The city of Seattle is encouraging community involvement and creativity by allowing its community members to design hand-painted crosswalks. This program hopes to inspire creativity, while reminding citizens that streets and crosswalks are public property, which makes them everyone's property.
While cities often view street art as vandalism, the "city’s Department of Transportation announced this week that it will permit its community members to customize their neighborhood crosswalks." The Department of Transportation will make funds available for the project and will also have to approve all of the creative ideas in order to ensure the roads are not disruptive or inappropriate.
While the city of Seattle has seen the crosswalks painted for Pride and for Pan Am, this new initiative will build bonds within neighborhoods and allow people to publicly express themselves.
What Makes This Trend Stand Out
- Community-designed Crosswalks
- Giving citizens the opportunity to design and paint their own crosswalks encourages creativity and community involvement.
- Public Property Art
- Allowing citizens to participate in public space beautification projects can create a greater sense of ownership and pride in the community as a whole.
- Neighborhood-centric Art
- Creating neighborhood-specific art installations such as hand-painted crosswalks fosters a stronger sense of community and identity within that local area.
Sectors Adopting This
- Urban Planning
- Cities can benefit from involving citizens in the design and planning of public spaces, such as crosswalks, to increase community engagement and improve livability.
- Street Art
- Street art can provide a channel for citizens to express themselves and for cities to promote creative expression as part of urban landscape design.
- Tourism
- Neighborhoods with unique and vibrant public art installations, such as hand-painted crosswalks, can increase tourism and economic activity in the area.
