from the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, NYC (thanks Josh!)

Looking back over the thumbnails on the DIYDPW blog channel page of all of these posts over the last few years, a major theme emerges: citizens in urban and rural environments pushing for the conscientious slowing down of traffic.

My gut response is that this is less about the handmade signage providing a direct counter to municipal speed guidelines, and more about people just being fed up with the constant danger posed by high-speed vehicles being driven in such a dissociated way from their environment that it’s a threat to human and animal lives in every single minute of our existence. In other words: slow the fuck down!

DIYDPW is a frequent, irregular blog post highlighting global examples of Do It Yourself Department of Public Works projects. These are defined as any examples of municipal signage or infrastructure, generated by citizens outside of state-sanctioned means, that fulfill a perceived need in the area within which they are installed. It focuses specifically on street signage and way-finding graphics, and we take contributions from our readers! Got a photo of a great handmade or otherwise DIY sign that fixes a problem the local municipality had otherwise overlooked? Send it our way. Email (include a web-ready image and location found) to DIYDPW at gmail dot com