Purpose Hour: By Design: Rethinking American Roads

Every road, intersection, and curb in our city was designed by someone, but probably not with you in mind. This month's Purpose Hour pulls back the curtain on how our streets got built, why they're failing us, and what it would look like to actually choose differently. 

We drive, walk, and bike our streets every day but most of us have never stopped to ask: who decided our streets should look like this, and why? 

• Over 39,000 people died from traffic related fatalities in 2024, of those 7,080 were pedestrian fatalities, a 72% increase since 2009. [source: Fatality Facts 2024: Pedestrians & Fatality Facts 2024: State by State]
• Traffic fatalities increased over 20% from 2013 to 2022, while global peer nations experienced a median decrease of 19.4%. [source: CDC Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report]
• In Colorado, pedestrian fatalities have increased 161% in the last decade and 77% since 2018. Last year, 136 people were killed by drivers while walking or crossing the street. [source: CDOT News Release]

CU Denver professor and author Wes Marshall has spent his career studying American road design, and his conclusion is uncomfortable: the system isn't broken, it's working exactly as designed. 

Join us for a conversation about the hidden assumptions baked into our infrastructure, the real costs of building cities around cars and speed, and what's possible when communities start making different choices.