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  • Misogyny, mobile phones and an ASDA car park

    Misogyny, mobile phones and an ASDA car park

    Some Simple Chat Show Truths for the Built Environment

    When I first started commenting on the built environment last autumn, it was an appearance by Saoirse Ronan on the Graham Norton Show that started it all.

    Did you see that episode?

    And what did you think?

    After all, it was the evening television stopped – albeit for a brief, ulcer-inducing moment.

    Saoirse had to prompt the host and fellow guests – all men – to basically STFU on the topic of women’s safety as they collectively rolled around giggling at the seeming absurdity of a woman resorting to using a mobile phone as a means of defending herself.

    Let’s face it, asking someone politely to stop assaulting you in public – *checks notes* – doesn’t work. We have yet to reach that level of civility, let alone a level of civility in which such attacks would simply never occur.

    Eventually the lads did graciously allow Saoirse a chance to get a word in and their reaction provided the GNS with a moment of ‘dead air’ sufficient to get you sacked as a DJ on Radio 2…

    … Like this post? Keep reading on Substack!

  • Playgrounds, California, Manual for Streets… and Shared Space?

    Playgrounds, California, Manual for Streets… and Shared Space?

    Folks, it’s here, it’s here! My new project is now up and running!

    Enjoy reading over on my Substack page!

    #manualforstreets #sharedspace #urbandesign #kensingtonhighstreet #ashfordringroadproject #exhibitionroad #poynton #fountainplace #theurbansketchwriter

  • Cool streets, Trump and Walkability

    Cool streets, Trump and Walkability

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 22 January 2025]

    In the news this week: Cool streets! Trump! Walkability! 

    What a difference a Monday in January makes. While President Trump has just withdrawn the US from the Paris Climate accord and intends to “drill, baby, drill”, there is still good news for environmentalists and those with a general interest in the ongoing survival of the human project from elsewhere in the world. 

    In Seoul, the Cheonggyecheon stream has been successfully released from its concrete prison beneath an elevated highway and turned into a highly loved and popular space for pedestrians and cyclists.

    While we aren’t likely to see anything like this occurring in the US anytime soon, the Cheonggyecheon project was one of the first to start a trend of cities turning car dominated spaces into oases for walkers and wheelers. See also New York’s High Line, Utrecht’s city moat and the Paris Plages on the banks of the Seine.

    As Jan Gehl has always said: you get what you invite. And these projects are certainly doing much to invite people on foot or bike back into the city centres.

    In addition, the Seoul Institute has reported that the area around the stream is now 3.6oc cooler than surrounding streets and nitrogen dioxide levels have fallen by 35%. The stream supports 174 animal species and 492 plant species. Further, the Cheonggyecheon has been designed to handle 200-year flood events.

    As Cheonggyecheon is seasonal, it unsurprisingly costs quite a bit of cheddar to keep it wet year-round. But the benefits to the environment, residents and visitors can’t be underestimated. You get what you invite.

    So, let’s stick with the walkability theme for a moment. 

    In what feels like 27 years ago, ARUP published their ‘Cities Alive – Towards a walking world’ report. At the time, the report was picked up by Fast Company, who published a handy synopsis of the ’50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets’ on their website in 2016.

    My angle is street safety and the urbanism of Jane Jacobs – if people feel safe in a place, they’ll use it. Not all walkable environments achieve this, so let’s take a quick run through some of the benefits on offer if you can get it right:

    • Eyes on the street – which I’ve commented on before…
    • Crime reduction – e.g. 74% drop in one Kansas City neighbourhood when some streets went car-free on weekends…
    • Universally accessible – not everyone can or wants to drive, enabling everyone to visit can only be good for diversity and safety
    • Social interaction – trivial interaction with strangers creates a web of trust…
    • Public transit – a pleasant, safe walk to the transit stop will… wait for it… encourage people to use public transport

    These things are not complicated. This is Urban Design 101 for placemakers. We get what we invite.

    #placemaking #cheonggyecheon #walkability #janejacobs #jangehl #ARUP #urbanism

  • New towns, Barbara Cartland and public transport

    New towns, Barbara Cartland and public transport

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 15 January 2025]

    This week: New Towns, Barbara Cartland and public transport!

    Create Streets are in the news this week with the publication of their discussion paper ‘Creating New Towns Fast And Well’.

