Outline How Material Things on City Road Favor Activities of Some Groups of People over Others.

At first sight each and every street appears to be unique. Nevertheless, similar patterns in all streets all over the world can be recognized by taking a closer look at them. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate how material things favor the activities of typical groups compared to others. In order to achieve this, a couple of examples for these patterns that have been observed in Cardiff are outlined and described.

The City Road in Cardiff is almost a mile long and one of the busiest streets in town. A well balanced variety of life in a contemporary city can be witnessed here:

Traffic rules are taken for granted. They can be found in every city, but they’re very essential for the daily life. The traffic system is really complex with numerous of norms that shape people’s behavior and affect them in many ways. This structure is a tremendous advantage, as it simplifies the society’s social coexistence. The locals in Cardiff invented the traffic islands on City Road to slow down the traffic and to make it easier for pedestrians to cross the street.

Another fraction of the city’s multi-layered organization is the street furniture. Large-sized blue bollards with white stripes are built along Cardiff’s pavements. Specifically the painted white stripes are eye-catchers that are immensely important to guide people with poor vision. These bollards were originally invented to stop vehicles from driving and parking onto the pavements.

Furthermore, they act as boundaries from the street to the pavement in order to protect the pedestrians from traffic. Paradoxically, at the same time the bollards are obstacles to a certain group of people. This group includes small children, old people, physically handicapped with wheelchairs as well as families with buggies.

It appears that the material world is continuously shaped by the society and that it defines civilization. People need their interaction with the material world to live their daily lives. They produce,...