Beyond the 99% Invisible City

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0:44Try Walmart Express Delivery today and get free delivery with promo code EXPRESS. Promotion valid for first express delivery order. $50 minimum. Subject to availability. Restrictions apply. This is 99 % invisible. I'm Kurt Colstead. Okay. So like what I want you to do is I want you to take a breath, take a breath. Okay. And just like, you know, just get into your voice a little bit and go, this is 99 % invisible. I'm Kurt Colstead. This is 99 % invisible. I'm Kurt Colstead. Okay. Now I want you to, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want you to do it again. I want you to do it again. Okay. And I want you to do it now this time.

1:28Like I want you to do. The gravitas is there, like you're getting like that part of the tone. But I want you to add, now that you have that, I want you to add like a little bit of smile in your voice. Okay. Okay. So you're going to go, this is 99 % Invisible. I'm Kurt Kolstad. This is 99 % Invisible. I'm Kurt Kolstad. That's great. I love it. Print it.

1:56in 2020 my co-author roman mars and i put out a hit book about the built environment it's an illustrated hardcover we called a field guide to the hidden world of everyday design the 99 invisible city was an instant new york times bestseller and topped the charts in the uk canada and australia versions of the book were also released in other countries as well translated into languages including Spanish, Czech, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. In the years since these first edition releases, Kurt and I have worked together on a number of new episodes and many stories with an eye towards an eventual second edition, a kind of revised and expanded paperback iteration with additional as-yet-unprinted stories.

2:39But today, rather than wait on publishers or printers, we've decided to share a set of four of our favorite short stories from the past half decade, each of which corresponds to one of the four main chapters of The 99 % Invisible City. And those chapters are infrastructure, urbanism, geography, and architecture. So if you enjoy what follows, be sure to check out both the book, The 99 % Invisible City, and the original episodes associated with each short story. That's right. Let's get started. Infrastructure. Shortly before the book came out, but after the final draft was already locked in, Roman and I did an episode on roadway signs and other roadway infrastructure designs.

3:22We titled it Highways 101. And what started us down this road was a letter from a fan. One of the things Kurt does is he checks our inbox for listener-submitted ideas, combs through all of them. And earlier this summer, a 99PI fan named Daniel wrote us about a strange stop sign that he encountered while traveling. And you started digging into the story. Yeah. So his email started like this. A couple of years ago, we took a trip to Hawaii. My wife became obsessed over a few blue stop signs we saw in parking lots. The signs were the size and shape and use the same lettering as normal red stop signs, but they were bright blue.

4:04So I don't think I've ever seen that before. I had never seen this either, either in images or in real life. So I started looking into why some were blue. And that turned out to be pretty easy to figure out. But it got me wondering something a lot more fundamental, which is why are the rest of them all red, right? Exactly. Why is that such a thing in the first place? Totally. Yeah. And that got me into, of course, digging into the whole history of stop signs. Of course. Of course. That's the only way this is going to go with you. Yeah. It's just my nature. And as I was looking into this, this one figure kept popping up everywhere I looked.

4:41A guy named William Phelps Eno, who in the early 1900s became known as the father of traffic safety. Oh, okay. So what do you have to do to earn that title, the father of traffic safety? So Eno was born way back in the 1850s. And if you think about it, you know, 1850s, he's in New York. This is a New York without cars. Right. So, of course, it's in New York without stop signs. Without stop signs. Totally. Yeah. The roads back then were kind of this open space that was shared by carriages and pedestrians, and they moved all around. It was a lot different. Right, right. It wasn't very organized.

5:16More and more people were on the streets, and cars started showing up. And it just was increasingly clear that this was a mess, and it was going to need some kind of regulation. And so was Eno some kind of road expert? Is that what he was working on? Well, that's the thing. Not really. He came from this family real estate business, decided it wasn't for him. It wasn't his passion. His passion was traffic. So in 1900, he writes this article. And it's not entirely clear in hindsight if he realized what he was doing at the time. But he basically was writing a treatise that would lay the groundwork for everything he would do for the rest of his life.

5:57So in the end, he would come around to inventing and evolving all different kinds of traffic innovations, things we take for granted today, like rotary junctions and pedestrian crossings. Wow. So he really earned that title, the father of traffic safety. Absolutely. And once his ideas got some traction in the U.S., he began helping other cities create traffic plans. And some really recognizable designs traced back to him, like roundabouts at Piccadilly Circus in London and around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. And he was even inducted into the Legion of Honor by the French government after World War I.

6:38For traffic? Yes. He got that. Wow. And so was Eno the man who invented the stop sign? Well, that's the thing. I kind of fell down this rabbit hole looking into him. But one thing I realized along the way was that I was never going to find the inventor of the stop sign. Yeah. Because it's one of those things that has existed in various forms for a while now. But it's safe to say that Eno played a really big role in popularizing stop signs and yield signs and that kind of signage infrastructure. And also, put this in context, right? Stop signs back then, they weren't what we think of as stop signs today.

