DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSFORMATION:

MOBILIZING CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT IN SAFER STREETS

Chris Riley

The streets of American cities have seen major changes in recent years, with new infrastructure drawing out growing numbers of pedestrians and bicyclists. However, cars remain markedly dominant, and safety campaigns have thus far fallen short of ending traffic deaths. Even in the cities that have made the most progress in infrastructure improvements, a serious gap has become apparent. The bicycle- and pedestrianfriendly places these cities aspire to be do not match their current, deadly reality.

To help bridge that gap, activists in several cities have been taking infrastructure improvements into their own hands. There have been many instances of guerrilla movements toward increased street safety in the past, but these more recent efforts represent a new, distinct model that utilizes social media to support ongoing, anonymous campaigns aimed at transforming street conditions.

This paper examines whether these recent efforts suggest a viable, scalable model for accelerating movement toward safer streets through citizen involvement. In exploring that question, the paper also considers the conditions that appear to support this model and the challenges that cities may face in responding to these guerilla efforts.

REVIEWING THE LITERATURE

For at least the past century, America’s streets have been contested spaces, with different types of users competing for the ability to use these public spaces safely. Many writers have documented various aspects of this tension – from the historic dominance of cars to the more recent rise of bicyclists.

Other writers have examined the concept as a form of selfhelp, viewing the undertaking of civic improvements at a small scale – with or without official approval – as a way of demonstrating or achieving advances in street management. Hou (2010) collects examples of insurgent public space, in which individuals or communities defy conventional rules and stake their own claims on the public realm. Lydon and Garcia (2015) describe a related type of intervention known as tactical urbanism, which involves short-term, low-cost, and scalable projects done in an experimental, iterative manner as a method of furthering longer-term, larger-scale goals.

Tactical urbanism is often undertaken by local governments or developers. In that respect, it differs from insurgent urbanism, also known as “DIY urbanism,” which by definition is undertaken outside official channels. The recent activism examined in this paper overlaps the ideas of insurgent and tactical urbanism, shown in the diagram below; it involves actions by citizens undertaken on a short-term basis to demonstrate the possibility of larger-scale change.

A number of other writers have further examined how advances in technology are changing the ways that citizens connect and organize, and how governments can adapt to this new civic environment. In particular, the widespread embrace of social media is enabling groups of like-minded individuals to connect, assemble, and act – with virtually no organizational costs. Peerto-peer communications can now be used to address a wide variety of social problems. Some have argued that the emergence of this networking activity calls for a rethinking of our governmental bureaucracy in order to enable it to better integrate groundlevel, citizen-led efforts.

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSFORMATION

A new demonstration of the potential for grassroots, networked activity turned up on Chrystie Street in Lower Manhattan one early October morning in 2015. For those traveling on bikes between Brooklyn and Manhattan, Chrystie Street provides a critical connection to and from the Manhattan Bridge, but in 2015, it had only a standard, painted bike lane, which was often blocked by cars, taxis, and trucks. That morning, things changed. The left edge of the bike lane was lined with orange cones, some of which were topped by sunflowers. The cones kept motor vehicles out the bike lane, allowing bicyclists to finally enjoy a pleasant, unobstructed ride.

That same morning, a message appeared on Twitter with a photo of the cones protecting the bike lane. The tweet, as shown in Figure 2, simply read, “Work in progress, Chrystie Street. #bikenyc #demandmore.” Several tweets followed with pictures and before-and-after views. The tweets were from a previously unknown source: “Transformation Dept., @NYC_ DOTr,” whose Twitter bio did not identify themselves as any individual or organization, but it did state an intriguing idea:

Transforming New York’s streets can happen in an instant. All it takes are a few traffic cones...and flowers. (Not affiliated with NYC DOT or any city agency.)

The cones placed on Chrystie Street immediately drew the attention of cyclists, bloggers, and mass media. Anonymous representatives of the “Transformation Dept.” explained the rationale, saying that the city was not moving fast enough to make Chrystie Street safe for cyclists. The cycling community cheered the improvements; some with no prior connection to the Twitter account pitched in to keep the cones in place and replacing them after they had been removed. Two weeks later, a similar installation appeared in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. It was also touted on Twitter, and cyclists again cheered and supported the improvements.

Shortly afterward, the Transformation Department put out its first call for donations. Using the crowdfunding website gofundme.com, they reached their initial fundraising goal of $1,000 in less than 24 hours. By the next week, their total was over $2,500.

The organization went on to implement and maintain at least seven additional installations over the next year. Four of these were similar to the first two, with orange cones protecting problematic painted bike lanes. Two others involved new signage, and a third utilized reflectors and flower pots intended to impose a “slow zone.”

THE IDEA SPREADS

A few weeks after the orange cones first started appearing in New York, a group calling itself PDX Transformation emerged in Portland, Oregon. The new group tweeted a picture of the Transformation Department’s installation in Prospect Heights and asked Portland bike riders where they would like to see a similar installation (Figure 3).

