It’s not often one hears a new word manufactured for a purpose, and see it spread its way through our vernacular world. That assumes there’s a need for it. In this case, for sure.
In Atlantic Cities, the word originator, Charles Marohn, explain how and when he came up with ‘stroad’
First the definition:
The STROAD design — a street/road hybrid — is the futon of transportation alternatives. Where a futon is a piece of furniture that serves both as an uncomfortable couch and an uncomfortable bed, a STROAD moves cars at speeds too slow to get around efficiently but too fast to support productive private sector investment. The result is an expensive highway and a declining tax base.
Then the reason:
Marohn says he coined the term in 2011 to wake up the people who design America’s roads. “I really was writing it as a way to push back at the engineering profession and get my fellow engineers to think about the bizarre things they’re building,” says Marohn. That was why he initially wrote the word in that annoying all-cap style, which he eventually dropped. “I figured engineers would read it and wonder, what was it an acronym for?” he says, laughing.
And of course, the video:
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v. stride, strode