Team work means more than sitting at the same table
(click image to enlarge)
Maid Marian Way in Nottingham– a direct, surface crossing overa dual carriageway, where oncethere were subways
Previous winners of the Urban
Transport Design Award:
"Transport in Urban Design? Should be the other way around, mate. You don't want to be putting carts before horses, do you? Let us sort the transport out first, and then you can mess about to your heart's content with your Italian marble, your bespoke bollards, your fancy lighting and your public art. If you've got the budget, that is…" This was the paragraph with which I began this series of opinion pieces almost two years ago. I quote myself not because I particularly like the sight of my own voice but because, as the months and years roll by, the more it has been brought home to me that lining up our horses and carts correctly is probably the key determinant of whether or not transport makes a positive contribution towards the over-arching goal of achieving better urban design - for which read 'places we actually like'.
If you cast your eyes across the page you'll see a picture of a Mercedes advert that I took a couple of years ago. It's an attractive idea to the boys in marketing but in practice it's only Lewis Hamilton, the Top Gear lads and a relatively select group of others who really get to enjoy the hyphen - and even this bunch commonly travels with the primary purpose of getting to 'B'. Transport, you see, is predominantly a means to an end. (In so far as movement is sometimes an end in itself, far more people enjoy recreational walking and cycling than driving for the sake of it.) Nevertheless, my experience is that far too many transport professionals still fail to see beyond the means. Indeed, it's often worse than that, with a good number of our number seeming to disregard life beyond the specific mode or aspect of transport they're most closely involved with. So, we have people who are fantastic at making a case for highway engineering, traffic management, bus priority, cycling, road freight, walking, bus rapid transit or whatever but who are more or less completely inarticulate when it comes to negotiating the place of their specialism within complex urban environments.
The consequence is that when those with a brief for a certain mode, for example, find themselves in conflict with those batting for another, both parties generally only think about playing to win, not least because of the fear of 'losing'. It ought to be plain to them that there must be deals to be done, that managing the many and varied demands for movement, especially in space-constrained environments (i.e. most streets), requires an often delicate balancing act - but it appears not to be the case.
(Purely coincidentally, as I was typing the previous paragraph, a couple of people further down my carriage started complaining about the conflict between pedestrians and cyclists in some place or other, and the phrase 'balancing act' floated through the air towards me. It's possible these two were transport professionals but they sounded like ordinary punters. They seem to have got the basic idea, whereas we often seem to be unable to see the wood for our professional trees.) The fact is that, in towns and cities, the many 'transport problems' to which we daily turn our attention are rarely best addressed by simple 'transport solutions'. Even complex transport solutions may not meet the need, with something beyond our own immediate grasp - such as the type, quantum and location of land use - needing to change if things are really to improve. However, what I'm absolutely NOT saying is that what we personally bring to the table isn't worth bringing: the problem as I see it is that we don't, or perhaps aren't asked to, approach the table at all. I'm sorry to sound awkward but even once we've come to the table that isn't necessarily enough, because we may often find that we remain professionally estranged from most of those occupying the other chairs. Put another way: there is an enormous practical difference between being on the same Gantt Chart as a bunch of other professionals and actually working meaningfully together with them. If we're going to contribute effectively to the overall goal of creating and maintaining more attractive towns and cities, we'll need to work closely with, and not merely at the same time as, all those who have a role in designing, delivering and using them. Even architects.
In short, we need to get out of our professional silos. This is simple to say and yet, I fully realise, not necessarily so simple to do. However, we haven't a prayer of achieving this objective if we don't, in the first place, see the need of doing so and/or have the courage to try. In this regard, it can help greatly to receive inspiration from other people and other places - so let me close by issuing a couple of invitations. The first is to let me know of any schemes you think worthy of consideration for the Urban Transport Design Award that it will be my pleasure to present at the annual Transport Practitioners' Meeting in Manchester on 24 July. Anything from a brilliantly-designed bus stop to a new interchange; from an innovative traffic management measure to a decluttered high street. If, in your view, it's a scheme that not only achieves transport objectives but makes the place it's in more like a place you'd want to go to, then contact me at j.dales@urbaninitiatives.co.uk
The second invitation is to join me at the Urban Movement Conference in London on 5 June (details of which probably fell out of these pages). Supported by LTT and in many ways this column brought to the stage, it'll be a forum for sharing experience and ideas and is intended to help us all get better at delivering transport's contribution to urban design. I hope to see you there.
John Dales is on the Commissions for Architecture & Built Environment's enabling panel and is responsible for helping to deliver CABE's 'Streets for People' programme of urban design training for highways and tranportation professionals. He is director of transport and movement at urban design consultant Urban Initiatives. This series of articles was originally commissioned by and published in Local Transport Today magazine.