PDX Transformation went on to place at least seven orange cone installations along painted bike lanes within that year. The group also placed signs in numerous locations around Portland that resembled speed limit signs, but read “Speed 20 is Plenty.” They also installed several crosswalks using duct tape that was later upgraded to white paint after the tape was removed by the city of Portland.

PDX Transformation used the same model as the Transformation Department in New York, connecting with supporters through Twitter, generating funds through an online crowdfunding tool, and even relying on the same company to produce their guerilla signage.

Another active “Department of Transformation” appeared in the summer of 2016 in San Francisco, emerging in response to the death of two cyclists on June 22, 2016. For its first installation, SF Transformation placed orange cones along a stretch of Golden Gate Avenue. In response, the city left the cones in place and even added two flexible posts. In the following months, SF Transformation went on to place orange cones along bike lanes in at least six other locations. In one of those locations, SF Transformation achieved a major victory after replacing its trademark orange cones with flexible posts, prompting the city to announce its intention to replace the temporary posts with permanent ones.

Like its counterparts in New York and Portland, SF Transformation relied on crowdfunding for financial support and used Twitter to cultivate a corps of volunteers to help with its efforts. The group also published its own blog and website offering an interactive map of installations, guidance for volunteers, and an opportunity to sign up for email updates.

This model caught on in other cities, as well. Within a year after the flower-topped cones first appeared on Chrystie Street, the Transformation Department emerged in at least four other U.S. cities: Boston, Jersey City, San Antonio, and Seattle. A similar group turned up in Oakland, under the name “FTFYOakland” (referring to “fixed that for you”). All are anonymous organizations devoted to guerrilla urbanism, specifically, citizen-led actions aimed at improving streets. All publicize their efforts through social media, specifically Twitter.

The most active groups, though, remained those in New York, Portland, and San Francisco. Notably, all three of these are known as bike-friendly cities, and all three have seen rapid increases in bike infrastructure and numbers of bicyclists in recent years. A large and growing community of bike riders, supported by strong infrastructure, appears to be a prerequisite for the emergence of significant group efforts aimed at guerrilla street improvements. The presence of a strong culture of activism is also important.

EVALUATING THE RESULTS

Even with a shared organizational model, the outcomes of the activism in New York, Portland, and San Francisco were quite different from one city to the next. The achievement of positive, lasting results depended in large part on the reactions of city officials.

Installations in Portland tended to be shorterlived than those in the other cities. One reason was the choice of locations. PDX Transformation often placed cones along curves, where they were soon run over by cars. Another reason was the city’s response. From the beginning, Portland officials were relatively resistant to attempted improvements. The city promptly removed any DIY crosswalks and even sandblasted a DIY stop line for no apparent reason other than that it was not officially approved. The city did replace a guerrilla crosswalk with an official one at one location, where there had been a strong community reaction to a pedestrian death, but the city was otherwise unreceptive to the group’s guerrilla improvements.

Officials in New York were generally more receptive. Several of the most prominent installations by the Transformation Department remained in place for weeks. Others did not last as long, but even then the city demonstrated some willingness to consider the spirit behind the efforts. On Chrystie Street, the city completed construction of a protected, two-way bike lane to address the longstanding problem of cars obstructing the existing painted lane. In addition, in two locations where the Transformation Department had installed DIY signage, the city soon replaced the signs with official ones intended to serve the same purposes.

Officials in San Francisco have also been fairly responsive to street improvement efforts. When SF Transformation placed orange cones along Golden Gate Avenue, officials left them in place, adding two safety posts. Other installations of cones remained in place for months. The city did remove some safety post installations, most often when the posts were placed on single white lines. However, posts installed on JFK Avenue in Golden Gate Park were allowed to remain in place. In addition, the city responded to pressure for improvements by installing posts in two other locations targeted by SF Transformation.

The longer-term value of these efforts remains to be seen. Each organization appears to have succeeded at cultivating a base of support in the form of a network of citizens interested in their work, many of whom are evidently willing to contribute time, energy, funds, and knowledge to the cause of safer streets. Additional recent activity in these and other cities indicates that the trend of guerrilla street improvements may be gaining traction.

For both activists and city officials, these cases suggest that there may be significant value in experimenting with new ways of working together. The private sector has previously stepped in to help with funding and management of other public spaces, particularly parks, but streets may be the next arena in which the public and private sectors can explore innovative ways to work cooperatively.

With the help of social media and crowdfunding, New York’s Transformation Department, Portland’s PDX Transformation, and San Francisco’s SF Transformation have begun to demonstrate the potential strength of the private sector’s contribution to safer streets. With further advances in infrastructure, the number of participants and supporters seems likely to keep growing. If governments are willing to embrace efforts like these as opportunities rather than threats, large networks in the private sector able to offer time, energy, resources, and ground-level knowledge of street conditions could be tapped to help improve and maintain key facilities. The potential benefits for our streets – and our communities – are virtually limitless.