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.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!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".