Abstract
AbstractThis article offers an analysis of different approaches to control walking in Stockholm in the inter-war period. Various social actors engaged in controlling pedestrians through legislation, police monitoring, educational campaigns and traffic control technologies. But the police, municipal engineers, local politicians and road user organizations differed in their aspirations to privilege motorists over pedestrians. While the inter-war period saw a shifting balance between pedestrians and motorists in Stockholm, the transition in terms of legitimate use of city streets was incomplete. Moreover, taking pedestrians’ viewpoints into consideration, what many observers and motorists understood as rebellion against traffic rules or simply bad manners, many pedestrians found to be the safest way to cross the street.
Highlights
The downgrading and disciplining of pedestrians is omnipresent in the small but growing scholarship on the history of urban walking
Municipal engineers, local politicians and road user organizations differed in their aspirations to privilege motorists over pedestrians
Errázuriz finds that the city authorities’ attempts to control pedestrian conduct through decrees and education largely failed, and proposes a more immediate reason for pedestrian submission: concern about their own life in Santiago’s increasingly car-oriented streets.5. Authors differ in their descriptions about the relationship and tensions between different road user groups and other social groups engaged with urban traffic
Summary
The downgrading and disciplining of pedestrians is omnipresent in the small but growing scholarship on the history of urban walking. Errázuriz finds that the city authorities’ attempts to control pedestrian conduct through decrees and education largely failed, and proposes a more immediate reason for pedestrian submission: concern about their own life in Santiago’s increasingly car-oriented streets.5 Authors differ in their descriptions about the relationship and tensions between different road user groups and other social groups engaged with urban traffic. In November 1925, a reporter at Dagens Nyheter criticized how the traffic police, rather than helping pedestrians to cross the street safely favoured cars.. In November 1925, a reporter at Dagens Nyheter criticized how the traffic police, rather than helping pedestrians to cross the street safely favoured cars.19 He apparently struck a nerve with the walking public: during the coming few days, the paper received a stream of phone calls from grateful pedestrians.. Motorist interests appear to have had an upper hand vis-à-vis other road user groups, the struggles of distributing blame and responsibility remained unresolved throughout the inter-war period, as seen in the debates around the introduction of pedestrian crossings and traffic signals in Stockholm
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