Vigilante or Visionary?

If your city officials aren’t doing the things you think need to be done to make your home safer and more enjoyable, at what point does a little nudge in the right direction become an illegal act?

I followed a virtual trail this week from UrbanToronto.ca to Spacing.ca to RaiseTheHammer.org, a site run by a group of residents of Hamilton whose common interest “is revitalizing our city, a goal that benefits everyone.” It’s a great goal, and a thought-provoking site. Anytime people act on their professed passion for their home cities, I’m impressed.

Here’s the short(ish) version of this week’s story: Mike Lydon, a principal at New York’s Street Plans Collective, gave a talk in Hamilton on tactical urbanism, a philosophy that encourages citizens to take direct, low-cost action to improve their communities, without waiting for city leaders to control all the variables, undertake endless expensive studies and committees, gather resources, and otherwise stall. Cut through the “analysis paralysis,” as Raise the Hammer editor Ryan McGreal puts it in his guest post on Spacing: “tactical urbanism emphasizes short-term action that precipitates long-term change. It’s informed by a vision of change and an understanding of local context. It emphasizes agility and value, and builds social capital and organizational capacity in the community.”

Inspired by the talk, some Hamilton residents organized a demonstration to promote turning a suburban intersection into shared space, painted a crosswalk adjacent to a pedestrian-unfriendly four-lane arterial road, and DIYed some bump-outs with pylons at a busy intersection next to a school, according to McGreal. He says that while other cities work with these tacticians to “legitimize their projects,” Hamilton general manager of public works Gerry Davis reported the installations to police, called them “illegal, potentially unsafe” and “vandalism” and had city workers remove them.

While the question of whether the initiatives will indeed spur the desired change is still up in the air, it brings up some interesting food for thought. Vigilantes have historically not been popular with law-makers, and although I’m not a great one for government interference, it’s easy to see why — the slippery-slope argument alone is pretty compelling in this case. If a few pylons help make kids safer, great, but what’s to stop someone with more radical views from shutting down the intersection entirely? Chaining himself to a light standard? Or throwing himself in front of cars?

I get it. But it does beg the question — who owns these streets and these cities we call home? If we do, then have we abdicated responsibility to city employees and politicians? They say you get the government you deserve, and maybe we get the city we deserve too.

On Raise the Hammer this week, McGreal calls attention to a report out of New York City called Measuring the Street: New Metrics for 21st Century Streets, which raises another related question: If we don’t have measurable goals, what are our chances of success? We say we want to slow down inner-city traffic, but what does that mean? Fewer accidents? Fewer moving violations? Fewer cars?

We say we want more pedestrian-friendly streets, but how do we measure that? And is there anything here in Hogtown we measure in subjectives like happiness and satisfaction? It’s not so crazy. Remember Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness? There are World Values Surveys, Happiness Indexes, Human Development Indexes, and a host of other initiatives trying to put a measurable value on quality of life. We measure sports in points, business in cash, work success in corner offices — why not measure quality of life? They say you can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.

After installing protected bike lanes, Manhattan officials reported significant drops — up to 58% — in injuries to street users, including drivers. They also reported nearly the same degree of increase in retail sales on the adjacent avenue! Speeds dropped, commercial vacancies dropped, and users had a marked preference for the new design. They also experimented with turning parking lots into plaza seating and reported increases in retail sales of 172% compared to an 18% general increase in the area (Brooklyn).

The New York City report says, “Cities need to set new goals for their streets if they are to meet the needs of a dynamic and growing city and address the problems of vehicle crashes, traffic congestion, poor-performing bus and bike networks, and environments that are inhospitable for pedestrians.”

We love to complain, so in spite of its being illegal and potentially dangerous, the fact that some citizens care enough to even try is heartening to me.  But if we’re seriously in pursuit of lasting change — and we have to be, if we don’t want to see our city become a gridlocked, smog-choked, pedestrian-unfriendly enclave for the privileged — we need to first figure out what our goals ought to be.

Whatever they may be, one thing is clear — change is going to start not with government employees, but with citizens who care.