A little extra effort, please

I bet there are a lot of stark, unfriendly pedestrian routes in your town. One of my least favorite is the corner of Pine & Boren (satellite view) in downtown Seattle.

It's not so much a corner, as a place where two freeway overpasses happen to cross. One point for utility, minus a thousand points for aesthetics.

If we're going to promote more walking as transportation, we need to convert these concrete strips into green connectors. Centrala, a group of designers in Warsaw, have envisioned exactly that for their city: pedestrian bridges spanning traffic, with enough space for green.

All I want is this kind of extra effort from all you architects and urban planners out there.