“Like city builders who face a blank when they try to think of what to do instead of renewal projects — because they know of no other respectable principles for city organization — just so, highwaymen, traffic engineers and city rebuilders, again, face a blank when they try to think what they can realistically do, day by day, except try to overcome traffic kinks as they occur and apply what foresight they can toward moving and storing more cars in the future.”
— Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961 (page 339)
I love that Jane Jacobs was discussing something as seemingly banal as traffic engineering way back in 1961. And I don’t love that 60 years later, we see these same problems play out in American cities and dense, “walkable,” pre-war suburbs today.
The solutions to these problems are so elegant.
So simple.
Yet… why can’t we get there?
We need to push our elected officials to assert an unequivocal position on traffic violence. They must hire engineers who are fluent in streets-for-people. (They’re out there! Really!) Otherwise, we’re stuck in the endless feedback loop of citizen-disillusion and do-nothingness, all while we “accept” a certain amount of death on our streets.
And that’s just not OK. If our elected officials (who are responsible for choosing and paying traffic engineers with our tax dollars) “are drawing a blank,” as Jane says, then we need new ones.
Time to hold them accountable or vote them right out.
