The arrogance of space

Use free online tools to visualize the space allotted for cars, bikes, and pedestrians.

I took this picture last night in downtown Richmond, VA. It reminded me of “the arrogance of space,” a phrase coined by urban designer Mikael Colville-Andersen in 2012. Here’s how he came to the idea: 

We have a tendency to give cities human character traits when we describe them. It’s a friendly city. A dynamic city. A boring city. Perhaps then a city can be arrogant. Arrogant, for example, with its distribution of space.

In my work as an urban designer in over 100 cities around the world, I’ve become quite obsessed with the obscenely unbalanced distribution of space that I see everywhere I go. The nauseating arrogance of obscenely wide car lanes and the vehicles sailing back and forth in them like inebriated hippopotamuses.

Here’s an example of how Colville-Andersen visualized the problem at an intersection in South Africa that looks applicable to Anywhere, USA.

Source: https://colvilleandersen.medium.com/the-arrogance-of-space-93a7419b0278

Since memes and propagandart can be powerful communication tools, you might want to make your own visuals. 

1. OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the whole world. You can use the crowd-sourced data to measure the dimensions of car lanes, car parking, bike lanes, and bike parking. It’s not perfect, but it’s a great resource at no cost. 

2. StreetMix is a free tool that lets you easily drag-and-drop street design features. I’ll warn you that it’s highly addictive. Once you spot some corridors that demonstrate the arrogance of space, hop over to StreetMix and create some alternative design options.  

3. Canva is a free tool that you can use to optimize your graphics for social media posts, infographics, slide decks, or whatever else.

Just as writing in plain language is so much more effective than technical jargon found in white papers, simple diagrams are easier to guide conversations than engineering drawings.

Find a street or intersection you love to hate and make some of your own propagandart. Send your creations to the local news, your HOA, the planning commission, an economic development agency, the county administrator, the local news, and me.

Sometimes the status quo is preserved because influential people don’t see a problem worth fixing. This is one way you can open their eyes to the outcomes of modern traffic engineering.

For a deeper dive on the arrogance of space, here’s a great video summary by Colville-Andersen.