Shared Space update

As anyone who's followed my blog, or indeed had a work related conversation with me in the last few years will realise, 'Shared Space' is a bit of a pet subject of mine.

See my previous post on Shared Space.

I was thus interested to see that the most recent isssue of the Landscape Journal had gone for a bit of shared space special. While I was pleased to see the topic being discussed, my feeling is that it's probably bit late as the tide seems to already have turned against the whole shared space concept. This view was rather confirmed by the recent article in Building Design entitled, "Is opposition to shared space kerbing councils' enthusiasm?". See below:

http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3155013&c=1

From personal experience it feels like resistance has been steadily building to schemes which include elements of shared space. Whereas, a couple of years ago they'd have been positively received (such as North Arran Way - image above), recent proposals have been rejected early on in favour of traditional bitmac and kerbs. The reasons for this are, I believe, twofold; firstly I think that there is a natural inclination against doing anything new. This is particularly true of the risk driven world of the highway engineer, where the safety of new approaches needs to carefully considered, but also where the lazy officer can easily use safety as an excuse for carrying on with whatever makes their life easier (remember that shared spaces are always bespoke). The second reason is the work that Guide Dogs for the Blind has done to oppose shared spaces. While I'm still a little confused by why they've taken such a hard line on the matter, there's no question that they've done a very thorough job of tarnishing shared spaces in many peoples minds.

As it happens, I went through the concerns of Guide Dogs for the Blind a couple of years back in some detail, when I worked on the North Arran Way Village Centre. The aim of the scheme was to provide a pedestrian focussed centre with local shops and facilities, that also included some car access. The solution we settled upon was to go for a shared space approach with 'cranking roads' and visual narrowing (trees, bollards and paving patterns) to reduce vehicle speed, and using the placement of buildings to create well-defined public spaces. Prior to the planning application we had to go through a user group audit, which inlcuded a variety of members of the local community, including a number of groups representing disabled people. The scheme was also 'challenged' by an experienced access officer from outside the area. Hence, I read up on all the available guidance!

I was surprised by how very positive the experince was. While there was some initial opposition (particularly from a number of blind and partially sighted users, and the organisations that represented them), we were able to adapt the design then and there and include measures to address their very well considered concerns. These included the use of contrasting colours for street furniture and kerbs, introducing definable navigation routes for the visually empaired, as well as many, many other measures which made the scheme far richer than the one we started with. Everyone involved went away happy and I felt that I had designed something that would really benefit the community. With hindsight, I think it was this excercise, which made me realise how well shared space can work for everybody.

If the scheme sounds interesting, it's all on the internet. I've also dropped a link to one of the key plans below:

http://www.solihull.gov.uk/akssolihull/images/att14322.pdf

Ironically, kerbs were actually used throughout the scheme. The only place they were removed was at crossing points, in response to a request from users with limited mobility. I also suspect that had this scheme progressed in the current climate, I would have been met by users with placards, and we wouldn't have been able to have the positive debates that we did.

Guide Dogs for the Blind's opposition to shared space stems from the problems the removal of kerbs causes to blind and partially sighted users. Guide dogs are trained to recognise and stop at kerbs, whilst for many partially sighted users a kerb is visible marker of the road edge. Some people have also pounced on suggestion that pedestrians make eye contact with motorists (this actually dates back to Hans Monderman, but is in my opinion unnecessary - all you need is for the motorist to see you and understand that he doesn't have right of way). Guide Dogs for the Blind repeatedly make the point that blind and partially sighted people don't 'feel' included for by shared spaces schemes.

So is the removal kerbs a fundamental part of shared spaces? In my opinion yes and no. As it happens, I think the removal of all kerbs has been used too much on certain schemes. I would personally only remove kerbs altogether on very low trafficked areas, or areas where pedestrians enjoy a clear priority. However, if you are proscriptive about having to include conventional 80mm kerbs everywhere as some are suggesting (including our friends at Guide Dogs), then I think you lose what shared space is trying to achieve.

So in summary, why are shared spaces so important, and why am I so dismayed by it's detractors?

At it's heart, shared space isn't about kerbs of paving or even cars, it's about designing for people. By understanding how people behave in certain situations, we can use the built environment to positively influence their actions. Shared space is also about taking the priority for our streets back from cars - at the moment road design is all about turning circles and visibility splays, when it should be about the people that use them. What sort of people use the space and what are their needs? Where do people want to cross the road? Is the road a comfortable place for people?

It seems to me that there is a very real danger that the shared space 'furore', will serve only to maintain the status quo of cars first, people second. I sincerely hope I am proved wrong and that a satisfactory solution for is found.

Shared Safety or Shared Danger

I’ve been ruminating on writing an article about ‘shared spaces’ for a little while now. It’s a subject I’m personally very interested in, but also seems to be a current hot topic in the press. At some point in the future the fruits of my musings may appear on here, but in the meantime I’ve been doing a bit research into the thinking behind it and have found some interesting related ideas.

For those unfamiliar with the term and without getting too bogged down in it, ‘shared space’ is an approach to the design of roads and streets where the traditional separation between pedestrians and vehicles is removed or eroded, to create a space where all users co-exist. This generally involves the removal or lowering of kerbs, reducing signage and the associated roadway paraphernalia, and the merging of footways and carriageways with the aim of improving road safety by forcing drivers to reduce speed and have due consideration for other road users.



