Signal Failure - TIME Feb 25th 2008
Last week, I read a very interesting article by Michael Brunton in the Feb 25th edition of TIME magazine.
Shortly, it describes a radical experiment conducted in Holland, in the province of Friesland. There, Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer redesigned the street layout of Frisian town and villages by removing road signs, traffic lights and surface marking. His theory is that “if you want people to behave in a village, maybe you have to make it feel like a village”. He also spread flowerpots which reduced average traffic speed by 10% and cut shared space on the street in half.
What I find very interesting in this approach is the fact that it is intended to force people sharing the street space “to look each other in the eye, to judge body language and learn to take responsibility - to function as normal human beings”.
Removing signs to generate a need for real communication… that’s brave and brilliant at the same time !
In a time when a crowd of signs surrounds us whenever we take a step… inside or outside, in the reality or in virtual worlds, isn’t it a good idea to center our life on real communication ? Using tools nature gave us (I mean … eyes, hands, arms… and whatever you use to interact with real people…)…
Let’s think about it !
