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Reclaiming the experiment
Published in Jack Stilgoe, Experiment Earth, 2015
We have had more than a hundred years in which to come to terms with the motor car. The ways in which cars are regulated have evolved alongside the technology. In Chapter 2, I mentioned the Traffic in Towns report (Buchanan 1963), one of many attempts at a technology assessment. Since the publication of that report, planners and engineers in the UK and most other countries have worked on the assumption that the safest way to organise motorists and pedestrians was to separate them. Outside my own university in North London runs Euston Road, a busy dual carriageway decorated with the machinery of segregation – railings, warning signs, traffic lights, pedestrian crossings, curbs and underpasses. Outside Imperial College, on the other side of town, is an alternative arrangement. There, Exhibition Road has become an experiment in ‘shared space’.
Analysing the influence of a farmers’ market on spatial behaviour in shared spaces
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2022
Mariana Batista, Bernhard Friedrich
Beyond decreasing traffic speed and allocating more space to pedestrians, the shared space concept is a means to promote the street as a public space (Hamilton-Baillie 2008b; Shared Space 2005; Brlek, Krpan, and Grgurević 2018; Jayakody et al. 2018). The idea is to create an environment that encourages social encounters and activities (Hamilton-Baillie 2008a; Karndacharuk, Wilson, and Dunn 2014a). Thus, the layout and location of the scheme, together with the arrangement of street furniture, are crucial elements to attract and accommodate vulnerable road users whilst creating a public space and enhancing the sense of place (Jayakody et al. 2018; Parkin and Smithies 2012). Furthermore, ground-floor uses and other elements, such as seating availability and sculptures, become decisive factors influencing and engaging people in the space (Peters 2017; Ruiz-Apilánez et al. 2017). Road users’ perceptions and behaviour are then subjected to both the design and the consequent traffic context, as shown in different studies (Hammond and Musselwhite 2013; Moody and Melia 2014; Peters 2017; Ruiz-Apilánez et al. 2017; Schönauer et al. 2012).
Innovative street design in a city without freeways: the case of Vancouver
Published in Journal of Urban Design, 2019
The second approach is called ‘Shared Space’, which draws upon the ‘Shared Street’ concept that has been applied to residential areas in the form of woonerfs, where pedestrian movements, social activities and children’s play combine with slow moving local traffic movement, but instead is applied to non-residential areas, particularly commercial districts (Karndacharuk, Wilson, and Dunn 2014). The Shared Space approach involves mixing vehicle traffic with pedestrians and cyclists on the same travel surface without there being any traffic signals, crosswalks, lane markers or signs to control behaviour – in other words, mixing it all up. This approach was first championed by Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman in the mid-2000s, who experimented with such projects in the town where he served as a road safety investigator. He found that vehicles slowed in commercial environments where kerbs, traffic signage, signals and markings were removed because drivers had to be aware of their surroundings and look for clues from walkers and cyclists about where they could safely drive (Project for Public Spaces 2008). The idea behind Monderman’s work is that within cities traffic can ‘coexist with other social activities within the public realm, so long as the cultural messages that govern human behavior is made explicit’, and specifically that when ‘eye contact and human interaction replace signs and rules’ the ‘traveler becomes a citizen’ (Hamilton-Baillie 2004, 51). In other words, without clearly differentiated and separated movement spaces for vehicles and pedestrians, people become less certain, drivers have to assess the situation more carefully and look to environmental and behavioural clues for information about how it is safe for them to proceed, rather than blindly relying on lights and traffic signage (Van Veen 2014).