[sustran] 'Naked streets' and safe chaos

[Paul Barter]

This is a follow-up to an old sustran-discuss thread that began in April
(as [sustran] FW: Traffic in India) when I posted a link to a video of a
chaotic looking Indian intersection. It provoked debate on the merits of
traffic discipline versus chaos and later moved on to some other related
issues. All of this resonates with debates about shared space or naked
streets approaches to streets and the public realm.

Then I noticed the proliferation of what you might call 'traffic
exotica' video clips on the GlobalSouth group at YouTube. This got me
thinking about this issue again - and if or how shared space idea might
apply to lower income cities. 

So I decided to blog about it - with more questions than answers I must
admit. See
http://urbantransportasia.blogspot.com/2006/08/naked-streets-and-safe-ch
aos.html

The entry is called: 'Naked streets' and safe chaos

And it begins: 
"I recommend taking a look at YouTube's GlobalSouth group which has more
than 60 short videos now on transport in developing countries. A
striking number of the videos are simply footage of streets or
intersections in countries like India, China or Vietnam. Most of them
show traffic that at first glance looks completely and utterly CRAZY,
often with a mind-boggling diversity of road users doing anything and
everything you could imagine."

Feedback welcome. I am sure some of you may know a lot more about this
than I do. 

Paul