Designing streets

Designing Streets

The Gallery, London, 16th January 2008

A large almost overflowing audience was present to hear ideas related to the publication Manual for Streets (MfS) and subject of the last issue of UD. Tim Pharaoh began and stressed the need for context-sensitive design and not using rigid geometric standards. The manual involved the replacement of road hierarchies in residential areas with walkable neighbourhoods using streets as social spaces. He compared the routes to school in impermeable indirect layouts with alternative coherent routes, which were good for public transport and also allowed easy orientation. The primacy of the street meant an end to residential distributor roads and a lower design speed with frontage development.

Paul Hewson presented the case for evidence-based practice in urban design. He referred to work that he is doing in the medical field in which evidence is needed before new treatments can be introduced, and so a critical engagement with evidence is needed and a reflection in practice informed by this. He has been involved with road safety issues in Devon where sometimes an inaccurate view of evidence or statistics appears to have been taken. He had doubts about Hans Monderman’s work, although that may have been because he did not have access to its evidence base (which appears to exist over a long period of observation). However design ideas often have no parallel - being a leap in imagination - so it may be that well-designed arterial studies are needed to satisfy the arguments.

Colin Davis called for a removal of signs, stating that the regulations do not require the posting of signs, but just that they must be posted in accordance with regulations whenever used. His case was that ‘everywhere is somewhere’ - the basic credo of urban design. The discussion included how we encourage highway engineers to be more interested in urban design matters. Few engineers take urban design courses and many engineering courses do not include aspects of urban design. People were concerned that the MfS only related to residential streets but it points the way for other situations, and hopefully a publication on other places will follow, but only perhaps if enough special interest groups make their concerns known. The response to this UDG event was encouraging and what is needed is sustained effort to take this interest further.

John Billingham