5 minute read
Creating places for people through transport
Landscape Institute Communications Officer, Oliver Ryan (OR), speaks to Sustrans’
Zoe Banks Gross FLI (ZBG), about the charity’s vision for transport, and the vital role of landscape in achieving it.
OR: Hi Zoe, please can you tell us about your work, and that of Sustrans?
ZBG: Sustrans mission is to create happier and healthier places for people. We want to see connected and compact communities where people can meet most of their daily needs within a reasonable distance of their home by walking, wheeling or cycling or using public transport.
In partnerships and public affairs, I work with and influence local and regional authorities, trying to create foundations for more liveable cities, with more active travel provision. Sometimes that means doing community engagement on the ground, sometimes giving presentations, sometimes giving evidence to a climate assembly. But it all comes down to creating places for people.
OR: What has Sustrans been working on recently and are there any key takeaways from this?
ZBG: We’re very pleased with the insights that the latest reports from our ‘Walking and Cycling Index’ has provided. The index is based on data from twenty-three urban areas across the UK and Ireland, with over 1,100 people from each location surveyed on their attitudes to walking and cycling. For example, it showed that 36% of people often use a car as they feel they have no choice, and that 56% of people support shifting investment from road building to options for walking, wheeling and public transport. It also gives insights into the relationship between these statistics and other data points like gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic group. The index shows there are less than half as many women cycling compared to men, for example. There is loads of research showing that women and girls do want to be using public spaces and green spaces, but don’t feel safe enough to do it. This is impacting the ability for many to get enough physical activity, so clearly we need to be doing a lot more to ensure that our spaces are codesigned and that we include the voices of those that will be using these spaces.
OR: What is the relationship between planning and healthier forms of transport and mobility?
ZBG: The National Planning and Policy Framework (NPPF) is not currently designed as well as it could be to facilitate active travel. We’re enabling the continuation of car-dependent housing developments, giving rise to environmental, social, and economic impacts, including disincentivising the uptake of active travel.
We need to move away from transport planning based on predicting future demand and providing capacity, to planning for an outcome communities want to achieve and providing the transport solutions to deliver these outcomes. Embedding desired outcomes in active and public transport into a revised NPPF, and aligning these with the National Design Guide and National Model Design Code,³ would be a good place to start.
OR: How do you see Sustrans’ vision applying to national policy agendas and what are your priorities?
ZBG: When it comes to any policy agenda and influencing, collaboration and systems thinking are key. Considerations in health, wellbeing, climate, and environment cannot be separated.
All policy areas are important, but it’s worth highlighting the significance of the NPPF in relation to Sustrans’ aims and objectives. For example, many transport departments and authorities are planning strategically for active travel networks, but this is being undermined by a lack of integration with planning departments, leading to missed opportunities and wasted time and money.
A joined-up approach would ensure that existing and proposed active travel networks are more visible to local planning authorities when they are developing local plans and determining planning applications. Active travel links with health and wellbeing, as well as net zero, so where layered problem-solving can be applied it will help with creating positive outcomes for everyone, as part of a holistic and just transition.
OR: How can landscape architecture help to champion and deliver better infrastructure?
ZBG: We have many landscape architects in the team at Sustrans as part of our design team (see CMLI Jon Rowe writing for Sustrans in Landscape, Autumn 2023), and we’re often working with external landscape architects as partners on specific projects.
The work they do is essential, and very much in line with our joined-up, systems approach to urban and environmental planning and design. They can help promote active travel and green infrastructure with multidimensional benefits, from reducing the urban heat island effect, to integrating SuDS, to specifying climate-resilient planting, and ensuring that nature has a place to thrive in urban areas – especially now with the implementation of Biodiversity Net Gain.
A great example of this can be seen when Sustrans recently worked in partnership with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, the Greater London Authority, and landscape architects at Alexandra Steed Urban, to reimagine the Ripple Greenway. What was created was a codesigned, beautiful linear park that links existing infrastructure networks with a new, multifunctional active travel route.
Oliver Ryan & Zoe Banks Gross
Zoe Banks Gross is Head of Partnerships and Public Affairs (England, South) at Sustrans, and a Fellow of the Landscape Institute.
