Designing shared space
Designing Shared Space - Hans Monderman
13 November 2007, City Hall, London
Hans Monderman is the expert on ‘shared space’ - a subject currently holding the attention of traffic engineers and urban designers around the world. From his base in the Netherlands and over the last 30 years, he has driven a revolution in thinking about highway engineering, urban design and place-making.
His cerebral approach to reducing traffic accidents has a technical grounding, maintaining a focus on humans, context, behaviour and risk. During his lecture, he used Magritte’s Le Viol (The Rape), to illustrate that the over-use of numbers causes us to ‘objectivise’ space, with little regard for the bigger picture – an action he describes as ‘the rape of space’. For example, Monderman sees the wider spatial context in street design as a crucial consideration. He described a project to reduce traffic accidents near a school: by removing the high fences segregating children and traffic, drivers became part of the school’s space; in turn the drivers became more aware of the threat that they posed to the children’s safety, and slowed down as a result.
Before cars became more widely affordable, streets were entirely ‘public’ space. However by the middle of the twentieth century, with increasing numbers of the public choosing to travel by car, the government introduced regulations to segregate traffic and people. Monderman argues that traffic engineering has become increasingly dehumanised since that time. Guidance and laws afford the public no intelligence, forcing people to move mindlessly between barriers towards their destinations. For Monderman, true learning and innovation is quashed if the traffic engineering profession hides behind this guidance and resists change.
Monderman emphasised that we must communicate with politicians on the subject of risk. Engineered safety and technological solutions (physical armour or barriers) have previously failed to consider compensating events; for example would motorcyclists travel at dangerous speeds if they were riding naked? Monderman stresses that risk cannot be avoided but it can be managed. Eighty to ninety percent of traffic accidents are small incidents and a necessary part of our learning experiences. Monderman believes that if the number of these small accidents increases, the number of serious and fatal accidents will decrease.
‘Shared Space’ - space without the kind of strict segregations that the majority of us are used to today - does however exist all over the world, particularly in historic European towns. Monderman used Seven Dials in Covent Garden as a good example of shared space in London but stressed the importance of assessing the correct cultural solution for each specific context, with change being achieved slowly on a local level rather than through grand projects.
Hans Monderman’s lecture can be watched in full on the Urban Design London website and is a ‘must view’ for all traffic engineers and urban designers. See www.urbandesignlondon.com/video_training/.
Steve Tomlinson
