[Sigia-l] Counterintuitive

[Groot, Boyd de]

Well, Drachten is in the north-eastern part of the Netherlands. A region
that can be considered rural and where social cohesion is still high. You
know, a place where you can leave your back door unlocked at night.
Unfortunately in the western parts of the Netherlands (Holland) this is much
lesser the case. Try walking through Amsterdam without paying attention to
especially taxi's and young immigrants in street racers and you WILL get
honked at and shouted rude words at out of the window.
Only yesterday I walked over a pedestrian crossing (in Rotterdam) on a green
light only to find myself having to run for my life to get out of the way of
a speeding car.

Mr. Monderman's designs are indeed wonderful but, in my view, assume that
all participants in the shared-spare share a basic and necessary level of
social responsibility. The article makes a comparison to a tour in the
jungle but Drachten is far from a jungle. In a real jungle the rule of the
strongest applies and then the math is simple. Someone in a car of about a
1000 kilos is 10 times stronger than any pedestrian.

--Boyd   

-----Original Message-----
From: Listera [mailto:listera at rcn.com] 
Sent: 22 January 2005 11:10
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: [Sigia-l] Counterintuitive


One of the more difficult things to accomplish in client education is
demonstrating counterintuitive notions like how less info often leads to
better comprehension/retention/etc.

Here's a brilliant example from traffic-flow design:

To make communities safer and more appealing, Mr. Monderman argues, you
should first remove the traditional paraphernalia of their roads - the
traffic lights and speed signs; the signs exhorting drivers to stop, slow
down and merge; the center lines separating lanes from one another; even the
speed bumps, speed-limit signs, bicycle lanes and pedestrian crossings. In
his view, it is only when the road is made more dangerous, when drivers stop
looking at signs and start looking at other people, that driving becomes
safer.

A Path to Road Safety With No Signposts
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/international/europe/22monderman.html>

Anyone from Drachten, Netherlands with actual experience here?

Ziya
Nullius in Verba