LP Ben H-B

Learning Point 99

Streets, Networks and Public Space

1

INTRODUCTION

Image: Reclaiming public spaces - the red carpet ‘Stadlounge’ (‘City Lounge’) in St Gallen. Switzerland.

Shared space is an urban design concept aimed at integrating motor vehicles, pedestrians and other road users into ‘people oriented’ public spaces

WHAT ARE LEARNING POINTS? Learning points share what people have learned from their experience in regeneration - from people working or talking together, or from research into issues and evaluation of what is happening. Learning points can help people and organisations to improve their practice through identifying what works and what doesn’t.

The views described in learning points do not mean that the Scottish Centre for Regeneration (SCR) or the Scottish Government necessarily support them. They simply reflect what has been debated and what those involved in the event considered useful learning and lessons from their perspectives.

WHAT IS THIS LEARNING POINT ABOUT? This Learning Point captures the key points from the presentation given at the Design Skills Symposium in Stirling on 28 September 2011

by Ben Hamilton-Baillie. Ben Hamilton-Baillie is an architect, urban designer and movement specialist and Director of Ben Hamilton-Baillie Associates.

2

1. THE CHALLENGE - Making our town centres places people want to be in With greater personal mobility and increased opportunities to shop, meet and access cultural experiences at home through TV, on-line, and via other media, and in out of town shopping or entertainment ‘centres’, our urban centres will continue to decline unless we make them places where people want to be. This means that we have to think of what kind of an experience people want from their towns, and know how we can provide this. A key aspect of this is re-designing our streets as lively and attractive urban space for all users instead of as traffic routes. For the first time in the UK in nearly 50 years there are Government policies that promote streets as places for all users, and we are beginning to see examples of schemes where streets have been successfully remodelled as attractive public places, which are also economically more successful.

Region

Whole settlement

Block / Street

Image: A shared space vision for Hereford, England.

Scotland’s towns are no longer used in the way they were in the past; re-designing them as accessible, attractive spaces is key to their long-term sustainability 3

District

Plot

2. BACKGROUND: How do we currently manage our streets?

The separation of traffic and pedestrians was enshrined in the 1963 Buchanan report ‘Traffic in Towns’ which stated that ‘people and traffic were fundamentally incompatible’, an approach inherited from the modernist attempt to rationalise and order the behaviour of people in cities. This approach led to urban centres being designed or re-modelled to segregate cars from pedestrians. New places were often designed with cars and people on different levels; segregation in existing centres took the

form of the creation of pedestrian precincts, and the installation of increasing numbers of guardrails, lights, bollards and signage mostly to keep cars and pedestrians apart. As volumes of traffic increased, so did the volume of this signage and street ‘clutter’. With most of this directed at road users, the message to pedestrians was that these places were not for them. Road safety campaigns to pedestrians which carried messages such as ‘One false move and you are dead’ (1982) confirmed that the territory beyond

the kerb was someone else’s. This approach was enshrined in the different government departments who had separate responsibilities for the different territories of building, pavement, road and trees. But while traffic can be controlled, the nature of public ‘foot-use’ of a space is that it is unpredictable and irregular, and public space should be designed to be able to support this irrationality and irregularity.

Rather than being corralled by rules and guard-rails we are being invited to re-discover principles of civility, and to adapt our behaviour more closely in response to each other.

Image (top right): 1982 Road safety campaign advertisement; (bottom left): Our town centres have become ‘cluttered’ with street furniture and signage designed to segregate pededestrian and motorist.

4

3. KEY POINTS: How can we change what we do a and create better streets?

Underlining much of the work of Ben HamiltonBaillie and of the examples he showed is one basic principle – take a holistic approach to the whole of a street (including buildings, pavement and roadways) as one urban space, and design it for all users. This involves a complementary understanding that there are many clients for public space, institutions and individuals. Depending on the nature and/or location of the street, ‘foot-users’ might need to be considered as having more value as ‘car-users’. A key part of this approach to a unified space is a new understanding of the relationship between people on foot and people in vehicles, in which, instead of them being separated, both sets of users are invited to pay more attention to each other and to the realities of their surroundings.

This attitude underlines the concept of ‘shared space’ which was a feature of most of the examples cited by Hamilton-Baillie, who used the image of the skating rink as a place where the successful practice of the activity (skating) was dependent on the protocol of all the users of that space looking out for each other; this behaviour in itself generated an important aspect of the very pleasure of the activity. Shared space, where the barriers between pavement and roadway and in the roadway between lanes (e.g. be-

tween cycle, bus and car lanes) are reduced or removed, involves individual users being given greater responsibility to observe each other’s behaviour and react accordingly. The evidence is that people are quite comfortable at behaving like this, find the experience of being in public richer, that footfall increases, traffic injuries decrease, road-widths can be reduced, delay times reduced and journey times shortened.

Learning points • To survive, we have to make town centres that provide experiences that people want to come there to obtain.

