Erstellt am: 4. 12. 2014 - 12:07 Uhr
Today's Webtip: When Pedestrians Ruled
Have you ever looked at the streets of your city and wondered what life was like before the automobile?
It's probably a bit easier to do here in Europe, since your streets were actually made with other purposes in mind, but in the U.S. it was nearly impossible to find a spot that hadn't been designed around the car. Car culture quite literally defined the geography I grew up in, and made it nearly impossible to think of pedestrians or bicyclists as anything other than second class citizens.
But the isn't the way things had to be. As a matter of fact, it's not the way things were going to be. According to an article in the Smithsonian, the primarily pedestrian culture of the U.S. at the dawn of the 20th century was dead-set against allowing the monstrous machines any sort of right-of-way on the streets.
Isadore Posoff (Public domain)
And yet we ended up in a situation where Jaywalking has become a capital offence.
The tale of how we got here and the role the term jaywalking played in that development is a fabulous illustration of the power of concerted effort. It shows just how malleable reality really is, and how powerful a few well placed initiatives can be.