7:20Their designs varied from place to place. One of the first ones that popped up in Detroit in, I think it was 1915, had black lettering on a white background, presumably for contrast. So they really, they came in all these different shapes and sizes. And there was no sort of one person you could say, aha, that guy made the stop sign. Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense to me, that there would be a need for stop signs. And therefore, they would be invented in multiple places and multiple times. So when did they sort of get this octagonal shape that we attribute to them? Like, when did that happen?

7:56Right. So that one actually does have a specific answer. And the answer is 1923. That's when the Mississippi Valley Association of State Highway Departments decided to standardize the shape. That's a very specific answer. Yes. That's great. And it was a pretty good idea to make it a non-standard shape, something that would stand out. But there was actually more to it than that. They had this idea that they could create an association between geometry and safety. Explain more what you mean there. Well, they believed that the shape itself could communicate something. Like part of what the sign was trying to do could be achieved through the shape of that sign.

8:42Okay, so we're not talking about just associating a rare shape with a specific meaning. There's some kind of theory behind eight having a meaning that ties to stopping. Yes, and this was a huge surprise to me. Yeah, because it sounds like nonsense. It sounds sort of occult almost, right? Totally. But I found this out through this New York Times Magazine article by Hilary Greenbaum and Dieter Rubenstein. And I'm just going to have you read this excerpt for context that explains why the Highway Department's Association recommended different shapes for different signs. Okay, here it is. Quote, The recommendations were based on a simple, albeit not exactly intuitive idea.

9:31The more sides a sign has, the higher the danger level it invokes. By the engineer's reckoning, the circle, which has an infinite number of sides, screamed danger and was recommended for railroad crossings. The octagon, with its eight sides, was used to denote the second highest level. The diamond shape was for warning signs, and the rectangle and square shapes were used for informational signs. End quote. That is just wild. It really is, right? I mean, there's so many things that I have, so many questions I have about this. And one of which is like, does a circle really have an infinite number of sides?

10:08Well, yeah. So I'm thinking back to like, you know, grade school geometry. And I'm like, I think that there's something to that. I think it's like. Yeah. If you take the tangent of each point and therefore it has an infinite number of sides. But I don't think people perceive it as having an infinite number of sides. I think they perceive it as having one side. Right. It's not like we look at a circle, a square, and a triangle, and we say, aha, right, three, four, and infinite. It never in a million years occurred to me that there was some grand geometric theory behind U.S. stop sign shapes. But if you think about it, if you start to unpack it and you look at signs around you, you can sort of understand what they're getting at, right?

10:49It's like, well, yeah, rectangular signs often tell you what exit to take or something. There's circles at railroad crossings, sure. Yeah, but there's also like armbars at railroad crossings, you know, like because the circle is not quite enough sometimes. There's also X's and armbars and all kinds of other things. So I get that there's a theory behind it. And if it has some kind of basis in semiotics, I'm willing to entertain that notion. So now that, you know, in 1923 in Mississippi, they established the shape. How did they come up with the red background? Well, that might seem like the simpler decision.

11:24That one actually took a while longer. At the time, yellow was often used in part just for material science reasons, like they couldn't get a really good reflective durable red. And so yellow showed up at night. So for decades, that was the general standard. And then in the 1950s, they made red the official standard. Okay, so yellow because you can make kind of a matte yellow and it contrasts really well with black, for example, when it looks really good at night. But until you get that shiny red that you see on a stop sign, red is not a very good stop sign color. Right. And if you think about like when you see a red stop sign at night, it is really shiny and really reflective.

12:05And also by that time, too, we've got stoplights and other signage. And red has really got this built up association of being a thing telling you to stop. So making them red just kind of fit with the grander scheme of everything else that was going out at the time. Yeah. And it's a warning color in nature. I suppose yellow is, too. But yeah, it makes sense. So how does this get us to those blue stop signs in Hawaii that Daniel found? Oh, right. And that's how we come full circle or full octagon, as it were. And it turns out the blue painted stop signs are actually exceptional on purpose. You usually find them on private property, places like store parking lots.

12:52And the reason they're blue is so they won't be confused with other official government red signs. That makes sense. So they're like intentional fakes because they don't want it to seem like it's a sign maintained by the city or county. So they're like mall cops. They have a badge, they might have a gun, but they're not actual cops. Yeah, right. Like whether you actually decide to pay attention to what the sign's telling you is a little bit up to you. But it is really clear what it's trying to tell you, right? Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things I think that's so great about the stop sign is that with the shape, the word stop and the color, you can really take one or two of those elements.

