Roadsworth Vindicated — And Other Interesting Ideas From 2006
Roadsworth’s stencil art in 2004
This week I was flipping through the New York Times Magazine‘s annual “Year in Ideas” issue when I came across a particular innovation that reminded me of something else. It seems that the tweedy good folks of Cambridge, Massachusetts have decided to tackle the problem of speeding cars, not by installing a speed bump or a mini-roundabout, but by street art. For $10,000, much less than what it would cost for traditional traffic-calming devices (raised crosswalks run about $100,000, for instance), the city paid local artist Wen-ti Tsen to paint an abstract design — a mural pretending to be a traffic circle, to paraphrase the artist — in the middle of a busy intersection, Although studies are still underway to determine its effectiveness as a traffic-calming measure, local residents already swear that it has worked: “There’s something in the road, so there’s a moment of confusion and you slow down. Then you see it’s flat, and you drive over it,” said one.
Montrealers will be reminded of local street artist Roadsworth, who had a moment of glory in 2004 when he decorated Montreal street surfaces with his tongue-in-cheek stencils: parking space dividers were turned into bird perches, crossworks were framed by barbed wire, zipper heads added to lane dividers and so forth.
(For more photos of Roadsworth’s work, check out the Wooster Collective.) Roadsworth was eventually arrested by a couple of overzealous police officers, who charged him with dozens of counts of public mischief and, perplexingly, threatened him with banishment from Montreal Island. In the public debate over Roadsworth’s work that ensued, one of the chief arguments used against him was that his stencil art would distract drivers and cause accidents. Confused by the sight of a painted owl or grenade on the road in front of them, it would seem, they would lose control of their vehicle and slam into some unsuspecting old lady.
Forget for a moment the fact that, over the course of 2004, there was not a single Roadsworth-related traffic accident. This particular argument was pernicious in large part because there was no local precedent for Roadsworth’s work that could prove otherwise. But Tsen’s project in Cambridge seems to indicate that not only won’t street painting cause accidents, it might actually prevent them by forcing drivers to slow down. (Of course, as fellow contributor Laine Tam pointed out to me, the art’s effectiveness will be reduced over time as drivers get used to it.) In a small way it’s a sort of vindication for Roadsworth, not that he hasn’t already been vindicated — his punishment was not jail time or a fine but “community service,” a clever way for the City of Montreal to commission several public works of art from the latest cause célèbre. Now he’s posing for photos with the mayor and getting gigs from the Cirque du Soleil.
The idea of street art being used to slow traffic was just one of many in the Times Magazine. Below, I’ve taken the liberty to reproduce some of those that might appeal to Urbanphoto’s dear readers. Enjoy.
Speed-Reducing Art
by JOHN GLASSIEPublic art projects are usually intended to beautify. But artwork commissioned this summer by the city of Cambridge, Mass., has a more utilitarian goal: reducing traffic speeds at a busy intersection.
The junction in question is in residential West Cambridge (at Walden Street and Vassal Lane); 6,000 cars pass through it every weekday. “People were asking, ‘Isn’t there something you can do?’ ” says Susanne Rasmussen of the Cambridge community-development department. Rasmussen and her colleagues were aware that neighborhood street murals in Portland, Ore., had had the unintended consequence of slowing drivers down, and they decided to experiment. Soon the city was taking proposals for a circular mural, 20 feet in diameter, to be painted on the asphalt in the center of the intersection — a kind of artwork rotary. The objective, to reduce average speeds from 30 miles per hour to 25, seems relatively modest, but Rasmussen, citing statistics, says it’s significant: “The chance that a pedestrian would survive an accident is vastly greater at that speed.”
Residents selected the semiabstract composition of the local artist Wen-ti Tsen. Tsen says that he initially thought of proposing a giant trompe l’oeil pothole, but ended up with “something like a blue pond with geometric vegetation in it.” The city paid him $10,000, a fraction of what it would spend on a more conventional speeding deterrent like a raised crosswalk.
