Students at my university in Berlin need to cross a busy road to travel between campus areas, which meant jaywalking or a long trip to a crossing with traffic lights down the road. A steady stream of students late to their next class sprinting across a six lane road is not great.
At some point students started painting their own crosswalk, which would be removed again and again by authorities, until the city eventually got the hint and installed a permanent crosswalk with a traffic light and a pedestrian island.
Sometimes the way to get something is fixed is by demonstrating the fix.
darkstar999today at 4:56 PM
It reminds me of The Guerrilla Artist Who Fixed L.A.'s Worst Freeway Sign
In Geneva, activists painted bike lanes in three streets in 2023, causing about 2000 swiss francs in damages (or improvements, depending on your view).
The Swiss police under prosecutor Walther Cimino proceeded to investigate as if they were a crime syndicate, gathering forensics but also identifying 96 sympathizers and putting them under heavy surveillance, which included requesting total records from their banks, employers, phone companies, email providers (Google through the US DoJ), and even CCTV and purchases from their local supermarket.
I'm afraid of the possibility that what used to be "grassroots civil disobedience" will now be labeled "eco-terrorism" and prosecuted accordingly.
This is an intractable problem with normal sidewalk/streets. Bikes don't belong on the road with cars and they dont belong on sidewalks with pedestrians and they don't belong in between. This is why both drivers and pedestrians hate bikers.
Ideally we have entirely separate paths for bikes. Of course this is infeasible for most established cities. Doesn't mean they are't inherently a problem in these cases though.
stetraintoday at 3:50 PM
Some DOTs have given official support to Tactical Urbanism, with methods for communities to propose and implement small projects themselves on accelerated timelines like bike lanes or pedestrian crosswalks.
hk1337today at 7:09 PM
This is great! They saw a problem, found a solution, and just fixed it. Better than complaining about it for 5-10 years waiting for someone else to do something
Sharlintoday at 4:30 PM
Similar grassroots (heh, quite literally) activism is the idea of guerrilla gardening. Around here, a local nonprofit Villi vyöhyke (Wild Zone) [1] started as a small group of guerrillas but is now advocating, consulting and involved in many major rewilding projects initiated by municipalities and private companies.
This is similar to The Oval at Ohio State University. Instead of planning walkways across a field of grass, they looked where students actually walked and then paved those routes.
I think this applies to so many things. Centrally planned things rarely work exactly as planned, especially if the people doing the planning are separate from those executing the plan.
Much of the time, it's better to observe what's working in practice (even if in a messy way) and systemize it rather than have a perfect concept that disintegrates upon contact with reality.
I like guerrilla housing. City does not build enough flats, so you occupy unused parking lot or sidewalk, and build house there!
bragrtoday at 4:00 PM
There's another side of stuff like this. People living up in the hills above LA near trail heads will put up fake no parking zones in front of their houses. People have gotten real tickets in fake zones.
jimbokuntoday at 4:35 PM
The return of Civil Disobedience as a tool for inspiring social change.
Maybe not as profound or important as the Civil Rights movement. But important nonetheless for public safety. (Assuming the guerrilla bike lanes themselves are safe and well thought out.)
jgbuddytoday at 3:55 PM
if you want it done right, you often have to do it yourself
luqtastoday at 3:28 PM
what an absurd the hipster population taking over spaces of deadly, noisy and polluting vehicles and having the state collaborating with them /j