Urbanism Speakeasy #24

Here's your reading list from Urbanism Speakeasy:

1. Experts who build the stuff for people don't understand people.
2. Word choice reveals our bias. Is that project an improvement?
3. The safest type of intersection is routinely ignored lest we hurt feelings.

The minds who design things around us don’t understand minds.

It's crucial for architects, city planners, urban designers, traffic engineers, and anyone involved in shaping the built environment to understand the relationship between our minds and the spaces we inhabit.

Psychology should be embedded into every one of these major fields of study. And the training should continue throughout a professional’s career as part of AIA, AICP, and PE requirements. We don’t know what we don’t know. [Read more.]

#psychology #mentalhealth

Let’s consider that subtly persuasive word, improvement.

Words and phrases can be careless or strategic. Every DOT around the country has a list of transportation improvement projects. But the outcomes don't always feel so great when you're outside the protection of a car. [Read more.]

#urbanplanning #trafficengineering

There's no question lives are saved by replacing signals with roundabouts. The only question is how many lives.

When it comes to all the types of at-grade intersections, roundabouts are by far the safest. It’s crazy how controversial that statement is, given the Federal Highway Administration has been documenting safety statistics for decades. They even have a dedicated webpage to proven safety countermeasures.

How often does any authority in any industry use the word “proven”? Not often! And of course experts don’t toss around “proven” lightly because we’re such a litigious society.?[Read more.]

#transportation #visionzero

Twitter is real life.

Meanwhile, roundabouts are out there saving lives left and right.