[This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 30 October 2024]
Unless you’ve been living under a rock since Friday 25 October 2024, you’ve no doubt seen the clip of Saoirse Ronan on The Graham Norton Show telling the lads to basically STFU when it comes to talking about women’s safety, a topic they clearly know nothing about.
Happily, they actually took notice and did.
As Marina Hyde points out in her Guardian article: “… what they can’t do, even with all their combined decades of Acting, is think their way into the part of literally any woman, in any place, walking home after dark or on an almost deserted route on just another day of a lifetime of knowing she could be prey. You get quite good at thinking about how boring little things like phones or keys could defend you in those moments, as any woman will wearily concede. We all dream of a future without this forever hum of fear, where we too could join in the absurdist joke.”
But my question to you is, what are we doing, as placemakers, to deliver a public realm where everyone – not just women and girls – feel safe to be there at any time regardless of gender, age, disability, race or religious belief?
- Why are we still approving development where routes are not well overlooked or lit?
- Why are we still approving development riddled with areas of concealment?
- Why are we still approving development that is car-orientated and discriminatory to those walking and wheeling?
- Why are we still approving development with substandard access to public transport?
- Why are we still approving development where most of the pavements end up blocked by parked cars?
And why are we in a situation where, according to Public Practice, 43% of respondents to their Recruitment and Skills Report say they lack the funding to recruit the required placemaking staff?
It’s all well and good the government setting a housing target of 1.5million homes over the next parliament, but how are we going to ensure these are built to the highest design standards when there are huge resource gaps in over-stretched planning departments?
In response can I at the very least demand a return to the basics – Urban Design 101 – and lobby for a return to street-based urbanism, à la Jane Jacobs, creating places with gentle density to accommodate a critical mass of population… short blocks to create a variety of routes between destinations… mixed use development to bring people out on the street at different times… street trees and hard and soft landscape that enhance the quality of the place… good enclosure of streets by buildings to enable eyes on the street… a ban on pavement parking.
We need to stop designing to accommodate the refuse vehicles first and foremost and finally start prioritising the people who will actually live, work and roller-skate there. We have more than enough guidance and policy to show us how to do these things.
As Saoirse would say: “Amirite ladies?”
#saoirseronan #marinahyde #guardian #amirite #placemaking #placemakers #publicpractice #janejacobs #eyesonthestreet #urbandesign
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