The approach was originally developed by Hans Monderman, a highway engineer working in the Netherlands, but has since been applied to schemes worldwide. According to the Gospel of Wikipedia however, it was British shared space enthusiast, Ben Hamilton-Bailey who first used the term ‘shared space’ to describe Monderman’s approach (note that Ben Hamilton-Baillie’s Wikipedia article was written by a B. Hamilton-Baillie). In the UK, shared space concepts have been promoted by a number of sources, but perhaps most influentially in ‘Manual for Streets’; a guidance document for the design of roads and streets, prepared in partnership by the Department for Transport and the Department of communities and Local Government. The aim of Manual for Streets, of which I’m a big fan by the way, is to try and promote the role of roads in place making and improving their environment, rather than looking solely at issues of vehicular transit and pedestrian safety.



However, not everyone seems so enamoured by current developments and there has been a significant amount of negative press coverage of some recent shared space schemes. This seems to stem from broadly two sources; organisations that represent the blind and partially sighted, and then the doomsayers who read the Daily Express and write to Ester Rantzen to complain that someone will surely be killed! Now without going into all the in’s and out’s of the arguments, I’d say that there clearly is an issue with guide dogs not being able to negotiate roads without kerbs (although there is little recognition of the potential benefits of this to those with limited mobility), but the rest…



It was actually Ben Hamilton-Bailey’s website, which first made me aware of Warwick Cairn’s excellent book, “How to Live Dangerously”. First and foremost it’s a very entertaining read, but it actually makes some pretty serious points about our compensation culture and the paradoxes of public safety. Interestingly, it both references Monderman’s work on shared space, but also gives some background on the thinking behind it and I think offers an interesting perspective on many issues in today’s society.

To those that are interested by the subject, I’d recommend getting hold of a copy, as it's a nice light read (see link below). For those of such an inclination, I suspect it would prove good toilet reading …







Rather cheekily, I thought I’d drop a few quotes from the books chapter “ The Safety of Danger”, in below.

“Where this is all leading is to one of the most important theories of how human beings deal with danger and risk, and why. It’s a theory that has very important and far-reaching implications, as we’ll see a little later. The theory goes by a number of names, including ‘risk homeostasis theory’ and ‘risk compensation theory’, but you may prefer to think of it as just plain common sense.

Here’s what the theory says: all of us have a natural or ‘ideal’ level of risk that we feel comfortable with in our lives... When things become more dangerous than we like, we take more precautions – when the roads are icy, for example. And – here’s the important part – when things become noticeably safer, we feel that it’s all right to take a few more risks.

So, strange as it may seem, and mad as it may seem, and hard to believe as it may seem, the safest course of action, much of the time, is the one that appears, on the face of it, the most dangerous.

In 1989, the year that UK law first required children in the rear seats of cars to wear seat belts, the number of children killed and injured in rear seats didn’t go down at all. It didn’t even stay the same. What it did was it actually increased. Significantly. The reason for this was that people felt their children were now properly protected, so they didn’t have to worry so much, and so they could afford to drive faster and more recklessly.

And when, for example, we make children’s playgrounds less dangerous by replacing tarmac with special spongy rubber stuff, and when we take away the big tall slides and climbing frames, and when we prevent children from playing conkers unless they wear protective goggles, what we are doing is not actually making them any safer: we are just making life duller, and challenging children’s ingenuity to come up with ways of experiencing the same level of thrills that the old playgrounds used to give them, and that the old unstructured play used to give them. Which may mean using playgrounds in ways for which they were never intended – as places to vandalize and spray graffiti on, for example, which carries the risk of being chased by an irate adult – or not using them at all but going somewhere else altogether – a derelict building, say, or a railway line you can run across as a train approaches; and getting your thrills there instead.

In the 1990s a committee of scientists, psychologists and health-and-safety experts from sixteen countries gathered to examine the evidence for this theory, to see whether more safety precautions actually protect people, or whether they just make them feel safe and confident enough to take bigger risks. Their verdict was unanimous and unequivocal: ‘It is clear,’ they said, ‘that confidence in safety devices – whether they be helmets, seat belts, safety ropes for climbers, or safety nets for trapeze artists – affects behaviour. People respond in a way that tends to nullify the intended effect of the device. Safety measures that ignore this tendency almost always disappoint their promoters.’

And here’s the point: if it isn’t so much things themselves that cause accidents as people’s willingness to take risks, then making things safer won’t mean there will be fewer accidents. It just means that there will be different ones. The only real way to make people safer, the only real way to cut the rate of accidents in one place without it leading to more accidents happening somewhere else, is to lower people’s willingness to take the particular risk that you have in mind. Which is to say, it is to make that risk more frightening. Or, to put it another way, the most effective way to make a thing safer is to make it more dangerous.”

While it seems a fairly contentious premise, if not counter-intuitive, as Cairn intimates there has been some serious research to back up these opinions. Professor Gerald Wilde of Queen’s University, Ontario coined the term, “risk homeostasis” to describe how human behaviour offsets external improvements in safety, by behaving less safely. While not universally accepted, much of the criticism of his work, seems to originate from those who have a vested interest in promoting the value of safety equipment.

All of which makes an interesting response to those who seek to sanitise, standardise and safety-fy everything around us. It rather sadly seems to me that personal responsibility has been largely forgotten in Britain today.