Scooter, Shanghai, September 2024

Bruteforcing the city (2/3)

Second of three posts reflecting on Shanghai’s convivial streets and small vehicles in which we explore the alternative, the bruteforced city of freeways and SUVs in Australia and America

Part 2 of 3. The first part explores Shanghai’s streets in late 2024, via their diverse and inventive arrays of everyday small vehicles. The third part explores the alternative to bruteforcing the city described below; that is, metaphorically at least, DeepSeeking the City.

School pickups, as described previously, are an urban design ‘tell’.

They bring a visceral quality to the deceptively dry world of traffic engineering, as the large numbers of children must suddenly, and swiftly, transition from the closed system of the school to the open system of the street. And in most of urban Australia, and much of the USA, the equivalent school pickup vignette would typically be dominated by a long, slow line of growling SUVs, each an embodiment of anxiety and aggression generated in their drivers, a spatial selfishness. Whilst advertising subtly preys on parents’ fears for their children’s safety, there’s a hugely increased danger of serious accident, the SUV’s elevated tailpipes are aligned at kids’ head-height, and moving kids in this way…