Things don’t always go as planned, but in the world of city planning, the cost of getting something wrong can be catastrophic. From bridges that lead nowhere to cities sinking into the ocean, here’re some of the most shocking things city planners failed to anticipate!
Tactile Pavement Gone Wrong
Have you ever wondered what those strange bumpy plates you sometimes see around cities are for?
They’re actually
tactile markings for the visually impaired to feel their way safely across roads and sidewalks. First used in Japan back in the 60s, they’ve quickly become the standard for almost every city across the globe. However, the folks who first came up with this brilliant idea didn’t anticipate some of the idiots who’d try and implement it.Look at this tactile path in Mojokerto, Indonesia. That’s not an unfinished section of paving, the markings literally end with a deep, sudden drop into a sewage canal. What were they thinking? Miraculously, there haven’t been any accidents, so far. But who’s to say there won’t be in the future? Erosion could make that hole even bigger! And our tactile troubles don’t stop there.
When making guided paths, city planners need to consider not only where to pave but also how to build around the paving in the future. The last thing you want is to set down a perfectly good path only for some nincompoop to put a bench right across it. Or worse,
a mysterious hole?It’s pretty clear that a lot of builders have no idea what these nobbles actually mean. Further cementing my point, over in this Japanese subway, whoever installed this surface was supposed to make it lead into the restroom, not straight into a wall!
Meanwhile, builders in China seem to care more about aesthetics than practicality. What’s with the zig-zag design and the ancient Greek pattern below? They certainly look nice; who wouldn’t appreciate that? Except, you know, the blind! At this point, the blind leading the blind would be a welcome improvement.
Narrow Piata Romana Station
Train stations can get pretty claustrophobic, but Piața Romană station in Romania is so small that one wrong move and you could fall onto the tracks at any second. Indeed, with a platform less than 3 feet wide, it’s by far one of the narrowest in the world. So, what idiot designed it? Well, hold your judgment, there’s a truly wild backstory
.
Back in 1985, the Bucharest Metro presented plans for the city's second train line to then-dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu. However, as Nicolae reviewed the plans, his influential wife, Elena, had an interesting critique. Despite having zero experience in public transport, she demanded the engineers cross off their plans for one of the train stations because Romanian people were getting too fat.
Aside from being an insane demand in the first place, the proposed line already had very few new stations. But the engineers had an ingenious idea. They’d remove Piața Romană, the most essential stop on the entire line; however, they’d only do so on paper. In 1986, they started working on the station in secret without the approval of Romanian leadership. The only caveat? Keeping an entire metro station under wraps meant it needed a super compact design. Incredibly, the entire thing was finished in just 3 months, completely undetected, and sheltered from view behind thick walls around the track. For a whole year, trains whizzed by completely unaware. But slowly, word began to spread of the secret station and thousands petitioned the government to open it up to the public. Finally, in November 1988, they buckled under public pressure. The engineers’ plan had worked! Nowadays, it’s still in use, even if it is smaller than originally intended.
Desire Paths
Sometimes, bad design can stick out like a sore thumb. Nowhere is this more obvious than in something called “desire paths”. You know, when you’re walking down the street and decide to cut across the grass because it’s quicker? If enough people make that same decision, voila! You’re left with a worn-down area, AKA a desire path, and it’s something that could’ve been avoided if whoever planned the sidewalk had done a better job of it.
A well-laid footpath has as few needless diversions as possible. Seriously, who thought that huge ring in the image below was a good idea?
Sometimes though, desire paths can seem like a giant screw-you to whoever designed a perfectly usable pathway. Like this one below that’s literally right beside an actual walkway. Though the odd spacing between the pavement and the uneven length of each step is probably to blame for that.
