Streets make up 80% of public space in London and are for far more than just facilitating our movement from one place to another.
For too long city streets have been focussed around the car and moving vehicles around faster and more efficiently. We have forgotten the human element in our cities. Neighbourhood spaces and streets have the power to breathe life back into our communities, bridge the gap between different groups of people living in a small geographical area and give people physical spaces to connect in, in an increasingly isolated world. With people crowding into cities across the globe, space is our most important asset - yet most of our public space is taken up with roads, parking and often unused and unloved spaces. Streets are spaces we all share. With careful, collaborative design and community ownership, streets can transform the forgotten link between neighbourhoods, enabling people to live better and healthier together.
Having worked across London engaging with a diverse range of neighbourhoods, for the charity Sustrans, facilitating local residents to redesign their streets; I have seen how small changes can create hugely beneficial outcomes for everyone. I believe streets are one of few secret weapons we have to tackle some of the biggest urban challenges we face. Here are five steps to transforming your street into a place.
Step one
Get to know your neighbours. At the heart of any neighbourhood or street are the people who live and work on the street, the experts in how it works. I start every project with intense immersion in the local community - try to bring on board a diverse range of local champions who can advocate for improving their streets and inspire them with the possibilities and your vision for the neighbourhood.
Step two
Create a map of your neighbourhood. Plot your thoughts, where does it feel dangerous to cross the road, where does rubbish sometime overflow out of a full bin or where is it dumped? Which route do you travel to school or work, why? What do you love about your street and what or who gives it character? Try and unpick your initial thoughts and keep asking yourself and each other why. That way you’re more likely to get to the bottom of our gut feelings about why we cross where we cross or walk, cycle or drive a certain route. You might want to use a survey to gather different views or simply share and collect comments on your map. Don’t forget to use social media wherever possible to crowd source as many different views as possible, young and old. These are all important steps to take in identifying problems that you might like to solve e.g. a dangerous wide crossing point or non-local traffic cutting through a residential street.
Step three
Share with your neighbours and prioritise what the problems are. Do your neighbours agree with you? Perhaps organise a ranking public noticeboard so everyone can agree and disagree with priorities building a consensus among local people about what are the neighbourhood priorities. Remember to make the process fun and inviting for people to get involved in. Instead of organising a meeting in a hall why not organise a pop-up stall on street or outside the school gates. Musicians and other artists can really help energise neighbourhood engagement and bring a new positive dynamic and challenge unhelpful perceptions about your area.
Step four
Experiment and trial interventions. Once prioritised it would be useful to share these with councillors and highway/transport departments at your council and explain your engagement process and how many people have been involved. If permission can be granted then our next step would always be to temporarily test out ideas that could help to achieve the changes you want to see. E.g. use hay bales or planters to test our narrowing a junction mouth to slow the speeds of cars entering a street. Create temporary public seating out of palettes and use bright coloured paint and stencils on the pavement and street to draw driver’s attention to people and think differently about the space.
Step five
After assessing the success of your trials and experiments you will have started to grow the momentum and energy for change in your neighbourhood. Perhaps your local councillors can push for budget for the changes to be made permanent or you can kickstart your local campaign to make your streets more people friendly.
What can happen?
A two year Sustrans community street design project on the Becontree estate in Barking and Dagenham, achieved the following:
- a decrease in traffic speeds at key locations chosen by residents and the whole project
- 56% of residents walking more since the project
- 48% of residents now feel more confident to participate in community activities
- road accidents reduced by a third.
Change can happen so don’t give up! To find out more about this project go to: www.diyporterslodge.wordpress.com