I wrote a story earlier this week for GOOD about the designer Julie Kim and her project to put a coffee table (which she designed) at a bus stop in Koreatown. You can watch the video above to see what happened—in short, awesomeness—but the whole thing has generated tons of comments, replies on Twitter, and general buzz about what could be done to help make bus stops better places for the people who have to use them (and my personal dream: make them so good-looking that even non-transit riders will want to use them). My friend Souris posted a call over at Paper Culture for people to contribute their ideas. I love how she relates it to guerrilla gardening, a sexy and popular way to improve the landscape. What’s the guerrilla gardening of public transit improvements?
About a decade ago, I helped plant guerrilla gardens throughout downtown Los Angeles. More recently, I purchased seed bombs and lobbed them into boarded-up sites. What simple things can we do to beautify bus stops? Could we hang art (would it get stolen)? What about designing permanent coffee tables or something similar around town? Are there any biodegradable furniture companies out there who want to help?
There are some comments already on Souris’s post, but here are some other ideas. From Allison Arieff:
From Facebook:
And this awesome one by Aaron Basil Nelson was sent to us via Twitter (there are more at The City Fix):
What are your ideas for beautifying bus stops? Add your thoughts or comments and we’ll try to compile them into one place. Or who knows… maybe we’ll secretly head out and start implementing them ourselves.