However, you shouldn’t always judge a road by its shortcut. At first glance the windy pathway below looks completely pointless. Look again though, and it’s actually to help with wheelchair accessibility up that steep hill. If anything, desire paths should serve as a guideline for where actual paths should be built, which is exactly what happened in the case of Ohio University. In 1914, their grounds had become an unruly mess of half-beaten trails. So, cleverly, the University decided to pave over them, turning them into the school's official paths! All that beautiful untouched greenery is the sign of a job well done.
Unfinished Foreshore Freeway Bridge
Have you ever started working on something only to lose interest halfway through? Well, you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s what happened with this massive bridge in South Africa, which has sat unfinished for almost 50 years.
Visit Cape Town and you’ll find the not-quite-complete Foreshore Freeway Bridge. Conceived in the 1960s, this ring highway was part of a huge infrastructure project intended to get ahead of an anticipated traffic boom. Everything seemed fine until, in 1977, construction unexpectedly stopped. And the weirdest part is nobody’s really sure why.One theory goes a calculation error meant the 2 sides wouldn’t have ended up connecting and the project had to be cancelled. Another is that a mysterious store owner refused to sell their property to make for the bridge, preventing construction from moving forward. The official story however is that funds simply ran out.But despite being about as useful as well, a half-made bridge, this strange structure has become something of a landmark. As well as people running guided tours of it, it was also used to display a 114-foot-long vuvuzela for the 2010 FIFA World Cup that was blown at the start of every match. So,
will the bridge ever be finished? I wouldn’t hold my breath. The most recent effort was back in 2018, but after allegations of corruption, the project was once again put on ice. And it seems no one really cares; It’s not like some hapless driver is likely to accidentally take the wrong exit and hurtle to their doom.
Hospital's Decorative Fountain Linked To Disease Outbreak
Sometimes, oversights in planning can have very serious consequences. Back in 2010, the Aurora Hospital in Wisconsin made a shocking discovery. Eight visitors had become hospitalized after getting infected with a serious type of pneumonia called Legionnaires' disease.
While the spread of disease in hospitals isn’t all that rare, none of the infected had been patients. In fact, half hadn’t come anywhere near a patient, arriving only to pick up prescriptions or deliver orders! So why were they suddenly getting sick?After doing some digging, public health investigators traced all the infections back to one source: the
fountain in the hospital lobby. It turns out, it used the same water day-in, day-out, and stood beside a nearby fireplace with floodlights glaring onto it. This meant the stale water was heated up to the point it made a perfect breeding ground for bacteria that thrive in warmer temperatures.
The biggest issue wasn’t the water itself though, it was what was hiding beneath it. At the base of the fountain, hidden under decorative rocks, was a foam-like material. This soaked up and trapped the contaminated water, which grew even warmer in the stationary foam and made it utterly infested with Legionella bacteria. This meant that as people walked by, tiny bacteria-laced droplets sprayed into their mouths and infected them. Luckily, all eight made full recoveries, but let this be a lesson to everyone: hospitals and fountains do not mix!
Roberto Cercelletta, The Trevi Fountain Coin Thief
Yet, even when they’re bacteria-free, fountains can still cause highly unexpected consequences. Take Rome’s famous Trevi Fountain. Every day, thousands of people flock here to toss a coin in, to the point it amasses over a million dollars a year, most of which goes to charity. Except one day, somebody decided all those coins would be better off lining his own pockets.
Starting in 1968, a man named Roberto Cercelletta would sneak under the cover of darkness and filch coins from the fountain with a magnet. In just 15 minutes he could steal up to $1,000, and repeated this little heist for decades while the police showed little interest.
Then, in 2002, Roberto’s treasure hunts got the media's attention. Following a public uproar, cops finally started to take him seriously, and the next time he was caught, he was taken away in handcuffs.
But just one year later, an Italian judge ruled that coins thrown into the fountain were discarded by their owners; therefore, taking them wasn’t stealing. Roberto was released and got straight back to snatching coins for another whopping 9 years. In 2012 however, his coin crime spree would reach a sudden end after a violent altercation in the fountain led to his second arrest. Cercellatta passed away the next year, which is sad for his family, but a big win for charity.