A formal speed study is under way. Meanwhile, many residents and city officials say the mural is working. “I know I slow down,” says Lillian Hsu of the Cambridge Arts Council, which ran the mural-selection process. “There’s something in the road, so there’s a moment of confusion and you slow down. Then you see it’s flat, and you drive over it.”
Shipping Containers Explain Everything
by MELANIE TOUMANIIf you look around your office, your kitchen or your closet, you will probably find a great many items that were made outside the United States. But how did they get here? Most likely in a giant metal box, a 35-ton, 40-foot-long container indistinguishable from the hundreds of thousands of others that cross the seas each day. Globalization has changed the world irrevocably, and it’s the humble shipping container that made globalization possible.
Or so argues the economist Marc Levinson in his new book, “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.” A cargo ship in the precontainer days carried haphazard piles of bags, barrels, cartons, reels and every other imaginable bundle of goods; one typical steamship that traveled from Brooklyn to Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1954 held 194,582 individual items. Loading and unloading required small armies of longshoremen working nonstop for several days at each end of the voyage. In some cases, shipping accounted for as much as 25 percent of the cost of a product.
By contrast, a port today is powered by computers, not brawn. The biggest ports can handle dozens of ships at a time carrying 3,000 40-foot-long containers each. Cranes lift the containers 200 feet in the air, moving 40 boxes from ship to dock each hour. The process is so efficient that transport costs have become “little more than a footnote in a company’s cost analysis,” Levinson writes, and thus — to the surprise of shippers and economists alike — imports and exports have been able to surge by orders of magnitude. Just a few decades after the first modern container voyage in 1956, it was cheaper for Macy’s in Herald Square to acquire clothes made in Malaysia than those assembled in the garment district a few blocks away.
Reverse Graffiti
by RICHARD MORGANThe British artist Paul Curtis is not sure what to call his version of vandalism. “People call it ‘reverse graffiti,’ ” he says, “but I prefer something less sinister: ‘clean tagging’ or ‘grime writing.’ ” Curtis, a k a Moose, selectively scrubs dirty, derelict city property (tunnel walls, sidewalks) so that words and images are formed by the cleaned bits. “It’s refacing,” he says, “not defacing. Just restoring a surface to its original state. It’s very temporary. It glows and it twinkles, and then it fades away.”
To pay for industrial scrubbers, he has sold some of his reverse graffiti as advertising. But mostly he sticks to his own art. Critics, like the City Council in Leeds, have accused him of breaking the law, but for what? Cleaning without a permit? “Once you do this,” he says, “you make people confront whether or not they like people cleaning walls or if they really have a problem with personal expression.”
The Humane Flophouse
by JENNIFER SCHUESSLERTo 20th-century housing reformers, the flophouse was the epitome of urban squalor, a place where the drunk, degenerate and down-and-out packed themselves into reeking cubicles devoid of light, air and hope. But to Rosanne Haggerty, founder of the New York-based nonprofit Common Ground, this lowliest of urban dwellings may in fact be part of the solution to America’s homeless problem.
In 2002, Common Ground paid $2.3 million for the six-story Andrews Hotel, one of the last remaining flophouses on the once-squalid Bowery, with the intention of turning its warren of tiny cubicles into a low-cost residence with design features worthy of a hip hotel. The reborn Andrews is scheduled to open by early 2008.
Haggerty’s mend-it-don’t-end-it approach was inspired in part by the work of the sociologist Christopher Jencks, who has identified the disappearance of cheap “cage hotels” (a reference to the chicken wire covering the tops of cubicles) as an important cause of the rise in homelessness among single adults. However grim such places may have been, Jencks argues, the freedom they granted residents to come and go and their modicum of privacy made them much more attractive to the homeless than free shelters, with their strict rules and dangerous dormitory halls. To prove that small doesn’t have to be squalid, Common Ground sponsored a design competition that attracted 180 entries; two of the five winners went on display last summer at the Municipal Art Society in New York. At the new Andrews, for $7 a night, the 146 residents will each get a cubicle of roughly 66 square feet with ingenious built-in storage and adjustable furniture.