    After all, the 1.5 million new homes planned over the next parliament are going to have to go somewhere… and hopefully not in random fields in the middle of nowhere with a grand view of a motorway flyover.

    The seven Design Principles set out in the paper are all solid urban design approaches and don’t say anything new, except that maybe these principles cannot be stated too often given the below par development that still keeps getting approved.

    But the thing that really stood out for me was the lack of promotion of public transport.

    While talking about buses doesn’t ignite the fever-pitch excitement of active travel and its big screen release LTN1/20, let’s not forget that not everyone can – or wants – to drive. My apologies – not – to highways engineers who are still obsessed with predict and provide even though this approach is now obsolete. See the latest iteration of the NPPF (109) although I admit that with two or three NPPF updates currently coming out every year this may well be out of date and superseded by the time you read this.

    Let’s face it, even Barbara Cartland found that level of output a challenge.

    The paper makes no mention of access to public transport in terms of travel modes – see Principle 2. I have written previously about the issues raised, particularly for women and other vulnerable pedestrians, by lack of access to bus services. New Towns need buses, folks! And ideally a BRT link to bring the residents from the new communities directly into the existing town or city centre. Just make sure the link is running before the residents start to move in. And for the love of malbec, please ensure land is safeguarded to ensure these links are deliverable throughout all development phases. We don’t need another Partridge Walk – the scheme alluded to here – on our hands. And while I’m here, who the heck names these places? Do you know how many partridges walk on a dual-carriageway? Not many.

    Public transport does get a mention in terms of mixed-use areas – Principle 7 – but only to say that walking and cycling should be so easy that using a bus becomes unnecessary. Well, if you’re doing your weekly trolley dash around [insert your supermarket of choice here], a bus can be a blardy useful thing to help you get the merchandise home.

    FACT: women make 30% more bus journeys than men and the majority will change their behaviour in order to feel safe. As placemakers we must provide well integrated and overlooked bus infrastructure as well as the cycle lanes and pedestrian links that get all the publicity.

    Ultimately, we still live in a carsick society. But will these new towns be able to turn the tide given the challenges facing our under-resourced planning departments?

    #carsick #placemaking #createstreets #newtowns #nppf

  • Twins, Barcelona and unicycles

    Twins, Barcelona and unicycles

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 8 January 2025]

    This week: twins, Barcelona and unicycles!

    Nice News have reported that twins have been helping to illustrate the importance of creating walkable places.

    We already know the importance of this: reduced car dependency… a cleaner environment… improved physical and mental health… the list goes on and on.

    But what the twins add to the conversation, given their shared genetics and backgrounds, is proof that between people of a very similar disposition, those who walk more are indeed better off financially and health-wise than those who don’t. Who’d have guessed?

    The study looked at how the environment affects people’s propensity to walk and those twins living close to shops and amenities – the dreaded 15-minute city concept – were indeed walking more than their siblings.

    Similarly, when the walking environment was enhanced, for example with additional pavements and crossings – quelle surprise! – people walked more.

    But as I’ve discussed in earlier pieces, you can live within what, on the face of it, is a 15-minute neighbourhood, but if the walking environment is low grade, car dominated and not overlooked, it will deter walking. We need a holistic approach.

    A desire and ability to walk for day-to-day short journeys is affected by a number of things, one of which is feeling safe on the pavements – just being able to relax and perhaps zone out a little, confident you won’t be run over in a pedestrian area before reaching your destination shouldn’t be too much to ask.

    Well, the city of Barcelona is to start fining anyone riding an e-scooter on the pavement and/or without a helmet up to €500. There are around 44,000 e-scooter journeys a day and with a top speed of 25mph scooters have become the getaway vehicle of choice for bag and mobile phone thieves. 

    Any collision involving a scooter travelling that fast is likely to end badly for the pedestrian/s being hit and the rider/s themselves.

    A new bylaw would limit speed to 15.5mph, as here in the UK, but the ability to enforce these restrictions will be key. Back in Bournemouth, private e-scooters, e-skateboards and e-unicycles were a common sight yet none of these were legally allowed on the road – or pavement.

    Similarly, delivery people riding motor scooters through pedestrianised areas and cars parking on the footways and causing damage to pavements the Council would then have to pay to fix were also normal occurrences. It’s a big commitment to systematically hand out the fines.