13:33And at this point, it'll convey the meaning. Like if you had a red octagon with no word stop on it, I think people would generally stop. Right. Or if you saw, you know, an octagon from behind, you'll know that that's a stop sign. The other people have to stop. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That's a good sign. So they were onto something in Mississippi in 1923 and they figured something out.

14:03Urbanism. During the COVID pandemic, I became interested in how other global disasters had historically impacted urban design. And my research yielded not only stories of white-knuckled perseverance and resiliency, as you'd expect, but also tenacious creativity and playful innovation. So I pitched Roman on a Horseman of the Apocalypse-themed episode titled War, Famine, Pestilence, and Design. And that might all sound very serious, and a lot of it is, but... And that's when I came across the rise of miniature golf during the Great Depression of all times. That is not an association I would have made.

14:49So when I picture miniature golf courses, I kind of think of like the World War II era, you know, like sort of kitschy leisure and baby boomers and that kind of thing, not the Great Depression. Yeah, right. I mean, the last thing on your mind when you look at a mini golf course is the worst economic crash in modern history. So did mini golf come up because it was too expensive to maintain big, fancy golf courses or something like that? I mean, that's part of it, right? There's no way you're going to maintain these huge grounds for just a couple people walking along with their golf clubs. And all that we associate with sort of luxurious, sprawling golf courses, that was kind of not on the agenda financially.

15:27But also, there's just the matter of space, right? You've got all these people who are in cities and need something to do. and they don't have transportation to get out of cities. So mini golf becomes this kind of logical solution, kind of infill solution in the urban environment. Right. So like along with everything else, real estate prices plunged and there's some space and if you have a little bit of space, you can build a miniature golf course. Yeah, that's exactly it. The conditions were in some ways totally ideal in the wake of 1929 for exactly this kind of activity. And so while technically mini golf actually predates the stock market collapse, the crisis really ramped up interest in it.

16:10And you have, as you noted, like tons of closed businesses and vacant lots. And, you know, all of this is just ripe for entrepreneurs to take over. And even in places where there's not extra space, people just kind of made space. Like they would convert rooftops into peewee golf courses or parking lots, really anything. And so it was this surprisingly huge fad. And at one point, somebody even called it the madness of the 1930s. Specifically talking about miniature peewee golf is the madness in this phrase. Absolute insanity. That's quite the sequel to the Roaring Twenties. Yeah. And so you've got these two very different periods in a way, but there's also this parallel where if you think about it, everybody needs recreation and distraction.

16:56And it doesn't matter if things are going well or they're going horribly. And given the economic situation in the 30s, cheaper activities were naturally much more appealing. So on the business side, it's also an opportunity, right? Because people could turn their own yards into courses or the interiors of their unused office buildings. Basically, anybody could try their hand at building a course. And so tons of people did. Wow, I love picturing that. The people just entrepreneurially, like setting up a miniature golf course, like a lemonade stand. Exactly. Everywhere they can. So when did all the things that I think of when it comes to miniature golf crop up, like the mechanical windmills or the ramps and all that sort of stuff?

17:37When did that happen? So some of the more technologically advanced stuff came later. But a lot of those basic things that we still see in miniature golf courses today do date back to this exact era. Things like ramps and bridges and ridges. People just build out of available dirt or whatever they could find. And at the same time, you have this recent invention of artificial turf, which helps courses hold up better to foot traffic. So people who could afford it would add that to make a more robust course. But, you know, really the kind of key in all this is all the odds and ends. Course makers could just grab whatever scraps they could find, pipes and stones, and just work them into this bigger design.

18:18And there was some scrappy entrepreneurialism in picking the sites for these places, too. Like some would situate their courses underneath big lit up billboards so that they could operate at night without having to pay for, you know, the light bulbs or the electricity. Oh, I love it. This is so fun to picture like cities filled with miniature golf courses everywhere. I mean, am I getting this right? Is it really like like everywhere? Yeah. I mean, I've literally seen pictures of it being everywhere. And like I love these images of like little rooftops that are where people are crowded around like playing mini golf.

18:53And, you know, it's totally the opposite of what we can imagine today, right? Like you look at New York City and you think, well, every bit of real estate is used and expensive. But back then it was like, no, there were little spaces you could cram into. And so people would just head out in droves and go play mini golf. Wow. I mean, mini golf is delightful, so it doesn't surprise me all that much. But the ubiquity of it that you're describing really is striking. Yeah. And, of course, with all these creators vying to make their course the best course, trying to attract more players, there was innovation around that, too.

19:29Like, ways that people would try to set theirs apart. Things like pools and mazes and traps popped up. And eventually, more kind of fancy things like fountains and forests and castles. And even replicas of famous architecture, like the Taj Mahal or the Great Wall of China. And so over time, these things become almost like tiny theme parks, right? Like just populated with all kinds of wild and creative and colorful stuff. And this one in particular that I read about, I think, has my personal favorite feature, which is a trained monkey that goes after your ball. So if you're not careful, it'll just come and snatch your ball and it's like game over.