Eventually, most Andrews residents will be required to accept some social services. They will also be assisted in moving up to the next rung of the housing ladder — perhaps to one of the facilities Haggerty’s group operates in painstakingly restored historic structures with fancier pedigrees, like the landmarked Times Square Hotel or the Christopher, where the Chelsea Y.M.C.A. building made famous by the Village People has been updated with eco-friendly touches like bamboo flooring and an energy-saving green roof.
The Diplomat-Parking-Violation Corruption Index
by CHRISTOPHER SHEASocial scientists who study corruption have long debated the relative importance of legal incentives and cultural norms (“people like us don’t do that”) in the decision to act for or against the public good. Many economists lean toward the view that most people will act similarly, given similar incentives, and that cultural norms are less important.
In an ingenious study published in June, however, the Columbia University economist Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel of the University of California at Berkeley argued that culture plays a powerful role. The two scholars studied parking tickets that were racked up in Manhattan by diplomats from 146 countries who were posted to the United Nations. In a situation in which every diplomat essentially received an invitation to be corrupt, diplomats from nations with “clean” governments said, “No, thanks.”
The study began with the observation that, until late 2002, there was essentially zero enforcement of parking rules where diplomats were concerned. Diplomats were ticketed, but few if any cars were towed, and no one demanded payment. Using public records stretching back to 1997, Fisman and Miguel identified which diplomats had delinquent tickets, and how many — 150,000 in all, representing more than $18 million in fines.
If incentives trumped culture, you would suppose that diplomats from every nation would cheat. But in fact, attachés from Canada, Ireland, Scandinavian nations and Japan evidently drove around the block till they found a spot. (Diplomats with few or no unpaid tickets also tended to get few tickets, period.) The worst offenders, meanwhile, came from Kuwait (246 unpaid tickets per diplomat), Egypt, Chad, Sudan, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Albania, Angola and Senegal. This behavior correlated strongly with the scores of diplomats’ home countries on a measure of public corruption compiled by World Bank researchers.
Of course, legal incentives were hardly irrelevant: over time, individual diplomats from “clean” countries did cheat more, as they learned how the system worked. But the initial scofflaws’ cheating grew even faster. (An interesting side note: the more anti-American the population of a diplomat’s home country, the more likely he or she got tickets.) Diplomats, Fisman and Miguel concluded, “bring the social norms or corruption culture of their home countries with them.”
Creative Shrinkage
by BELINDA LANKSFor decades, depopulated Rust Belt cities have tried to grow their way back to prosperity. Youngstown, Ohio, has a new approach: shrinking its way into a new identity.
At its peak, Youngstown supported 170,000 residents. Now, with less than half that number living amid shuttered steel factories, the city and Youngstown State University are implementing a blueprint for a smaller town that retains the best features of the metropolis Youngstown used to be. Few communities of 80,000 boast a symphony orchestra, two respected art museums, a university, a generously laid-out downtown and an urban park larger than Central Park. “Other cities that were never the center of steel production don’t have these assets,” says Jay Williams, the city’s newly elected 35-year-old mayor, who advocated a downsized Youngstown when he ran for office.
Williams’s strategy calls for razing derelict buildings, eventually cutting off the sewage and electric services to fully abandoned tracts of the city and transforming vacant lots into pocket parks. The city and county are now turning abandoned lots over to neighboring landowners and excusing back taxes on the land, provided that they act as stewards of the open spaces. The city has also placed a moratorium on the (often haphazard) construction of new dwellings financed by low-income-housing tax credits and encouraged the rehabilitation of existing homes. Instead of trying to recapture its industrial past, Youngstown hopes to capitalize on its high vacancy rates and underused public spaces; it could become a culturally rich bedroom community serving Cleveland and Pittsburgh, both of which are 70 miles away.