    I have no issue in principle with micromobility devices being used in cycle lanes as they don’t mix well with pedestrians. But, without a cohesive, joined up cycle network, we don’t yet have the infrastructure in place to make this feasible and buy-in would of course be needed from cycling groups.

    But the fact remains: encouraging more active forms of travel can only be a good thing in our car sick society.

    #carsick #placemaking #barcelona #15minutecity

  • Parking, unhappiness and car sickness

    Parking, unhappiness and car sickness

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 1 January 2025]

    Happy New Year! Let’s make it a walking and cycling friendly one!

    Why? Well, a duo of stories this week, from both sides of the pond.

    First, here in the UK, the unsurprising but sobering news that – wait for it – cars are getting bigger. So big in fact that they no longer fit into standard parking spaces.

    Many luxury saloons and SUVs are now over 5m long and 2m wide, which is bigger than the average parking space. And assuming you even do find a space, you probably won’t be able to open the doors to get out. My heart fails to bleed.

    If you choose to buy one of these cars, you have to take responsibility and – *checks notes* – keep reminding yourself that there is no right to park.

    Fines can be issued for parked cars that do not fit within marked parking bays. However, these are only between £70 and £150, which is meaningless when you consider the cost of these vehicles start at about £60,000 and can easily exceed £100,000. A £70 fine – or 0.1% of the cost of some of these cars – is, quite frankly, the least of your worries.

    Particularly when you consider that, secondly, the car-dependency that is endemic in the US is actively making Americans unhappy.

    Who would have thought it?

    Half of all car trips in the States are under three miles. We know that this distance is easily cyclable or a cinch on public transport – assuming, of course that the cycling infrastructure and public transport actually exists.

    All too often in the US, it doesn’t. And the decisions on transport investment are invariably made by people who drive.

    Even here in the UK there is an assumption that you drive everywhere. As someone who hasn’t owned a vehicle for over ten years, I’m always amused when people ask where I parked and I explain that I arrived by bus.

    Disability advocate Anna Zivarts, who wrote “When Driving Is Not An Option”, is right when she says: “We need to get the voices of those who can’t drive – disabled people, seniors, immigrants, poor folks – into the room because the people making decisions drive everywhere. They don’t know what it’s like to have to spend two hours riding the bus.”

    True. But not only those who can’t drive, but also those, like me, who choose not to. All non-drivers are fed up of pavement parking, inconsistent and dangerous cycling infrastructure and unsafe walking environments. And even though I have been in the room, if the highways and planning officers aren’t interested in safe, inclusive design, your hands are still tied. Who cares about the Equality Act?

    Of course, our car sick societies aren’t only bad for us. The impact on the environment, water and air pollution and loss of biodiversity to build yet more roads will take more than a few Car Free Days to mitigate. 

    Let’s make 2025 the year all those involved with placemaking treat active travel as the priority and give us our streets back. Can we take Manual for Streets seriously now, please?

    #carsick #placemaking #annazivarts #manualforstreets

  • Relief roads and free range children

    Relief roads and free range children

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 18 December 2024]

    Some highways madness from the UK this week. It turns out that Oxford CC has decided to spend 80% (£11m) of its active travel budget on… gong wash please!… a new relief road for Watlington that will ‘reduce congestion’.

    Well, it will reduce congestion for approximately 27 minutes until the relief road is also filled to capacity with vehicles. 

    And some people will wonder why other people aren’t flocking to use the accompanying walking, cycling and public transport infrastructure… until they remember they got cheap and opted for the ‘basic’ active travel option that no-one will feel comfortable using. 

    Folks, once again from the top and for the benefit of the people in the back who’ve just joined us: ‘a track for pedestrians and cyclists beside a large new road does not meet current standards for such schemes”. Well said, Chris Church, co-chair of the Oxfordshire Roads Action Alliance. 

    Until Oxford CC – or any other highway authority for that matter – can properly maintain the roads it already has, maybe it should hang fire on building new ones. Years of disruption and chaos during the construction phase not to mention the destruction of property and biodiversity, the carbon footprint… all for negligible gain and, ultimately, yet more maintenance liability.

