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Antanas Mockus, mayor of Bogotá, hired street-corner “traffic mimes” to make fun of reckless drivers or walkers–and cut the city’s pedestrian death rate in half. Mockus’ seemingly wacky notions have a
respectable intellectual pedigree. His measures were informed by, among others, Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, who has investigated the tension between formal and informal rules, and Jürgen Habermas‘ work on how dialogue creates social capital. Somehow this reminds me of K. R. Munson’s show-tune-self-defense strategy: If you all dont lower your voices and
cease calling me Satan, I will have to sing show tunes. The other straphangers look at me with stony faces. I begin to sing…. The aptly named Mockus, says BoingBoing, just hired 400 more traffic mimes. But, for fending off road rage, shouldn’t they also sing show tunes? |
Marcel Marceau, the city of Paris needs you!
December 22nd, 2004 · No Comments
Tags: Heroes and funny folks