Decorated pedestrian tunnels

post by dkl9 · 2024-11-24T22:16:03.794Z · LW · GW · 1 comments

This is a link post for https://dkl9.net/essays/artistic_streets.html

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Moving thru a visually-varied environment helps you remember what you think, say, and hear. Adding visual variety to an area thus aids the memories of those passing thru it, and, on average, makes it look nicer. Dense cities, especially those with mixed-use zoning, already have many mutually-distinct buildings. Some other small areas, like parks, are similarly intricate. Suburbs and blander cities, however, are mostly dull arrays of streets and houses. We can do better.

Visual art can be almost arbitrarily detailed and unique. If we cover walls around streets with visual art, the problem is solved. However, most walls around streets are the outer walls of buildings, most of which are privately owned, only some of which would approve of adding lots of art. Putting art on the street-ground itself helps, but people moving outside look to the sides more than down (citation needed), and getting walked on, cycled on, and driven over could wear away the paint (or equivalent).

In much of the US, urban and (even more so) suburban streets are, regrettably, dominated by automobiles. Ideally, we would use automobiles a lot less. But, for a probably-effective stopgap: invite walking and cycling in an underground network of tunnels. Artificial underground space can get dreary, but a tunnel necessarily has walls, all of which could be delightfully coated with a wild assortment of images, completely solving my current concern. Tunnels would also be thermally insulated from the above world, and so have more stable, pleasant temperatures — especially important when moving without enclosed vehicles.

Much as it may be putting pedals before handlebars to design them in such detail:

• the tunnels should form a grid, ideally triangular, or else in squares or parallelograms
• the above world should connect to the tunnels near grid intersections, and maybe other spots
• intersections should cut rounded corners for visibility, especially if tunnels allow cycling
• tunnel-segments should extend 20 to 100 metres between grid-intersections
• tunnels should be 1.5 to 5 metres wide

Good art — at least, good-enough-art — could come from graffiti, if legalised with the right caveats, like

• at most so much detail in one spot (encourage spreading out)
• at most so close two repeats of a design (encourage variety)
• keep it family-friendly to at least such a standard

Enforcing elaborate rules on graffiti is harder and more expensive than prohibiting graffiti is harder and more expensive than allowing all graffiti. It may end up easier and cheaper to prohibit all graffiti and publicly fund visual art for tunnels.

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