    But on a brighter note and following on from last week’s missive, I’ve just been made aware of a short film celebrating the Whittington estate in Camden. It was completed in 1979, just before the axe came down on the construction of social housing.

    What’s so good about this particular place is that from the get-go it was designed as a low-rise, gentle density housing scheme that was deliberately designed to be child-friendly. The kids all meet up and play together because, as young Rowan points out firmly, there are “no cars” and “there’s lots of space for running.”

    So whilst the streets are not necessarily paved with gold, they are filled with activity and community, all under the watchful eyes on the street. Yes. Natural surveillance was deliberately designed into the layout.

    This is, I think, what we need if we’re to achieve the government’s ambition to “… raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.”

    It isn’t rocket science.

    You can spend £11million on a relief road that’s ultimately just going to create more problems than it solves.

    Or you can invest it in infrastructure that will enable children like Rowan to run without fear of being run over.

    At the very least, can we just ban pavement parking?

    #placemaking #walking #cycling #chrischurch #oraa

  • Manifestos, mental health and five-minute cities

    Manifestos, mental health and five-minute cities

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 11 December 2024]

    A trio of stories for you this week! First, the Labour Party Manifesto is championing the ambition to “… raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.”

    This follows an inquiry into children and young people by the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee that found the built environment has a ‘critical role’ to play in the creation of child-friendly places. Who knew?

    Why then is the dilution of placemaking by over-zealous highway engineers and volume housebuilders, that have ensured child-friendly places are often designed out of schemes at the first opportunity, allowed to continue?

    A LAP, LEAP or NEAP in a new scheme that’s tucked away in an unobserved corner of a site to minimise noise to residents and give tick-box compliance to a local plan play policy is essentially meaningless. Meanwhile, the over-provision of car parking is often enabled and junctions and turning heads are designed to accommodate the largest and most infrequent vehicles that will visit a site.

    We won’t be able to raise healthy children if they can’t walk to the LEAP because the streets are designed as roads with no continuous pavements at junctions and sweeping radii that enable drivers to take turns at speed… and then park on the pavement.

    The inquiry report found that “One in five children aged 8-15 have a mental health disorder – and by the time they reach 15 years old, the UK’s children report having the lowest average life satisfaction compared with their peers in 26 other European countries. Too many of our children are unhappy, and too many are growing up in unhealthy environments that stifle their opportunities to develop well and thrive.”

    This. Is. Shameful!

    And this at a time when, secondly, the government has closed the Office for Place. The OfP was on track to create digital design tools to help cash and resource-strapped Councils create the very design codes that would support placemaking for children and young people. Is the government actually clear on what it wants and how to create it? Has it read the Equality Act?

    And thirdly, I note that in the Nordhavn district of Copenhagen, they are now championing the five-minute city. Yowza! The design philosophy here is “… now that we have all this infrastructure for walking, biking and public transit, is there still some room for cars?” In other words, the exact opposite of how we go about placemaking here in the UK.

    Do some people need to drive? Yes. Should they be prioritised at all times over everyone else? No.

    I suspect there are a lot of children out and about in Nordhavn. As Jan Gehl says: “… you see many children in a city like Copenhagen… if you see a city with many children and many old people, using the city, the public spaces, then it is a sign that there is a good quality for people in that particular city.”

    Enough said. You get what you invite.

    #placemaking #walking #cycling #larsriemann #jangehl #nordhavn #mentalhealth

  • Car dependency, sustainability and cycling in Copenhagen

    Car dependency, sustainability and cycling in Copenhagen

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 4 December 2024]

    I note this week The New Economics Foundation have recently published a report entitled: Trapped Behind The Wheel – How England’s New Builds Lock Us Into Car Dependency.

    The UDG have conveniently summarized some of the main findings in their latest Urban Update. The drivers (no pun intended) behind this trend include:

    • Land value and condition, which favour cheaper greenfield land in a profit-driven housing development system
    • Relatively lower levels of local political opposition to new developments in more remote areas
    • A lack of early, integrated planning of transport, housing, and development sites, reinforced by substantial underfunding of public planning departments
    • Top-down local housing targets that act in combination with the factors above to produce development in the wrong places for sustainable transport

    To my mind, the third bullet is the kicker. 

    You simply cannot retrofit joined up active travel or public transport provision into a development. It has to be done upfront, at pre-app, in collaboration with all the relevant placemaking specialists who have hopefully read and understand Manual for Streets.