Pont Des Arts Love Locks Removed
For decades, couples have shown their romantic feelings for each other by scratching their initials on padlocks and locking them onto bridges, though nowhere was this odd trend stronger than Paris’s Pont des Arts. Since 2008, couples have flocked to the popular bridge, affixing locks and throwing the keys into the river. The only thing is, the bridge wasn’t built to hold so much weight.
In 2014, it semi-collapsed due to the crushing weight of a staggering 700,000 locks. While nobody was hurt, it was enough for the Paris government to finally put its foot down, banning any new Love locks from being added. The next year, more than a million locks, weighing some 50 tons,
were removed, and the 200-year-old metal grates were replaced with smooth panels. While the act might’ve broken some hearts, we can all agree it’s preferable to someone’s bones being broken by a parapet weighing as much as a Range Rover.
Hostile Architecture
You might assume that well-designed public spaces are meant to bring people together. But one popular style of architecture aims to do the total opposite. Known as hostile architecture, it incorporates spikes, bars and sloped surfaces to discourage certain people, like the homeless and skateboarders. How lovely.
But this aggressive design has had some unintended consequences that have caught just as much flak as its intended ones.
For one, it reduces seating options for the elderly or disabled. Say grandpa needs to take a quick lie down on a bench; he’s gonna have a hard time with a metal rod sticking in his back. And by forcing homeless people away from well-lit spaces, it doesn’t mean they just disappear! More likely than not, they end up moving to areas that aren’t as safe.
Besides, if it sounds kind of dangerous to place a whole bunch of intentionally spikey metal objects around public spaces, that’s because it is. In 2024, a British four-year-old learned that the hard way when he tripped in Manchester Cathedral’s Gardens and banged his head against a skate stopper.
These metal strips are secured to benches and other public features to make them more difficult to skate on, and can be very dangerous. Luckily, the child survived, but he was left with a serious gash on his forehead. You ask me, these things have no place in any public space.
Bike Lane Blunders
The life of a city cyclist is fraught with danger, but if there’s anywhere they should feel safe, it’s a bike lane. Yet, somehow, some city planners just can’t seem to get their heads around it. Like whoever designed the strangely wavy lane below in Hungary.
It appears to be a pump track, specialized routes for cyclists that take advantage of up and down body movements to generate momentum. But they’re normally used on actual courses, not right next to roads. That said, at least it has a purpose, unlike this next total blunder in Arizona. Clearly, the cycle lane painter and the road designer weren’t on the same page.
This next one in Indonesia seems totally fine though, unless it does not have a pole right in the middle of it! If we give whoever planned the bike lane the benefit of the doubt, the lamp posts were built there afterwards, but that doesn’t excuse who put them there! At least you can ride around them, something some bikers in Romania have significantly more trouble with, thanks to a massive tree. And what’s up with the arrow painted on it? Is that meant to be helpful?
But the gold medal goes to the Macedonian bike lane in the image below. What possible reason could there be for building this 2-foot stone slab in the way? Perhaps cyclists speed over the crossing a lot so they raised the curb to deter them. But why paint the top red and make it way harder to see? Building a death trap in the aid of road safety seems mighty counterproductive.
Magic Roundabout, Swindon
Few things send a chill up a driver’s spine quite like having to use a roundabout. But none bring out true terror like the UK’s magic roundabout.
See How an Insane 7-Circle Roundabout Actually Works | WIRED by WIRED Opened in Swindon in 1972, this large, complex roundabout is anything but magic, despite the name. The main roundabout is surrounded by five smaller ones, with five different roads, all feeding into the same juncture. But the real kicker is that drivers can enter the circular intersection from either the left or right. It sounds less like a roundabout and more like a bumper car-style free-for-all. But there’s method behind the madness.Because of people’s ability to take either direction, cars can get on and off much faster, in fact, over a thousand more cars use the roundabout per hour than a traditional one. And even more shocking, it’s also proven to be safer than most similar intersections. Traffic keeps moving almost all the time due to the multitude of roundabouts, so generally cars are moving much slower compared to the stop-start nature of a standard roundabout.
