Car accidents have always been an issue and a headache to transportation planners. In 2006 in the US, there were around 39,000 crashes — 45 percent of those crashes occurred in urban environments (Dumbaugh & Rae). One can only wonder what are the possibilities to prevent such crashes around the city. Reading through Dumbaugh and Rae’s article, this concept of community design was a concurring theme in the papar. What is community design? Well I had to dig a bit deeper to understand this concept. Based on the Association for Community Design website, community design is “a movement focused on the creation and management of environments for people. This process promotes change to the built environment from the neighborhood to regional scale, and aims to meet community needs through participatory decision-making at all levels”. With this idea now in my mind, I went through the article once again, and looked for specifics as to how community design impacts safety levels in urban areas. The article emphasizes the ways in which community design on paper should enhance safety. The first idea is to develop a new class of roadway that addresses safety needs of motorists. The second idea is that street networks should be reconfigured to prevent vehicle traffic from entering residential areas and reduce conflicts between opposing streams of traffic. Lastly, the third idea is that land uses should be designed to reinforce the functional separation of traffic (Dumbaugh & Rae). The results showed that this type of community is safer.
Now I wonder what other outside-the-box techniques can be brought into place using the idea of community design to increase safety in transportation. In this class, thanks to one of our classmates' videos (Alan), we learned how the superblocks in Barcelona are a technique to reduce the amount of accidents. I think that in order to successfully achieve a goal regarding public spaces, you need people’s input. Understanding what they need, and how those needs may serve you as a source to reduce accidents in the urban area. Maybe a neighborhood is looking for public spaces to organize events. How can you use that to your advantage from a transportation planner’s point of view? Maybe you promote more walkable neighborhood events, and by that you may indirectly impact the number of cars in the street. Also as a driver when you see people walking around you tend to be a little more careful of your surroundings. Crashes and accidents are an ongoing problem, but maybe there are some indirect outside-the-box ideas that can help ease such problems.
Edited by Asif Haque
Sources:
Eric Dumbaugh & Robert Rae (2009) Safe Urban Form: Revisiting the Relationship Between Community Design and Traffic Safety, Journal of the American Planning Association, 75:3, 309-329
“About.” About | Association for Community Design, https://www.communitydesign.org/about.
By Manuel Suarez
Hello Manuel,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your post. When reading it I thought of a project I helped with over the summer. The basis of the project was that streets in their neighborhood have had more cars recently, and they went at higher speeds. We engaged the community and surveyed them to find their areas of concern.
I think community engagement is meaningful and necessary. I also understand that the perception of increased traffic or speeds may not be the reality. I'm not quite sure what to do when a community asks to lower speed limits, but you understand that altering the built environment, as you suggested in your post, is a more effective way to lower speeds. The community (located in a suburb of Portland) also believed that Portlanders were moving there for lower home prices and commuted to the city for work, causing an increase in traffic. Data found that was not the case. Either way, slowing cars in the name of pedestrian safety is still an important task.
I'm inspired by "tactical urbanism," which occurs when citizens use create or alter space without authorization from the city. During the heat of COVID, when speeds were increasing, neighbors painted a crosswalk where they felt one was needed. One can argue the danger of this, encouraging crossing where perhaps they shouldn't, at least not without proper research, but I admire the gesture.
Hi Anthony, I appreciate your insight! I think there are techniques outside the box and not so obvious at the beginning, which can ultimately be a deal changer. Safety is a very important issue in transportation, and if we can find solutions which can also promote health and community interaction is great. But we still have a long way to go, and have to dig deeper as to what works and what doesn't in each neighborhood.
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