streets are places, too
Streets are places, too
Local authorities could – and should – have taken a little trouble to make sure that road design and maintenance was coordinated with town planning. But, says Colin Davis, most of them didn’t, leaving us with many problems to address
 | Colin Davis RIBA RTPI FIHT is Coordinator, The Public Realm Information and Advice Network, PRIAN Working together with PRIAN: It seems very unlikely that the sensible method to coordinate street design – subjecting all aspects of a public street to planning control – will happen very soon. A practical alternative is to encourage all the many different people who are involved in the public street to work more closely together. To help this process the Public Realm Information and Advice Network has set up a short multi-disciplinary course. Supported by such bodies as English Heritage, CABE and the engineering institutions IHIE and IHT, this residential course explains the concepts and objectives of all the agencies, breaks down barriers and demonstrates how quality public spaces, including streets, can be produced. For more information visit: www.publicrealm.info People at the very top: chief executives and leaders of councils, seldom have the inclination or expertise to challenge the conventional, single issue advice being served from below This is a most positive and optimistic time for those of us who are passionately interested in helping to deliver real quality in the public realm. Awards are being showered like confetti. Every town has its pet public space, usually a discrete garden or square that is being spruced up or, if it is lucky, having millions spent on it in an attempt to create a splendid example of civic pride. But, as the seminal Manual for Streets officially informs us, every street is also a place. A street has a movement function, which we always knew about, but now we may legitimately speak out loud that a street is not just for traffic. It is a place where people live their lives, walk, meet friends, look around them, admire what they see in shop windows – and sometimes even appreciate the architecture. This pronouncement is more fundamental than many people realise. Highway design and maintenance has always been kept separate from town planning. Official highway design advice (though not strictly speaking mandatory) concentrated on the movement function of a street. There was no coordination of the different and sometimes conflicting objectives that a street must deliver. Indeed, traffic and planning each have their own disciplines, professional bodies, government departments, legislation and funding systems. Experts in one field are generally not familiar with the concepts and practicalities of the other. Although a unitary authority may have a coordinating management structure, that structure does not have technical expertise throughout. Middle managers are often people with skills in management, but not necessarily possessing specialist skills. They may have been promoted from one of the speciality agencies to a position of wider responsibility, from where they now supervise a number of other specialities – many of which are not within their personal experience or basic discipline. At the top of a local authority management hierarchy, where coordination could take place, there is little effective technical knowledge. People at the very top: chief executives and leaders of councils, seldom have the inclination or expertise to challenge the conventional, single issue advice being served from below. The exception that is often quoted is the well-known exemplar at Kensington High Street (see box opposite), which shows what can be done when conventional technical advice is ignored. It is interesting that the person who pushed through this innovation was not an engineer or urban designer. Councillor Daniel Moylan was in the fortunate position to control and coordinate decisions on the design of the whole street. His vision and tenacity has paid off. Kensington High Street The problem is that the diagrams assume the roads are going to be built in the Gobi desert. The layout may have been fine for vehicles, but pedestrians, and the public realm environment generally, got a raw deal The original road layout at Kensington High Street followed exactly the recommendations of the official advice. Traffic was streamed and segregated into lanes so that vehicles turning left were separated by a triangular traffic island. This is exactly what is recommended in the traffic diagrams of the official Design Manual for Roads and Bridges. The problem is that the diagrams assume the roads are going to be built in the Gobi desert. The layout may have been fine for vehicles but pedestrians, and the public realm environment got a raw deal Pedestrians originally had to cross the road in three separate crossings, waiting for the green man at each and getting more frustrated. This probably didn’t matter when the layouts were first designed. Pedestrians were second class citizens anyway and would jolly well have to wait. Just to make sure, they were kept in their place by four of five rows of guard rails The new scheme kept the traffic flows about the same, but removed the triangular island so that people could cross the entire road in a single, straightforward crossing. Pedestrians could see that they were allowed to cross exactly where they wanted to, without any annoying diversions. Thus, guard rails were unnecessary and so were not installed. The whole layout for both drivers and pedestrians is now far simpler, less cluttered and easy to understand. It has, as a result, proved to be safer Link and place: a guide for street planning In November 2007, a team from University College London (UCL), working with Transport for London (TfL), introduced a guide for planning and designing urban streets, based on the dual principles of streets being both links and places. This approach, rooted in network planning, has major implications for the ways in which street network functions are defined, for the ways in which the quality of street performance is assessed, and for the types of design solutions that are developed and appraised. |
| Streets are places too: our ability to navigate and enjoy treets shapes the way we feel about our environment | |
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| The original road layout at Kensington High Street | |
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| Kensington High Street-after-plan The new scheme kept the traffic flows about the same, but removed the triangular island so that people could cross the entire road in a single, straightforward crossing, proved to be safer | |
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| Pedestrians originally had to cross the road in three separate crossings, waiting for the green man at each and getting more frustrated. | |
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| Deatailed analysis of the A2 from London to Kent (by TfL and UCL team) | |
The ideas are illustrated in the guide Link and Place.
Most streets perform both functions, to varying degrees. The guide explores in detail the implications of this ‘paradigm shift’, as the authors call this approach, for all stages of street planning and design. The processes and techniques used in implementing this approach; essentially, a set of matrices and values allocated to sections of the study sites that, once weighted, define problem areas and raise priorities for attention. Several comprehensive pilot studies have been carried out, for example detailed analysis of the A2 from London to Kent, (see bottom left) and the complex data interpreted in the guide. Link and Place is available from Landor books at £45 | |