20:11I would definitely go to that park. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wish that one was still around today. But a lot of the elements are still around, right? Like those complex courses with the miniature architecture, it's like become a kind of staple. And it's still like this thing that we associate with like a fun family night out. Totally. It's just sort of fun to imagine New York City just being carpeted with miniature golf courses of all things. I just, I kind of love it. Oh, I do too. I do too.

20:43Geography. 99 % Invisible has a recurring episode series we call MapQuests. Each new installment collects geography-related stories from different producers. In some cases, a given collection might revolve around a specific place or typology. And one such set, named 5440 or Fight, came out during the COVID era. And it contains a set of stories centered on the border between the United States and our country's affable neighbor to the north. And you have a Canadian border story for us. Oh, I do. Okay, hit me. It's about this pair of adjacent parks that are along the U.S.-Canadian border in Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia.

21:28And in these parks, like right where they meet along the border, there's this big peace arch monument with this inscription, May these gates never be closed. Wow. Well, that's a pretty bold statement for a border. Right? Which is like antithetical to what borders are usually about. So what's the story there? Well, the arch and the parks date back to the early 1900s. But that never closed sentiment is actually a nod to the war of 1812 between the U.S. and the U.K. And at the end of that conflict, basically both sides signed a treaty to leave the border between the U.S. and Canada undefended as a sign of friendship.

22:08And so now there's this arch with this sentiment written on it. But I mean, can you truly walk through it whenever you want? Well, yeah. For most of the past century, you absolutely could. And when this park space is open for visitors, people can just freely cross into it from either side and then hang out without actually waiting to get through some tedious border checkpoint. So it ends up being this kind of no man's land. And then when they leave, visitors just have to exit back to their country of origin. Okay, so the arch doesn't really operate as a checkpoint, but it sounds as if the entrance to each park might operate as a checkpoint a little bit.

22:50Well, sort of. It's like you can freely walk into the park and there's people patrolling the park. But the real key is you should have identification with you because when you try to exit the park, they want to make sure that you're coming back into the country you're supposed to be coming back into. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. That makes sense. But it's a little less rigorous than what we think of as a normal international border checkpoint. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. But it started to change a little bit in this past year and a half, as you might imagine, because of the pandemic. Right.

23:23Yeah. So each country maintains and controls its side of the park, right? And early in the pandemic, both sides kept everything open. But even after Canada decided to close its side down, Canadians have still been able to meet up with Americans by crossing into the U.S. park along this one side. Huh. Well, I can imagine a lot of people are taking advantage of that because everything else was pretty closed. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like a lot of friends and families split by the border have continued to gather here. And there have even been a ton of bi-national weddings at the park. well that makes sense i mean if it's a convenient way to get together and people like get married in parks yeah absolutely i don't know what you do after the ceremony you just split apart again yeah you go your separate ways i mean that's that's the crazy thing right it's like you still have to kind of go back to your country of origin but it you know it's still a pretty convenient place for people to get together and celebrate yeah it's partly that direct ease of access but also people fully crossing over in conventional ways have faced up to a two-week quarantine and COVID testing.

24:28But they can get around all that by meeting up in this spot instead. And as you might imagine, you know, divided families who can't afford to take all that time off of work to self-isolate after a trip. I mean, this border zone loophole has been a real boon for them. I'm pretty careful about all the COVID stuff. And I think that these quarantines are really, really effective. And I'm just kind of surprised that both countries just haven't shut this down entirely. Yeah. And, you know, that's kind of the craziest part, because legally, no matter what either country wants to do, neither side can fully close the border because that would be an international treaty violation.

25:07So this is the treaty that you mentioned dating back to the War of 1812. I mean, that that thing really has teeth like they have to keep the border open in someplace? Yep, that's the idea. And so you still have authorities policing the parks and, you know, regulating who is allowed in and where they exit, but they're not really able to just stop people from meeting up entirely. Huh. That's kind of amazing. So for the sake of argument, like, what would happen if one side actually decide to, like, you know, put up a wall and shut the border down? I mean, Canada was pretty proactive when it came to COVID protocols and shutting the border down?

25:45Like what would happen if they put their wall up? Well, that's the thing. I was looking into this and I found this immigration lawyer who was interviewed by the CBC. And he says that a full closure would have some pretty wild side effects. And it would depend upon like which side violates the agreement. So he claims if Canada broke the treaty, in theory, the U.S. could lay claim to parts of Ontario and Quebec. And if America broke it, Canada could get parts of Maine, Michigan, and Wisconsin. So basically, North American geography, as we know it, is contingent on this early 1800s treaty remaining in effect.