Picture from ‘Annual Report of the City Engineer, Cape Town. 1984-1985 We are somewhat obsessed with big infrastructure projects. Whatever form they take, we love those big, sexy (expensive) infrastructure schemes. And yet, if you take a good look at the places where walking and cycling thrives (think Scandinavia, the low countries, small town UK, […]
Small infrastructures Read More »
The models and visuals of the 2017 exhibition of the Foreshore were entrancing. They allowed the visitor to get a full sense of the scale and grandeur of the proposals. Visitors could move, as if in an airplane, through the air above the city and see the future visions below. Donna Haraway calls this
God tricks and the Foreshore Read More »
“Our proposal starts”, said one of the 2017 Foreshore bids “by re-arranging and completing the elevated freeways in a lean and elegant way, thereby resolving the key traffic bottlenecks…” ‘Lean’ and ‘elegant’ are not the usual text-book civil engineering terms, but these words do evoke the poetic tradition in road engineering texts. When the first
The poetics of freeway building Read More »
I can’t read “Non Motorized” without thinking “Non White” and “Non European”. Then I’m left wondering what the consequences are of South Africans adopting the term “NMT” (Non Motorized Transport)? “Non Motorized”, like “Non European”, makes one category normal and the other abnormal. With ‘normality’ and ‘abnormality’ come the baggage of acceptability (or not),
Calling out the Non- in NMT Read More »
This question – do roads have politics – from Langdon Winner in 1980 beguiles me. Winner asked it while describing 1920s ‘parkway’ access routes from New York City to the beaches of Long Island. This work has generated controversy over Winner’s reading of history but while his scholarship can be criticised, the question is
Do roads have politics? Does AI? Read More »
I often fall short of my aspiration to treat other road users as fully human. And yet it is also true that this is my deepest wish. I really want to respect other road users, especially those who aren’t driving. So why is it so difficult? Madelaine Akrich offers some clues as to why I,
Scripts of streets Read More »
“Of course cyclists should use the road” she said. ” But they must follow the rules of the road. I just saw a cyclist going the wrong way down a one way. ” I gulped a little hard and looked down into my coffee, because I do that. I cycle the “wrong way” down a
Cyclists and Cyborgs Read More »