Social Streets: Lessons from Europe and an Australian

In our travels, one feature of some northern cities really struck us as decidedly cool. On the inner streets of places such as York, Weymouth, Strasbourg, Colmar, and Amsterdam, cars shared the narrow streets with cyclists and pedestrians in a much more egalitarian way than they do here.

I am often struck by the attitude of Christchurch motorists to pedestrians and cyclists; motorists often seem to take the view that the car is at the top of an invisible hierarchy. Nowhere is this more irritating than in a mall car-park on a rainy day, when you jump out of the car, become a pedestrian, and have to wait for streams of cars to get out of your way - while the drivers cruise ditheringly past in the warmth and dryness of their vehicle.

Colmar

In marked contrast, on the streets of Strasbourg, cars are welcome, and pedestrians are too. (The biggest danger comes from cyclists whizzing through in the cycling lanes.) When you need to cross the road, you can do it quite quickly because the roads are narrow, and cars aren't streaming along double and triple lanes in traffic-light-controlled waves. Instead they are trickling through at a slow pace and keeping a watchful eye out for other street users. It gives a quite different vibe.

Ian and I were intrigued recently when NatRad's Simon Morton interviewed David Engwicht, an Australian expert in making cities safer and more social (https://www.creative-communities.com/). According to him, traditional planners strive to increase predictability when they plan streets, so they incorporate lots of features to control and instruct the street users - such as signs, barriers, lights, and so on. They regard these features as a means of making the street more safe. Engwicht maintains that far from making the street more safe, these features allow road users to abdicate their responsibility for looking out for other users, and create a false sense of security.

"Over-regulation of public space promises a level of predictability that cannot be delivered."

Amsterdam

"Risk is not a problem; readability of risk is the problem... planners must make the risk visible..."

Moreover, Engwicht argues that by focussing on movement of traffic and pedestrians, the planners relegate social and economic interactions - people stop communicating with each other and just follow the signals slavishly. Hans Monderman, a Dutch engineer, pioneered the concept of shared space in Europe. You have this space outside the shops and houses; you can choose whether to use it just for movement, or whether you regard it as an outdoor living room where social interaction is encouraged and supported.

"Risk and conflict are absolute core measures of the vitality of any space"

According to Engwicht, the evidence shows that average traffic speeds in these "living streets" drop by 50% - but traffic through-put drops by a much smaller amount, because the cars aren't impeded by constant controls.

Monderman said "My chief job is to put people in eye-contact with each other. They have to look each other in the eye and negotiate how they're going to move in the space". This describes exactly what we experienced and appreciated overseas.

It's also what we experience on Stuart Street at Lake Kaniere. This is a narrow bach-lined street that spends much of the year in splendid solitude, but when the holidays come around, the street throngs with walkers, dogs, cyclists, towel-wrapped children coming up from the lake, and four-wheel-drives towing boats of all sizes. There are no footpaths. Everyone moves slowly, and accommodates the needs of other users. Almost always, people wave and smile as they sidle past each other, or stop to talk. It's a place of movement and social interactions.



Looking up Stuart Street - cars,
people, dogs, you name it,
all pass each other happily

The local council has plans to double the width of this pleasant street, adding footpaths. We believe that these features will turn a quiet road into something that looks and feels like a main arterial route, encouraging drivers to increase their speeds and expect pedestrians to keep out of their way. We cannot see how this can ever improve safety or contribute positively to the social environment of Lake Kaniere.

Bookish Dreams

In March 1938, Arthur Ransome wrote the following to Helen Ferris (U.S Junior Literary Guild):

Libraries - and Guilds! - ought to be very careful lest they encourage the idea that books are like newspapers and muffins and herrings, to be served fresh and fresh. Any good book improves on rereading, and I believe that the reason why books meant so much to me when I was a small boy is that I didn't have too many, and those I did have I knew pretty well by heart. (From "Signalling from Mars, The Letters of  Arthur Ransome", Hugh Brogan 1997)

I have read all of the Swallows and Amazons books so many times that on the rare occasions when I sail on my own, I always hear Arthur Ransome's advice in my head. I can't say he made me a competent sailor but he certainly did make me feel that I could and should sail. And now that I have read his words to Ms Ferris, I feel entirely good about rereading good books, too.



An island on Windermere

Being such a fan of AR, only imagine my delight when Ian, George and I visited Lake Windermere in Cumbria, which formed part of the setting of several of The Books. (We only had a day there, and did not get to Coniston on this trip.) This was an unexpected treat that came about because Ian had organised for us to stay a night or two with his Cumbrian cousin Peter, his wife Lindsay and their lovely young'uns.

Once at Rio/Bowness, I was fairly desperate to be on the lake and with some control of the helm (albeit delegated - but I definitely didn't want to be a mere passenger in a steamer). This accorded with George's need to be driving something; anything. So we rented a small electric runabout and spent a happy hour or two scooting about the lake. It could nearly have been Kaniere - soft dark water and wooded islands - if one ignored Bowness and ancient ruins...  and boat-houses of course, which have sadly been removed from the Kaniere shore.

But, who wanted Kaniere? Not I - this was the realisation of a long-held dream - and yes, a highlight of UK trip 2012.

I'll never know why there was smoke drifting up from distant woods - but the plume pictured here will always mean charcoal burners to me!

The Altounyan red slippers