Achieving Vision Zero through hostile architecture
Seattle Mayor Harell and the city council have launched Vision Zero to eliminate traffic deaths in the City of Seattle. Their initial efforts have focused on reducing car-pedestrian collisions by implementing measures that can be carried out quickly
- The green light for pedestrians turns on a few seconds earlier for some intersections
- Some intersections downtown are now no turn on red
- Sound Transit will make some safety improvements in Rainier Valley
- The City Traffic Engineer will be promoted to Chief Safety Officer
Statistically, these changes will do almost nothing.
After an extensive review of the available data, I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion and an obvious response.
Inescapable Conclusion
The city’s report included many interesting pieces of the puzzle
- 79% of the bikers killed were in a location with no bike lane or seperation
- 80% of the pedestrians killed were on a multi-lane road
One critical piece of data is implied, but never explicity called out: 100% of the deaths involved a car or truck. I found no record of a fatal pedestrian-pedestrian collision, nor one caused by a pedestrian-bicycle collision. No cars and trucks, no traffic deaths or injuries.
Obvious Response
So now that we understand that the problem isn’t the streets or the lights, but the cars and trucks, how to we get rid of them?I suggest that we look to Seattle’s efforts to end homelessness for inspiration and implement hostile architecture.
For example, there were undesirable people living in a park downtown. The response was to build a fence around the park, keeping everyone out. Fences were also built at other camping locations throughout the city. Doesn’t that park look wonderful! Hostile architecture solved the problem.
The Guardian wrote an article on how Seattle used bike racks to prevent homeless campers setting back up after a sweep in a location where there was no need for a bike rack. The racks provide a much more important purpose than providing a safe place to park your bike, preventing people from setting up tents under a bridge.
Another example is the uncomfortable narrow benches at bus stops. They may not be nice to sit on, but they’re impossible to sleep on and that’s what’s important.
These are all examples of hostile architecture
the design of public spaces in a way that stops unwanted behaviour, for example putting spikes (= pieces of metal with a sharp point) in doorways to stop people who have nowhere to live from sleeping there:
Through these measures Seattle has solved our homeless problem by making the experience as unpleasant as possible by altering the built environment. So why can’t we end pedestrian deaths by making driving as unpleasant as possible?
Hostile Architecture for Cars
Here are some ways to apply the concept of hostile architecture to cars
- Convert all street parking into bike or bus lanes
- Convert one lane of all multi-lane roads to either a bus or bike lane
- Convert all municipal parking into high-density housing with no parking
- Eliminate all parking requirements for new construction
- Every intersection with a traffic light has a scramble period of five minutes that is an all-way cross for pedestrians and bikes
- Install roundabouts on every uncontrolled intersection. Make going left at a roundabout a felony offence with a minimum one-year prison term.
Just by eliminating large amounts of parking, owning a car in Seattle will be impossible for all but the wealthiest who can afford the few remaining parking spaces. Converting roads to bus lanes will improve transit , increasing capacity to take up some of the former drivers.
Drivers may complain that this is an unreasonable crusade against them, that they’ve broken no laws and why are they being treated as pariahs. They’re not like the homeless, who smell bad and have no money. We made poverty illegal and we haven’t done that yet with driving.
The drivers might also complain that the transit, walking, and biking infrastructure isn’t there to support a change in their behaviour, and they would be correct. But we aren’t waiting to build low-income housing before we put fences around parks, so why should the drivers expect more accommodation? If they leave and become another city’s problem, Seattle will be better without them.
If this doesn’t achieve the goals of Vision Zero, then we can look at more extreme measures like sweeping dangerous neighborhoods of cars with a fleet of tow trucks.
And if you don’t think that hostile architecture is a good way to deal with traffic deaths and injuries, what makes you think it’s a reasonable way to deal with the homeless?
