Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Wiki Neighbourhood - who owns the right to improve your 'hood?
Photo courtesy of diegoehg_ via flickr
When governments don’t build infrastructure, citizens usually complain, but can’t do much about it. They pressure public officials and protest against proposed projects, but that’s as far as citizen participation in city building usually goes.
However, this model of citizen participation is being rethought by citizens around the world. They are taking control over what happens in their cities. They are helping to build them, mostly with paint.
In Mexico, the movement is called wikiciudad (wikicity), and it has the central idea that anyone can edit and modify cities. In Mexico City, a group painted pavements that didn’t previously exist and zebra crossings in dangerous intersections. Their actions have not only been acknowledged by local governments, but sometimes even improved on.
The improvements that citizens are building are not always priorities for local government, but, however tiny and localized, they do make a difference in the way people feel about and interact with the city’s public space.
Text edited from an article by Jimena Veloz
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I really want to paint a zebra crossing on my street. How do you think the council would react? (I'm not joking)
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Do it and see. You'll need someone to stop the traffic from Salisbury Rd while it dries...
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That's the thing, it's not a one woman job but maybe v early on a Sunday morning and with the judicious use of a few cones...
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Just park a car at the bottom of the street with the hazards on.
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It doesn't need to be to get half the idiots around here with no driver's licence to stop for pedestrians.
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It could be in the spirit of zebras in continental Europe, reminding drivers that this is a crossing place...however, its legality isn't the issue, I'm pretty sure if you're searching the rule books, there's probably one that says you can't paint what you want on roads...the issue surely is how hard it is to get tiny concessions from the monolith that is government and that sometimes citizens go for forgiveness rather than permission in seeking to make small improvements.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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But if a pedestrian thinks it's legit and gets killed by one of the other half who doesn't stop then the person who painted the zebra is responsible
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If you're going up a ladder road (including Wightman) at more than 20mph and can't stop for a pedestrian then you're at fault. There'd have to be something wrong with your car (or you'd have to be updating facebook on your phone) for you to be not able to stop if you were adhering to the speed limit.
Stop your trolling and do something useful like iron a shirt for tomorrow night.
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I think the key idea here is not what citizens do (although I do want to paint something on the road, a zebra is just being polite...I'd prefer "SLOW DOWN, GET OFF YOUR PHONE, STOP EATING/READING/ DOING YOUR MAKE UP YOU SELFISH B******D") but that "their actions have not only been acknowledged by local governments, but sometimes even improved on"...in other words instead of getting their pants in a twist about the legality of a zebra, they come along and add the beacons to make it safe.
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of course, why stop at boring black and white?
Here's a few more ideas. I'm thinking picture 2 for the wide road at Burgoyne and picture 5 for around the schools...
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