• The design of streets is a key part of the design of town centres, and streets should be designed for all users, not just car-users.

• A holistic approach should be taken to street design, which incorporates the adjacent buildings as well as pavements, lighting and roadways.

• The segregation of cars and pedestrians should be ended, to allow each more freedom to moderate their behaviour in response to each other.

Image: Hamilton-Baillie suggests that the apparent chaos and unpredicabilty of movement of skaters on an ice-rink provides is an appropriate metaphor for the behavior of motorists and pedestrians who flow through shared spaces 5

• The concept of shared space incorporates much of this thinking and its effect can now be examined in a number of completed schemes.

The support for a new approach that already exists – policy, knowledge, practice

4. FIND OUT MORE of CABE documents is best located through Google.

Smarter Choices, Smarter Places (SCSP) - a £15 million Scotland-wide initiative exists – policy, knowledge, practice to encourage Scots to reduce their car use in Highway Risk and Liability Claims Policy and knowledge favour of more sustainable alternatives such as (ICE, 2009) - challenging the assumptions of risk walking, cycling and public transport.

Streets for All (English Heritage, 2005). Sets that have underpinned the dominance of highout principles of good practice for street manway engineers in the design of streets and public http://www.transportscotland.gov.uk/roads/sustainabletransport/funding-for-projects/smarter-choices-smarteragement – such as reducing clutter, co-ordinatspace places ing design and reinforcing local character.

ICE presentation by Rob Huxford SUSTRANS the promoters of the National http://www.helm.org.uk/server/show/category.19638 on the responsibilities of highway engineers to Cycle Network also produce guidance on street prevent cars going faster Manual for Streets (Department of design and liveable neighbourhoods Transport, 2007) and Manual for Streets 2 http://www.ice.org.uk/ice_upload/MGS_risk_liabilities.pdf http://www.sustrans.org.uk/what-we-do/liveable-neigh(2010). Provides guidance for practitioners Designing Streets (Scottish Government, bourhoods/diy-streets involved in the planning, design, provision 2010). The first guidance in Scotland to mark a and approval of new residential streets, and Living Streets – the national charity that change in the emphasis in street design towards modifications to existing ones. stands up for pedestrians, working since 1929 place-making and away from a system focused to make the streets people live, work, shop and http://www2.dft.gov.uk/pgr/sustainable/manforstreets/ upon the dominance of motor vehicles. play in safe, attractive and enjoyable spaces.

This way to better streets (CABE, 2007) http://www.scotland.gov.uk/ http://www.livingstreets.org.uk/scotland/ and This way to better residential streets (CABE, Publications/2010/03/22120652/0 2009) - plus associated case studies by CABE. Local Transport Note on shared Looking at streets in town centres, ring-roads and residential areas designed not to let the car space (Department of Transport, forthcoming) dominate, instead enable people to get around, Best practice studies from SCOTSNET – the promote walking and cycling, civic pride and Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in identity, provide safe play for children and allow Scotland the community to interact. Since CABE’s merger http://www.scotsnet.org.uk/best-practice.php with the Design Council the current location The support for a new approach that already

6

Practice Completed schemes cited by Ben HamiltonBaillie – • Kensington High Street, London (completed in 2003) • Exhibition Road, London – ‘treating the street as a public space that re-connected the institutions along it who shared the space’ The work in the Netherlands of the traffic engineer Hans Mondermann (19452008), in particular schemes in –

Mondermann said ‘the more traffic engineers engage with place, the safer places become’.

Work by Ben Hamilton-Baillie Associates • Hereford Town Centre – treating roadway and pavement as one designed space to give more unified character to a declining retail street • New Road, Brighton – creating a street attractive to a wider variety of users,

supporting different activity at different times of day and night, and bringing more business to the shops • Ashford, Kent – changing a one-way circular road back to 2-way, creating a tree-lined boulevard between the roadways and a design speed of 18-19 mph. Journey times have improved, and the town has gained the confidence to implement further measures.

Image: The redesign of Exhibition Road in London will be the largest shared-space scheme in the world in terms of both numbers of pedestrians and vehicles, and geographical area.

• Makkinga – all barriers were removed and the streets could still work as highways • Noordlaren, Groningen – where the school took down the wall separating its playground from the main road into the town, and extended the playground ACROSS the road. This one move influenced the behaviour of traffic throughout the town.

• Drachten – removal of all sets of traffic lights 7

Scottish Government Architecture & Place Division This document is published by the Scottish Government. If you would like to find out more about this publication, please contact Geraldine McAteer in the Architecture and Place Division of the Scottish Government.

Scottish Government APD. Area 2 J South, Victoria Quay, Edinburgh. EH6 6QQ T: 0131 244 0548 E: geraldine.mcateer@scotland.gsi.gov.uk www.scotland.gov.uk The views expressed in this Learning Point are not necessarily shared by the Scottish Government.

8