From the Freakonomics guy who questions everything, to Marcus Buckingham's views on management (First, Break All the Rules), I'm a sucker for this stuff. I'm also a Traffic Engineer, so when I run across a "maverick" in my field, I perk up. Enter Hans Monderman from the Netherlands, who passed away earlier this year.
Hans took urban street planning to an extreme, believing that a mix of vehicular, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic would be better served by removing signs, stripes, signals, and curbs to creat "Naked Streets." In his shared-space environments road users communicated with each other to travel safely and efficiently.
Here is an excerpt from an article written just after his death:
His maxim was: “If you treat drivers like idiots, they act as idiots. Never treat anyone in the public realm as an idiot, always assume they have intelligence.”
To prove his point, Monderman was known for boldly walking out on to his naked streets and junctions, turning his back on the moving traffic and walking to the other side to show that drivers would not run him over.
In the world of Engineering you don't see "out-of-the-box" thinking like this every day, so it has been refreshing to me to learn of those around the world who push the envelope. Rest in Peace, Mr. Monderman, and thank you for impacting the way I do my job.
1 comment:
Similar to Kramer's "comfort lanes"? Oh the humanity!
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