I think about this a lot. Engineering design is overwhelmingly done in CAD in offices far from project locations. Drawing lines on a screen gives you no sense of what the physical environment actually is. It might as well be a vacuum. https://twitter.com/mnolangray/status/1248372436099141632

Cities and states hardly ever challenge engineers to consider the actual experience of the mythical pedestrian. The roadway is a tool, a conduit - a place for machines, not humans. Meeting code is all that matters. As long as the dimensions are by the book, it’s all good.

Engineering firms are often located in nondescript exurban office parks. Few in the profession incorporate walking, bicycling, or transit into their lived experience. It’s no wonder the environments that the profession creates are often complete garbage for pedestrians.

I wish there was more of a bridge between the worlds of urban design and traditional transportation engineering. Except on high-profile projects in progressive coastal cities, they basically exist on different planets.

Engineering needs to become less about engineering if our cities are to progress. There’s a less quantifiable dimension—the human element—to every road project that the profession has long refused to engage with, or even acknowledge.

A radical take: urban designers should be involved in every urban road project. Every single one. And civil engineers should be required to learn/apply basic urban design principles, just as architects are required to have a basic knowledge of structural engineering.