Designing signals, mediating mobility

Emanuel, Martin

doi:10.4324/9781315560113-9

Cited by 2 publications

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“…As traffic lights had come to Sweden and Stockholm in the interwar period, the Swedish signalling firm AGA had played a crucial role in technology transfer from the United States. 53 As we have seen, AGA and other signal firms remained important agents of transfer in the post-war period, but now, Swedish experts looked to England rather than the United States for inspiration, technology and expertise-apparently because street networks and traffic in English cities seemed comparable to Stockholm. The first post-war decade also saw a shift in traffic control expertise, similar to what Clay McShane has found for the United States in the interwar period.…”

Section: Vehicle Actuation Comes To Town: Technology Transfer and Transition Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 93%

“…Most of them could be set to either work automatically according to a pre-set signal cycle or be manually operated by officers on location, and traffic experts debated the strengths and weaknesses of the two methods of operation. 22 The discussions persisted throughout the war and afterward. Manual control of the lights by police officers was more expensive, and traffic experts criticised their inability to properly judge the phases for optimal road user comfort and traffic flow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Challenging the system: Pedestrian sovereignty in the early systemisation of city traffic in Stockholm, ca. 1945–1955

Emanuel

2021

The Journal of Transport History

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This article probes the duality of marginalisation yet omnipresence of walking in cities. Using innovation in traffic light technology in Stockholm as a case study, it seeks to understand the attempts to regulate and safeguard pedestrians in the first decade after the Second World War. The article argues that traffic lights and other technologies were part of experts’ efforts to make urban mobility “systemic”, linking streets with vehicles and road users with the aim to optimize traffic. In doing so, their approach to pedestrian control was ambiguous. On the one hand, experts wanted to fit pedestrians into the emerging city traffic system: make them predictable, while also seeing to their safety. On the other hand, their designs and corresponding legislation often accepted pedestrian sovereignty, and walking was not systemised in Stockholm during the period studied here.

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Section: Vehicle Actuation Comes To Town: Technology Transfer and Transition Of Expertisementioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Challenging the system: Pedestrian sovereignty in the early systemisation of city traffic in Stockholm, ca. 1945–1955

Emanuel

2021

The Journal of Transport History

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Controlling walking in Stockholm during the inter-war period

Emanuel

2019

Urban History

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This 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.

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Designing signals, mediating mobility

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

Challenging the system: Pedestrian sovereignty in the early systemisation of city traffic in Stockholm, ca. 1945–1955

Challenging the system: Pedestrian sovereignty in the early systemisation of city traffic in Stockholm, ca. 1945–1955

Controlling walking in Stockholm during the inter-war period

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