Alright, that’s all gravy, but why is it featured in this article then? Didn’t the planners expect this? Well, yes and no. That confusing design might work very well in actuality, but it scares so many people off that they actively choose longer routes just to bypass it! Indeed, it’s consistently ranked among the most hated roundabouts in the whole country. Something that’s all too clear from the countless testimonials from angry drivers. You just can’t have nice things, can you?
London's Walkie Talkie
By now we know city planning isn’t as easy as building any old structure anywhere. But did you think anyone could mess up so bad they accidentally make a solar-powered death ray? Well, that’s exactly what someone did in London back in 2014.
The Fenchurch Building, nicknamed the Walkie-Talkie due to its distinctly top-heavy profile, was designed by Uruguayan architect Rafael Viñoly and finished in Spring 2014.
Conceived as a state-of-the-art high-rise office building with a small footprint and lush sky garden, it had everything going for it on paper. However, it quickly became one of the most hated buildings in the city. For about 2 hours a day, it had the small problem of shooting rays of concentrated heat down at the streets below.Despite looking cool, the Walkie-Talkie’s unique concave shape caused sunlight to reflect down from it onto a smaller, concentrated area on the ground. Think of it like a kid using a magnifying glass to burn ants, only blown up to a massive scale.
But everyone loves the sun, right? Not if it reaches terrifying temperatures of 161 degrees Fahrenheit. This towering terror burned tiles, bike seats, cars, and even set a small fire right outside someone's shop! One person demonstrated just how hot it is by frying up some eggs with the reflected beam. What’s the saying again, you can’t make an omelet without a few scorched barber shops?
Understandably, the building owners faced an outcry from angry locals and even had to pay thousands of dollars in repairs for melting part of someone’s Jaguar. But that expense is nothing compared to what they had to spend fixing the issue. To start, the building’s exterior had to be hidden behind a huge netting sheet until it was finished. Not exactly a good look for your $400 million mega project. Then, they installed a massive light-absorbing sunshade to prevent future damage to the hefty tune of some $12.7 million. Talk about a screw-up on an unimaginable scale. But you know what’s even crazier? This was the second time that Viñoly made this exact same mistake.Back in 2009, he was the architect of the 57-story
Vdara Hotel in Las Vegas. Everything seemed great until a year later, at a nearby pool, tourists started noticing their plastic cups were melting and their hair was getting singed. It soon became clear that the hotel's tall, glassy exterior was shooting Nevada’s heat right down at them! Not that Viñoly learned a thing from it.
San Antonio Sinkhole
Sometimes, a lack of foresight can lead to much worse than a few melted cups. Back in 2015, engineering firm CDM Smith contracted S.J. Louis Construction to build a temporary connection for a sewer line beneath Quintana Road, San Antonio. On paper, it was a simple plan to increase the efficiency of the city’s sewer system. In reality, they’d made a terrible mistake.
A year after construction was finished, in December 2016, two cars were driving down the road when, out of nowhere, they both
plunged into a massive 20-foot sinkhole filled with sewer water. While two people survived, one woman sadly wasn’t so lucky. How could this happen? The answer was lousy construction.
The first problem was the choice of piping. Where normally sewer pipes would be made from strong materials like fiberglass, polyethylene, or concrete, S.J. Louis used weaker, corrugated metal piping instead. Secondly, they’d seriously underestimated the speed at which the sewage would flow through it, due to its design, it rushed a shocking eight times faster than standard. Under this pressure, the weak pipe they installed was literally vibrating. But their final and maybe biggest mistake was that, around the corrugated pipe, they’d built a frame made of nothing but plywood and sandbags. This slapdash connection did nothing to stop the pipe from shaking out of control.Eventually, all that shaking damaged it so much it started leaking sewage, which eroded the ground beneath the road, making a massive invisible pit just inches below the surface. When those two cars drove over it, their weight finally brought the whole thing crashing down to disastrous effect. To all the city planners out there, if you’re planning any construction work, don’t cut corners.
