Journal of the American Planning Association | 2021
Planners in Politics: Do They Make a Difference?
Abstract
street amenities in these same places; a sobering study noted that 40% of streetlights in Detroit (MI) were either missing or broken. A poignant through-line of Right of Way is the care with which victim’s stories are told. The author sensitively transforms statistics on pedestrian fatalities into vignettes that remind the reader of the pain that each crash leaves, from small children to the woman who became the first pedestrian ever killed by a self-driving car. Perhaps most inspiring, we learn the story of Amy Cohen, who was spurred by her son’s death in Park Slope, Brooklyn (NY), to join with other grieving parents to form Families for Safe Streets. This organization— now with chapters sprouting up across the country— has already notched several major victories, including lowering of default speed limits from 30 miles per hour to 25 in New York City (NY) and a major expansion in the use of speed cameras in school zones, both interventions that required action from the state legislature and that have been associated with significant decreases in traffic fatalities. As gutting as our pedestrian crisis scale is, the good news is that planners possess the tools and techniques to address it. Schmitt details several steps that can meaningfully decrease fatalities, from obvious fixes like expanding the provision of crosswalks to more subtle changes such as giving pedestrians a head start at intersections (before turning traffic) and even using social norms to alter drivers’ behavior. Indeed, the reader learns of an ingenious experiment in Minnesota, wherein researchers erected signs displaying what percentage of cars yield to pedestrians at specific intersections, which increased driver compliance throughout the duration of the pilot. As to criticisms, one minor gap is too little historical data on U.S. traffic fatalities, which would help contextualize where the epidemic stands today. Although Schmitt does touch on the fascinating period of the 1920s and 1930s, during which deaths first spiked and streets were remade for the automobile’s benefit, more discussion of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s (when pedestrian fatalities were higher than they are today) would provide a fuller picture of current trajectories. Overall, for meaningful changes to sweep the nation—especially the neighborhoods where traffic violence is the highest—there must be a concerted effort to shift the dialog and present the “moral basis for change” (p. 174). Schmitt makes a useful comparison to the opioid crisis; though addiction was long considered a personal failing, it has only been since Americans have confronted the structural aspects of that epidemic that more meaningful change has come about, such as reining in pharmaceutical companies. The author’s challenge to planners is to do the same with pedestrian deaths: understand how the roads we build, the cars we drive, the laws we pass, and whom we blame all reinforce our status as an outlier in the industrialized world regarding death while walking.