Foreign Affairs - 03.2020 - 04.2020

(Frankie) #1
Mean Streets

March/April 2020 147


from cars and redesigned them for crowds o’ pedestrians. Using
brightly painted movable barriers, a road-safety team created safe


waiting spaces and simpli¥ed the process o’ crossing the street. After
the modi¥cations, o¾cials noticed a 53 percent increase in sidewalk
use. More important, 81 percent o’ people surveyed said they felt
safer at the location as a result o’ the project.


Similarly, between 2018 and 2020, Milan under Mayor Giuseppe
Sala transformed ten squares that were once clogged with parked
cars into community-friendly spaces, with benches, tables, and plant-
ers. Where cars once roamed, children now play ping pong and


neighbors greet one another.
Most o’ the time, urban planners do not have to reinvent the wheel.
They have the experience and testimony o’ others to draw on. For
instance, the Global Street Design Guide synthesizes the real-world ex-


perience and practices o’ experts from 72 cities spanning 42 countries.
The guide has now been adopted by 100 cities and several nongovern-
mental organizations focused on tra¾c safety. It represents a sea
change for street design, putting pedestrians and cyclists, rather than


freight and private vehicles, at the top o’ the street hierarchy.
Often, all it takes to make streets safer is paint, planters, and basic
materials already in stock in city depots, such as stones, signs, and
“exible tra¾c posts. Even so, given the scale o’ the changes, munici-


pal governments will require sustained investment to expand on these
proven safety practices and turn the tide on tra¾c deaths.


THE ROAD AHEAD

I‘ low-tech solutions can have such a tremendous impact on human
health, what about high-end technologies? The driverless-car industry
contends that it is at the forefront o’ the tra¾c-safety charge—prom-
ising that autonomous vehicles could be programmed to maintain safe


speeds no matter the environment. They point out that a combination
o’ ±Ä ́ data and sign-recognition cameras in cars can limit a vehicle to
the posted or o¾cial speed limits.
It’s all well and good to claim that driverless cars operating in a


closed, connected system would be safer. But everything is dierent
on the open road, where those cars would need to drive alongside hun-
dreds o’ millions o‘ human-driven vehicles, whose operators are still
speeding, cutting one another o, and jockeying for position. There


has been only one death involving an autonomous car, but even one

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