Venice, The Sinking City
Venice is one of the most vibrant and recognizable cities in the world, situated on 126 islands in northeastern Italy. The city has traditionally flourished, but now it faces one huge problem that its founders never anticipated. It’s sinking!
Venice has been hit by 324 intense floods since the 1870s, and over half of them were in the last 30 years. One flood in 2019 was so bad that a worrying 80% of the city went underwater. And things are only getting worse. The average sea level has risen a whopping 12 inches over the last century.
On top of that, Venice has dropped about 9 inches, due to the city's foundations sinking into the muddy soil. Things are looking so bad that it's possible Venice could be entirely submerged by the year 2100. But it’s not over just yet.Back in the 1980s they started working on an integrated flood prevention system designed to isolate the Venice lagoon from the sea during high tides. Progress was far from speedy, but in 2020, after a number of pushbacks and an eye watering $6 billion sunk, the so-called “MOSE System” was finally up and running. Located at each of the three inlets connecting Venice to the ocean, a total of 78 hollow metal gates are fastened to the seafloor and filled with water. In response to an incoming flood, each gate is filled with compressed air which ejects the water and, because air is over a thousand times less dense than seawater, raises the barriers.
Amazing Timelapse of 5.5 Billion Euro Barrier that Should Save Venice by On Demand News Already,
MOSE has saved Venice from multiple floods, blocking 20-foot waves that would’ve ravaged the city. But even this incredible system has had some major unforeseen consequences.
Cutting off water circulation from the lagoon to the ocean does prevent flooding, but it also traps a bunch of algae-loving nutrients and may lead to a rise in water temperature. If left to fester, excess algae could turn one of the world’s most romantic cities into a stinking sewer of green slime. And as ocean levels keep rising, the walls have had to be used more and more often, stressing the system and making maintenance more difficult. In less than a century, they might be so battered that they become nothing more than expensive reefs below the ocean.
Here’s hoping people find a way to save this iconic city, or we might have an Atlantis 2.0 on our hands.
Sign Posing
Modern road signs started appearing at the end of the nineteenth century, and now they’re in practically every city in the world. So they must work, right? Well, despite being implemented with the best intentions, growing evidence suggests otherwise.
A UK poll from 2020 found that
over half of drivers didn’t read road signs properly. And it doesn’t seem any better across the pond, where one study found more than one in ten Americans couldn’t even say what the "Do Not Enter" sign means. But even if a person does know what a sign means, there’s no guarantee they’ll take it seriously.
Despite deer crossing signs appearing all over the US, there are still 2.1 million collisions every year. And studies show neither elephant crossing signs in Sri Lanka nor camel signs in Tunisia seem to have much of an effect either. Many drivers either don’t take the danger seriously, or simply won’t slow down because they don’t want to be late. But aside from just being ignored, traffic signs can be actively dangerous. As well as an abundance of road signs causing confusion and distractions, relying on them too much can make drivers less cautious and more likely to get into accidents. Is there nothing we can do?
Did you know that narrowing roads can prevent accidents? While this might feel counterintuitive, having narrower roads means people naturally drive slower and pay more attention without the need for a sign, lowering accident rates. Another strategy might be as simple as planting more trees. This isn’t some hippy “nature is the answer to everything” bit. Studies genuinely show that tree-lined streets encourage people to drive slower! The only thing is, nobody exactly knows why. Some reckon the trees give the impression roads are narrower than they actually are. Others say they imply the area is populated. Still others theorize that they have a calming effect, reducing road rage and helping people drive in a more relaxed state of mind. Whatever the reason, one thing’s for sure, we need to implement more innovative safety mechanisms into our roads besides just signs. I hope you were amazed at these city planning fails! Thanks for reading.
