The Urban Sketch Writer

Tag: placemaking

  • 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

  • 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

  • Safety, public transport and the fabulous Jane Jacobs

    Safety, public transport and the fabulous Jane Jacobs

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 13 November 2024]

    Ha! Who knew? I haven’t just been talking off the top of my head for two weeks! An Urban Update from the UDG (Urban Design Group) referenced an article from Cities entitled: ‘Women’s perceived safety in public places and public transport: A narrative review of contributing factors and measurement methods’.

    I couldn’t make it up – certainly not a title that dry. But there we have it – women’s safety and public transport covered in one hit! And a call for tree-lined, actively peopled streets into the bargain!

    According to the UDG’s summary of the report (see bullets below), the key findings will quite frankly be of no surprise whatsoever to anyone who works as a placemaker with a duty of care to the public:

    • Street Lighting and Crime Fear: Many studies focus on how lighting affects safety, especially for women at night. Brighter lighting often lowers fear of crime and increases confidence in using public spaces, but lighting alone doesn’t fully address the underlying anxieties people may have about safety.
    • Visibility and Openness: High visibility in public areas allows people to see their surroundings more clearly, which can reduce fear. Open areas without concealed spots make streets feel safer. By contrast, poorly lit areas with hidden spaces increase feelings of vulnerability, especially for women walking alone at night.
    • Role of Surveillance: CCTV cameras are common, but studies show they don’t directly improve feelings of safety. Women tend to prefer visible police patrols over video surveillance for a greater sense of security.
    • Complexity of Safety Perception: Personal safety feelings result from various factors, including physical environment, social context, and individual characteristics. Personal experiences and anxiety levels also influence how safe a person feels in different settings.
    • Impact of the Walking Environment: Walking through clean, tree-lined streets with active shops and people generally feels safer. Conversely, litter, graffiti, and low activity areas lower perceived safety. Familiarity also matters—women feel safer in areas they know well, especially if they are well-lit and well-maintained.

    I’ve been droning on about these things ad nauseam for years: sorry not sorry.

    On the subject of the walking environment, which covers all the preceding bullets, we can do so. much. more.

    I demand a return to the street-based urbanism of Jane Jacobs – short blocks, mixed use, eyes on the street etc. Simple stuff… but sooo effective. And beneficial to all – not just women.

    To deter anti-social behaviour we must have streets that encourage more people to be out and about. 

    More people out and about = streets that become self-policing.

    Self-policing streets = streets that are safer for all.

    A virtuous circle.

    But until these self-policing streets become the default design norm, keep your phones and keys at the ready, ladies.

    Amirite?

    #urbandesign #placemaking #UDG #urbandesigngroup #streets #streetdesign #janejacobs #amirite

  • Car dependency, GDP and inclusive design

    Car dependency, GDP and inclusive design

    [This content first appeared on LinkedIn on 6 November 2024]

    Yowza! How apropos a question raised in my previous post seems to have been! Namely: Why are we still approving development with substandard access to public transport?

    Well, lo and behold, Peter Walker of the Guardian, no less, has attempted to answer that question by publishing an article on how “Planning rules have failed to link new homes to public transport.”

    It turns out that a study by the RTPI has found that the last ten years of constant chatter about building in sustainable locations with good transport infrastructure has literally fallen on deaf ears.

    There are a number of repercussions to this that anyone who’s been placemaking for over half an hour and has a duty of care to the public will understand:

    • People have to become car dependent out of necessity 
    • This has implications for people’s health…
    • … as well as their finances
    • It disadvantages those on low incomes
    • It disadvantages those who for whatever reason cannot drive, or do not want to drive
    • It makes access to shops, schools, colleges, workplaces, doctors’ surgeries etc. etc. etc. an arduous task in what is apparently a civilised society with sufficient GDP to send us straight in at No6 in the Top Ten countdown of global economies

    Not a good look.

    This week my Urban Design 101 request is a return to strategic level design, reviewing the morphology of existing settlements well served by public transport to investigate how these could be sustainably expanded to accommodate housing need.

    It’s quite clear that the current system of the ‘call for sites’, where land comes forward in an often delightfully ad-hoc manner, often in fields with questionable topography and drainage issues, often far from anywhere and which would just result in yet more car dependency… *checks notes*… isn’t working. 

    I’m not the only one to reach this conclusion – take a look at ‘Achieving Good Town Form’, the latest Urban Design Group paper.

    If we are going to design inclusively – which includes providing the community with a viable choice of travel options – we have to get the public transport links right. 

    A few miles up the road a still-under-construction major, major housing development has had to abandon a bus route through the site because the streets in the neighbouring development parcel weren’t wide enough to accommodate it. But all is not lost! Residents can still walk a quarter of a mile alongside a dual-carriageway on a path that isn’t overlooked to a stop that is barely overlooked by a single house to catch a bus into town.

    And on the way home again, they have the pleasure of crossing that dual-carriageway via staggered crossings. 

    Not much of a selling point even while the fare is still capped at £2.

    Phones and keys at the ready, ladies! 

    Amirite?

    #peterwalker #guardian #amirite #placemaking #placemakers #urbandesign #publictransport #bus