    There is clearly a huge disconnect between the incessant call for sustainable development and the regular use in a DAS of the words ‘active travel’ on the one hand and, the fact that, on the other, despite all the rhetoric, we still keep building in unsustainable locations, that are first and foremost car parks with houses squeezed in between. Any DAS that proudly proclaims a dual carriageway into a site as a ‘… formally designed… gateway’ is *checks notes* missing the point.

    Too much of what we’re approving and building just isn’t fit for sustainable purposes.

    I remember Jan Gehl in his ‘How to Build a Good City’ interview explaining how his then seven-year-old granddaughter, living in Copenhagen, could walk on her own all the way from home to school without ever having to step on a road due to the installation of continuous footways across side streets. What freedom and independence!

    Also, that his ten-year-old grandchildren are: “… allowed to go from one end of the city to the other because it is deemed safe for a little one who is ten and who has been bicycling around with mum and dad since they were five, now they can do it themselves. And that is very nice that you can be mobile early and also you can stay mobile a long time after the doctor has taken away your driver’s licence.” Something to ponder.

    Yet seven years on from his interview, we still can’t negotiate a dedicated cycle lane or 3m radii on a side road junction or a 20mph design speed (BfHL) let alone a continuous pavement, because a driver might get mad or a bin lorry might have to *gasp* cross into the opposite lane to make a turn.

    We have a long way to go, folks. Or maybe we should just move to Copenhagen.

    #placemaking #streets #streetdesign #cycling #cyclelanes #publictransport #jangehl #udg

  • Toronto, housewives and Aldis lamps

    Toronto, housewives and Aldis lamps

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 27 November 2024]

    This week, Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, wants to remove three cycle lanes in downtown Toronto to ease traffic congestion. The rationale for this is apparently based on ‘anecdotal evidence’ – the best and most reliable kind, obviously – that the cycle lanes are exacerbating travel problems. 

    This in a city where six cyclists have been killed in the past year: five on streets with no cycling infrastructure, the sixth having been forced into vehicular traffic by a construction waste bin blocking a cycle lane.

    He also believes that traffic congestion could be mitigated by building more roads and wider streets. Hmm. And a road tunnel! Don’t forget the road tunnel! This is somewhere up there with Robert Moses’ plans for the Lower Manhattan Expressway. Thankfully, Bob’s plans were scuppered by a housewife with a penchant for cycling.

    Anyone with a modicum of sense intrinsically knows that building more roads just equals – *checks notes* – more cars. You simply cannot build your way out of this mess. Build it and they will drive. To think otherwise is insane – and stupidly expensive and disruptive.

    But hey, let’s give Doug the benefit of the doubt for a split second and assume that more and wider roads are indeed the answer the Toronto’s car-related woes.

    Let’s accommodate those cars to the max! Let’s put on our sincere faces and accept the destruction of buildings, severance of communities, noise and pollution and potentially fatal danger to anyone outside a vehicle as being an unfortunate necessity to give drivers on University Avenue the increased freedom to back up a few inches.

    Well, I don’t know about you, but I have yet to meet anyone who’s just come back from a holiday anywhere in the world waxing lyrical about the high volume of fast-moving or idling traffic in the city centre and how wonderful, relaxing and safe it felt to be close to the cars at all times, shouting to be heard and choking in the smog.

    Conversely, some travellers recall the intimate, walkable street network, the astonishing baroque architecture, an unexpected hidden square with a cute pavement café selling the best cakes in town or the peace and quiet of a car-free environment where you can actually have a conversation with the person next to you without needing to resort to semaphore or Aldis lamps to communicate because the din of the cars and juggernauts is so loud.

    So the cure to Toronto’s car addiction problems is not more roads or wider roads or tunnels. It’s actually more cycle lanes, better public transport and viable, convenient sustainable travel choices for everyone. I can assure you that no-one will be visiting Toronto to breathe in the increasingly polluted air or marvel at the number of traffic lanes that can be squeezed onto Bloor Street. 

    It’s time for the housewives of Toronto to get on their bikes and unite, just give me ‘two tings’ if you agree.

    #urbandesign #placemaking #streets #streetdesign #cycling #cyclelanes #janejacobs #toronto #twotings