Salon.com has a very interesting article on second-generation traffic calming by Linda Baker, "Why Don't We Do It In The Road?" [registration required], which

...[r]eject[s] the idea of separating people from vehicular traffic...a concept that privileges multiplicity over homogeneity, disorder over order, and intrigue over certainty. In practice, it's about dismantling barriers: between the road and the sidewalk, between cars, pedestrians and cyclists and, most controversially, between moving vehicles and children at play...

Sounds intriguing in theory, but could it work in the hot-tempered daily snarls of American cities?

Reversing decades of conventional wisdom on traffic engineering, [traffic researcher Ben] Hamilton-Baillie argues that the key to improving both safety and vehicular capacity is to remove traffic lights and other controls, such as stop signs and the white and yellow lines dividing streets into lanes. Without any clear right-of-way, he says, motorists are forced to slow down to safer speeds, make eye contact with pedestrians, cyclists and other drivers, and decide among themselves when it is safe to proceed. [via Kottke]

Maybe there is something to it: how else can we explain the daily accident-free function of a vehicular nightmare scenario - and early example of second-generation traffic calming - the "Magic Roundabout" in Swindon, England [above]?

"The next thing they mentioned was the Magic Roundabout. One of the locals asked us to explain how it works. My brother said 'Oh, it's easy. You just go clockwise on the outside and anti-clockwise on the inside'. They just looked even more baffled. On all other roundabouts in the UK you always go clockwise.

Swindonians called the new roundabout the 'Magic Roundabout' from the very beginning. Firstly because it did seem to be magic - solving the traffic congestion - but also as this is the name of a children's TV series popular in the 1960s and 70s."

Perhaps the Magic Roundabout isn't a pure example of '2GTC,' but it illustrates the point that behavior change can ease the shared used of congested traffic areas, here an exceptionally messy five-point freeway. Drivers and pedestrian users would have to rapidly become accustomed to cooperative use of traffic areas rather than what often happens, "competitive use." This, of course, would require a major shift in many U.S. drivers' "me-first" self-perception - urban Chinese-style intersections or "magic roundabouts" are no place for road rage:

For their part, many American traffic engineers say one critical ingredient is missing for a system built around shared spaces to work in the United States: a communal sensibility. "We live in a culture that gives so much value to the individual and the expression of that is how we act in a car," says Robert Burchfield, a city traffic engineer in my home town of Portland, Ore., which is nationally recognized for its preservation of public space and its dedicated network of cycling lanes and pedestrian pathways. "I'm not comfortable with less order when I can't get people to go below 50 or 60 miles per hour."

I think I've experienced something like 2GTC when I drive through the International Marketplace section of Devon Avenue (roughly between Leavitt and McCormick) on a busy Saturday afternoon, when crosswalks mean nothing, and drivers and pedestrians alike make a Chicago street feel like a multiculti souk. No one seems to mind much, though. Few horns ever blare in frustration, and no one seems to get ticketed for jaywalking or driving through stop signs. Although the chaotic feeling takes some getting used to, I think the trick - as a driver - is to look and move about like a human being, not like a metal box with an engine.

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