Street Safety Is a Storytelling Problem

In Zutphen, the Netherlands, there's a painter named Femke Hiemstra whose work might accidentally contain a blueprint for American street design. She has no idea.I mean this seriously, which is the most dangerous way to mean anything. Hiemstra paints what she calls "Neo-Fabulist" scenes: meticulously rendered jewel-box paintings where teacups grow legs, mice wear waistcoats, and inanimate objects conspire with woodland creatures in a fairytale one-third Beatrix Potter, one-third Hieronymus Bosch, one-third the dream you have after eating a whole wheel of brie. Her work lives between fantasy and reality, rendered with the kind of attention to narrative detail that makes every fox, teacup, and mushroom feel weighted with looming consequence.Looming consequence. Also a great description of an unprotected left turn on a four-lane arterial.The Plywood RenaissanceA quiet shift is happening in municipal public works departments. Like most quiet shifts, it involves a lot of orange paint and…