Youngstown’s experiment has not gone unnoticed. Williams’s office has already fielded calls from officials in a few of the many American metropolitan areas that have experienced steep population drop-offs. When cities hit rock bottom, it seems, planners can find new solutions for urban decay — if they are willing to think small enough.
Big Urbanism
by DAVID HASKELL“Make no little plans,” the architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham wrote a century ago, “they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” For the last four decades, however, little plans have been the signature creations of the American city. Ever since 1964, when Robert Moses, New York’s master builder, was prevented from blasting a freeway through SoHo, the most successful urban-design strategies undertaken by large American cities have been essentially conservative. Jane Jacobs’s crusade against architectural master plans, combined with a growing historic-preservation movement and the fall of heroic high modernism, led to a generation of planners, architects and activists intent on restoring, rather than drastically reshaping, the urban fabric.
But now cities are once again planning with grandiosity. This year witnessed the return of what you might call big urbanism, with large-scale redevelopment projects sprouting nationwide. In the summer, the New York City Planning Commission approved the controversial $4.2 billion, 22-acre Atlantic Yards project, which only a few years prior was widely dismissed as impossibly overscaled. In late October, a coalition of developers presented an audacious $3.6 billion plan to revitalize downtown Yonkers, a struggling postindustrial city. (Construction is expected to begin next spring.) The city of Atlanta purchased Bellwood Quarry, which will be transformed into a 300-acre park that will become the linchpin of a 22-mile belt-line corridor of rails-to-trails that will constitute a 50 percent increase in city park space. This fall, Denver celebrated the opening of the $110 million Hamilton Wing of the Denver Art Museum and the corresponding cultural master plan, both designed with characteristic bravura by Daniel Libeskind. And soon, Related Companies will break ground on the first phase of the $1 billion-plus Frank Gehry Grand Avenue project in Los Angeles, which in total will create 3.6 million square feet of development and a 16-acre park.
Taken together, these projects represent a new confidence among designers, as well as developers and public officials, in reshaping the American city. In part, this can be attributed to mechanics like “tax increment financing,” a newly popular device that allows municipal governments to issue bonds on the expected tax-revenue windfall upon a development’s completion. (TIF development projects are able to receive public support without threatening to dip into city coffers.)
But more important, the cautionary lessons of Jane Jacobs, who died in April, have been reinterpreted by a new generation of designers, developers and civic officials who hope to bring a vibrant urbanism to large, new developments. Skeptics wonder whether tall towers and developer-engineered neighborhoods can truly create the lively streetscapes Jacobs loved. Even so, it would have been difficult to predict 40 years ago that the legacies of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs would one day find common cause.
Bicycle Helmets Put You At Risk
by CLIVE THOMPSONFor years, cyclists who ride on city streets have cherished an unusual superstition: if they wear a helmet, they are more likely to get hit by a car. “I belong to an e-mail list for cyclists, and they complain about this all the time,” says Ian Walker, a psychologist at the University of Bath who rides his bike to work every day. But could this actually be true?
Walker decided to find out — putting his own neck on the line. He rigged his bicycle with an ultrasonic sensor that could detect how close each car was that passed him. Then he hit the roads, alternately riding with a helmet and without for two months, until he had been passed by 2,500 cars. Examining the data, he found that when he wore his helmet, motorists passed by 8.5 centimeters (3.35 inches) closer than when his head was bare. He had increased his risk of an accident by donning safety gear.
Why? You might suspect that cyclists wearing helmets are more prone to take risks. But studies have found otherwise. The real answer, Walker theorizes, is that helmets change the behavior of drivers. Motorists regard a helmet as a signal that the cyclist is experienced and thus can be approached with less caution. “They see the helmet and think, Oh, there’s a serious, skilful person,” Walker says. “And you get hit.”
Walker will publish his findings next year in the journal Accident Analysis & Prevention. After a preprint of the article was circulated to colleagues, he was flooded with angry e-mail. Wasn’t he giving cyclists a green light to doff their headgear? Walker takes a more diplomatic approach. The mere fact that drivers are responding to a helmet means that they are making judgments, however unconscious, about cyclists. That means a government advertising campaign could retrain drivers to make the opposite judgment: a helmeted rider deserves just as much space.
