Reclaim the Streets

New Ground 61
Summer 2001

Shopping, talking, eating, celebrating, demonstrating...what do you do on the streets of our towns and cities? Ben Plowden argues that UK roads need to be more friendly to people.

What are streets for? This question has major implications for policy and practice in planning and transport and how we design and manage streets and public spaces. Yet despite the importance of the question, it is never debated explicitly.

For most of history, streets and public spaces have done lots of jobs. They have been places to meet friends or neighbours. They have been the venue for romance, from La Passeggiata in Mediterranean countries to promenading in eighteenth century England. Streets and squares have been the site for markets and fairs. Political events such as demonstrations, executions, marches, rallies and riots have taken place in public, not private. Streets have been places for stopping and resting, watching and talking, eating and drinking, celebration and mourning. And they have been places for play, from football to Knock Down Ginger.

Streets have also been routes for the movement of people and goods. People have walked, ridden horses and bicycles and travelled on coaches and buses. Goods have been carried on people's backs, by horse and cart or lorry.

Until the early 1960s, streets could host all these activities at the same time. People could meet, play, trade, woo and travel without one activity dominating. But the arrival of mass car ownership meant that the movement of cars and lorries became the dominant activity in many streets. Roads have been widened, junctions re-modelled and space given over to driving and parking. Neighbourhoods have been levelled for roads and car parks. The design of new housing estates, business parks and supermarkets assumes that those using them will be in a car.

Turning streets into traffic corridors has created a dangerous and degraded environment. Over 6000 children are killed or seriously injured on British roads every year. In some places, the noise, stench and danger of traffic make being outside difficult or impossible. US research shows a clear link between the volume of traffic on city streets and the degree of social ‘connectedness’ in a community. Children no longer play in the street; neighbours no longer know one another; communities turn inwards.

Litter, dog mess, graffiti, car dumping, bad lighting and poor policing blight communities in both town and country. These problems can deter some, particularly older people and women, from going out at all. Recent research has analysed why people leave urban areas. Nearly one in five urban dwellings were assessed to be in poor environments, compared with only 4% of those in suburban or rural areas. The research also found that one in ten recent movers identified "moving to a better area" as the reason for their move, with this accounting for a higher proportion of movers to suburban and rural areas.

There are important equity issues here. A child from social class V is five times more likely to be killed as a pedestrian than one from social class I. Low income communities suffer the worst effects of traffic, poor street management and crime. The clichéd image of a poor community is of streets filled with rubbish and abandoned cars, broken streetlights, graffiti and the threat of violent crime. It is small wonder that those who can afford to move out of degraded urban areas do so.

The impacts of traffic and traffic environments are not only an urban issue. Villages are cut in two by speeding vehicles. Country lanes have become no-go areas for people walking, cycling or riding horses. Traffic noise and the glare of road lights are destroying rural tranquillity.

Our political institutions mirror the dominance of traffic in our built environment. Most local authorities are staffed and structured round the need to keep traffic moving. The education, training and careers of traffic planners and engineers focus on designing, building and managing roads. Few in national or local government have the skills to think creatively about streets as anything other than traffic routes.

To tackle these problems, we need a new set of political priorities based on the principle that streets are for people. They should be available for lots of things, not just moving traffic. Roads are currently classified only according to how much traffic they carry. This ignores their role as social, economic and cultural spaces. We need a new road classification. This would take account of the role of streets as places for living, shopping, meeting, talking and sitting. This approach is used in Portland, Oregon. The city's roads are classified according to whether pedestrians, public transport or cars have priority. This classification then informs planning decisions and application of the city's highway design guidance. A similar approach is evolving in some British cities. York's road user hierarchy puts pedestrians and cyclists at the top. Bristol City Council is developing a system that gives greater weight to non-motorised users.

Once the new road hierarchy is in place, roads should be audited to check their design is consistent with the new classification. These audits would then be used to make room for residents, shoppers, children and those going about their business on foot.

This does not mean every street should be pedestrianised, although more pedestrian areas are needed. There is a spectrum of pedestrian priority, with full pedestrianisation at one end and the motorway network at the other. In between, speed reduction, traffic restraint, wider pavements, more pedestrian crossings, shorter waiting times, longer crossing times and the removal of barriers all increase pedestrian priority without requiring pedestrianisation. Re-design of the Strand in London has improved pedestrian priority while still allowing for general traffic. Cities like Birmingham, York and Cambridge have developed attractive pedestrian cores that allow limited access for public transport and deliveries. The Corporation of London has nearly eliminated through traffic in the Square Mile and is creating a high quality environment within the ‘ring of steel’.

Pedestrian priority areas should go beyond town and city centres. Portland's Pedestrian Districts are local centres designed on the basis that travel within the district will be on foot. Swedish cities like Gothenberg have adopted Home Zones outside residential areas, to create walkable environments in local centres.

Legal reforms are needed too. Home Zones in other European countries are enforced by the principle of strict liability. A driver injuring a pedestrian or cyclist needs to demonstrate that he or she was not at fault in the event of a crash. This principle needs to be applied in UK Home Zones. The normal speed limit for built-up areas should fall from its current 30 mph to 20 mph. Where people are likely to be about on foot or bicycles, cars should be travelling slowly enough to minimise the risk of death or serious injury.

Creating streets for people is not just a matter of traffic engineering or legal changes. Streets should also be full of beauty and interest. They should have places for stopping as well as spaces for movement. Good lighting, seating, signing, paving, public toilets, sculpture, fountains and trees all add to the quality of the public environment. Creating such an environment is expensive. It will be resisted in a country embarrassed to talk about beauty and fond of the cheap and cheerful. We need to learn that there is no such thing as cheap and cheerful, only cheap and nasty.

Maintenance, management and policing are also vital. Broken pavements, litter, graffiti and fly tipping all need to be tackled. The police also have a crucial role to play. Their responsibility is to enforce the laws that underpin people's willingness to spend time out and about. This includes public order maintenance and prevention of dangerous driving, including speeding.

There are signs that the government is starting to see the light. The Urban White Paper emphasised the benefits of creating livable communities and the fact that streets "dominated by traffic.….discourage walking and neighbourliness which can help create a sense of community". The government's March 2000 Road Safety Review announced new casualty reduction targets. The Home Office and the DETR recently consulted on tough new penalties for dangerous driving. Ministers have backed the idea of Home Zones. Walking, cycling and local safety schemes are slowly starting to come though Local Transport Plans. The new Commission on Architecture and the Built Environment is taking a clear lead on the importance of urban design.

But to achieve real change, we need political leadership. The benefits of a political commitment to reclaiming streets for people are clear. Cities like Barcelona, Copenhagen and Portland are reinventing themselves as places where people come first and traffic second. British cities like Birmingham and York are following suit. Ken Livingstone has set the goal of making London one of the world's most walkable cities by 2015. This should be the rule not the exception. Streets are for people and should be designed and managed as such.

Ben Plowden is Director of the Pedestrians Association, which campaigns for streets and public spaces people can use and enjoy. The association can be contacted at info@pedestrians.org.uk