DOERING: If you’re one of the millions of city-dwelling Americans who saw over a foot of snow in recent weeks, you might have felt a bit buried by the endless snowbanks. But all that snow made traffic slow down and gave us a chance to see our sidewalks and streets differently than we did before. Living on Earth’s Bella Smith has this report on the phenomenon of the “sneckdown.”

SMITH: Yes, you heard that right: sneckdown. It’s a portmanteau of the words “snowy” and “neckdown,” a traffic-calming feature that extends the sidewalk into the street at intersections. Sneckdowns occur after a snowstorm, when snow remains piled at intersections but cars continue carving their usual paths through the roadway — revealing space that often goes unused.

ECKERSON: I call it nature's tracing paper, because the snow comes down and then the cars start driving over, over the next few days. And then you can see, well look, cars barely or don't at all, use those few feet off of the intersection. Even trucks don't.

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SMITH: That’s Clarence Eckerson Jr, director of StreetFilms, a project dedicated to documenting more livable urban spaces. He’s been helping to champion sneckdowns and the improvements they hint at since 2014.

ECKERSON: And that kind of shows you that that space could be reclaimed for, you could put benches, you could just put simple curb extensions. There's a lot of things you could do with it.

Sneckdowns have even inspired real-world change in cities like Philadelphia and Clarence’s native New York.

ECKERSON: I have taken a tour in one of my videos of downtown Manhattan and seen where there were sneckdowns and now there are painted curb extensions or safer havens for pedestrians.

SMITH: And if you don’t get any snow where you live, don’t worry. The same kind of thing happens when leaves clump by the side of the road, creating “leafdowns”.

ECKERSON: And there was, even in California, people like, couldn't be left out. So they started noticing the palm trees, the palm fronds were falling and then kind of getting scuttled to the sides of the road and they were calling them palm frond neckdowns. So, you know, it's really had its own kind of [LAUGHS] fun journey to like, letting people get creative.

SMITH: And for those of us still struggling through snowbanks, snowy neckdowns or sneckdowns offer a simple, playful way to step outside, document your neighborhood, and imagine a safer transportation future for your community. So whether you’re welcoming the first signs of spring or still stuck in the winter blues, sneckdowns just might help you see your streets in a whole new light. For Living on Earth, I’m Bella Smith.