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Watching snowfall can make your city a better place

Watching snowfall can make your city a better place

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sneckdowns
sneckdowns

Urban planners love nothing better than a complex, multi-factor map illustrating how many variables go into their decision making, but sometimes the simplest methods are the best. Jon Geeting over at This Old City illustrates this point perfectly with his photos of snowfall on the streets of Philadelphia. By simply looking at where snow is allowed to build up, Jon builds a compelling argument for reclaiming parts of the city's road network for pedestrian use. Highlighting islands of disused asphalt, he makes a series of suggestions that would help by reducing driver speeds and making the areas nicer to walk through.

Geeting doesn't expect his ideas to be uncontroversial, but the method by which he arrives at his supporting evidence is both clever and novel. Sneckdowns, as these agglomerations of snow have become known, are growing in popularity as a graphic and engaging method to convey an argument in favor of reclaiming more public spaces from the road network.