With the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts at one of its corners, the plaza at the intersection of South and Orange is really grand. Unfortunately, you don’t notice how great the civic space is until you’re passing it by. We’d love to see a visual speed bump at this intersection as a gateway into the space.
Other cities like Portland and Miami have embraced these on-street murals and crosswalk designs to reduce speeding. The City of Casselberry also has one. Orlando’s bringing so much more art to the public space; here’s another great opportunity to celebrate one our newest civic spaces. There’s lots of other intersections and crosswalks in Orlando that could use similar treatment.
Bonus: We read about this smart street sign in Fast Company. The digital sign’s arms can change content and direction based on information it’s fed from different sources (Twitter, Foursquare, local transportation APIs, and RSS news feeds). It might be an interesting way to showcase the rest of Downtown Orlando for visitors checking out a show at the Dr. Phillips Center.
I love the idea of a Visual Speed Bumps. It underscores our recent designation as tied for #2 on the list of Most Creative Cities of America…and our avid interest in and support for the Arts. We could commission local artists to do the work with grant money that has been put in place for just this sort of thing. I say “Go for it!”. Let’s make The City Beautiful even more so!
That Youtube video is blowing my mind! I have never seen that before. Very cool.
This is a high volume thoroughfare, and in addition just a very short distance to our major trauma center. Is it advisable to have a distraction resulting in people slowing to a virtual stop at this point ? Just asking. The sign of a major metropolitan city generally is seen by how rapidly they move high volumes of traffic with minimal stops or even slowdowns. In many large cities, their traffic police man major intersections and manage potential slowdowns by waving traffic on and eliminating obstacles the best they can, even controlling traffic lights manually. Lost souls and sightseers are NOT seen as popular things during periods of high traffic.