An old idea to make cities more pedestrian-friendly: pedestrian scrambles
London has quite a few intersections that work this way: most famously, Oxford Circus. But most are not marked in any special way so there's nothing obvious to let you know you're allowed to cross diagonally.<p>I suspect the real reason for them is to improve the flow of car traffic at the expense of pedestrians - since pedestrians now only cross once in each light cycle instead of twice!<p>A more worrying recent trend (also in London) is to remove the pedestrian signals all together. Rather confusing when you first ecounter it - I guess you're just supposed to cross with the vehicle signals or "when it's clear".