What if private industry participated fully in our cities' transportation systems - not just naming stops after themselves, but actually ran a single line? What if the laws, customs, and norms that regulate traffic were connected directly to nature? What if the last thing on our mind when we got into our personal automobile, the bus, our bicycle, or walking shoes was efficiency; that we actually enjoyed moving through the city and took our time? Traffic, transit, moving through the city. It has always been an issue. We continually try to fix the problems that arise from these necessary components of our lives. We build more roads, we invent different forms of transportation. we create new zoning laws. We create a variety of economic incentives. Enter the worker transit authority (wta), a new form of authority that investigates and produces projects for the built environment through the convergence of planning and art.
The exhibit, the Worker Transit Authority, is a display of mock planning projects created by a mock planning authority. The Worker Transit Authority asks the community, "How do you move through the city?" And, for three weekends, Tucson residents participated in this important discussion about land use, infrastructure, transportation, environment and distribution.Like actual transit authority public processes, the project is a form of civic engagement, but unlike actual transit authority pubic processes the WTA events are fun! The project wraps art, parody, and beauty to format new and radical notions of how we can function as individuals and as a society. The projects include: an overview of the Worker Transit Authority (WTA), the Consumer Transit System (CTS), the Bicycle-centric Approach to Planning (BcAP), and Distribute This! (DT!). The exhibits include interactive maps, brochures, surveys, drawings, sculptures, videos and text.
Photography by Roy Chamberlin