Then again, Walker himself has a dim view of pro-helmet laws and rarely wears a helmet when he rides. But at least now he has an excuse. During his study, he was struck by a truck and a bus — both times, of course, while wearing a helmet.
The Aerotropolis
by STEPHEN MHIMIn September, Bangkok witnessed the opening of the Suvarnabhumi Airport, which when finally completed will include virtually all the components of a major metropolis: shopping malls, office buildings, hotels, hospitals, an international business center, conference and exhibition spaces, warehouses and even a residential community. Traditionally, of course, airports have served cities, but in the past few years airports have started to become cities unto themselves, giving rise to a new urban form: the aerotropolis.
John Kasarda, a scholar of urban planning at the University of North Carolina, defines the term as more than a place for planes to come and go. It is a destination in its own right. The Changi Airport in Singapore, for example, contains cinemas, saunas and a swimming pool. In Dubai, the World Central International Airport and its environs, which are under construction, will contain office towers, hotels, a casino, a golf course, housing for workers and what promises to be one of the world’s largest malls. (The price tag: $33 billion.)
Thanks to an increasing number of amenities that airports provide for both work and play, a growing number of travelers are doing business on the premises of the airport city. They can hold meetings and attend conferences by day and relax at restaurants and clubs by night, never once venturing into the old-fashioned “downtown.” Certain industries even have an incentive to base their operations in airports: air-express companies, for instance, or manufacturers and distributors of lightweight products shipped on planes, like pharmaceuticals, microelectronics, medical instruments and fresh seafood.
“Access, access, access is replacing location, location, location as the most important commercial real estate principle,” Kasarda says. No surprise, then, that the world’s most expensive industrial real estate is adjacent to Heathrow Airport.
Tags: Housing, Montreal, New York, Parking, Roadsworth, Street Art, Urban Design, Urban Planning
Eric Bowers says:
Yeah, I’d venture a guess that art painted on the street will only serve as a temporary stop-gap traffic calming measure, as you noted. Similar to the third brake light on cars that was ushered in in the eighties.
I also recall reading a few years ago that car companies or auto safety advocates or whoever were wanting car brake lights to indicate the amount of pressure applied to the brake, so as to indicate to the drivers behind the severity (or non-severity) of the braking situation at hand. Eventually the drivers will probably plow right over the street art without a second thought.
December 14th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Christopher DeWolf says:
Yeah, that’s probably true — but since street paint never lasts more than a year or two, it will eventually be repainted with something else.
Apparently neighbourhood residents and pedestrians love Tsen’s work, but motorists (go figure) hate it. In October the Harvard Crimson reported that it had been vandalized by someone who poured pink paint all over it.
December 15th, 2006 at 3:33 am
Ken Gildner says:
The paint illusion you describe is a very interesting (and efficient) method of traffic calming, but I think it can’t be effective if it’s used in isolation. This reminds me of textured pavement, which (except for making a slighly different ‘feel’ for drivers) is a purely visual traffic calming mechanism. Together with cicanes, elevated intersections, street parking and other measures, this could prove to be a very simple means of slowing down speeding traffic in areas that need attention.
Great read, Chris!
December 15th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Youngstown Ohio says:
Apparently neighbourhood residents and pedestrians love Tsen’s work, but motorists (go figure) hate it. In October the Harvard Crimson reported that it had been vandalized by someone who poured pink paint all over it.
June 17th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
12 Pedestrian Crosswalk Artworks | Listicles says:
[...] remembering just how cool it was and how poorly the city handled this renegade visionary (they threatened to banish him from the island at one point, which is all kinds of hilarious [...]
February 27th, 2009 at 9:36 am
Clean Graffiti Advertising says:
Check out some of our reverse graffiti examples
February 8th, 2010 at 4:04 am