How fast is too fast? Cities like New York, Portland, Boston, and Washington, D.C. are initiating ways to regulate traffic speeds and install better signage to aid in pedestrian and bicycle safety. With the high number of reported traffic-related deaths and injuries only rising, cities are starting to realize that lowering urban speed limits doesn’t only benefit non-drivers. 

In a recent CityLab article, writer Andrew Small provides detailed information communicating the benefits that reducing speed limits can have for non-drivers, drivers, and the built environment, alike. One detail Small points out is how "perhaps urbanists shouldn't demand slow lanes or slow neighborhoods: They should ask for a slow city." 

With the rise of fast-paced micro-mobility on our streets and sidewalks, and the promise of zippy autonomous vehicles transporting products and people supposedly in our the future, it can be hard to imagine how a slow city might be a possibly come to be. However, Small points out that viewed another way, "the micro-mobility revolution not only highlights a burgeoning need for more slow lanes: It can vividly illustrate the people-moving power of very modest speeds [...] If we can re-conceptualize autonomous vehicles as low-speed machines trundling around downtown rather than interstate-eating robots tasked with making complex split-second driving decisions at highway velocities, everything gets less difficult."