davis_square | Gateway to Davis Square (Reply)

In the somewhat recently released city report called "Safe-START - Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety, Priority Locations, Assessment & Recommendations" there was at least one recommendation that I thought was really interesting and potentially wonderful:

4. Summary of Recommendations for Long-term Improvements
...
D. Develop “Gateways” to key nodes around the City
including Davis Square, Union Square and Tufts
that will highlight that motorists are entering high
pedestrian traffic areas;

And by "Gateways" they mean visual clues that indicate a special area, like the pretty gate that they have in Chinatown in Boston. It can be done with permanant architechtural structures, or with more easily changable banners, bollards, artwork, signs, and flags. It's a very useful way to work with people's subconscious minds so that they instinctively know that they have to pay more attention, and to slow down so that they can more effectively react to unexpected activity in the streets when passing through districts that are busy with commerce and other "destination" activities. The only problem with an idea like this is that once people leave these destination areas, there is an opposite psychological trigger to pay less attention and speed up. So maybe it's safer to go with a less abrupt "gate" message, or have several gates and/or use smaller, but still obvious visual clues to be aware of local activity in other areas of the city. I'm particularly thinking of playground and school areas, where things like kid's artwork, flags, decorated traffic signals, and multicolored crosswalks might be useful.

Anyway, I thought this idea was a wonderful starting point for really bringing in some creative problem solving (and artistry) to making Somerville's places safer and healthier.

* The report is available here as a PDF download. It's intened as a rough draft, I believe, for public comments. Though the public comment period seems to be over, unfortunately. But it's intersting to look at nonetheless. The general recommendations are pretty tame, and probably won't do a heck of a lot of good, but you never know.