It doesn't have to be big, or even beautiful
O’Connell Street in Dublin: much more democratic than it used to be
The loading bay that thinks it’s a footway!
One of the Hungerford footbridges across the Thames: footfall never lies!
What qualities would you expect a scheme to have to render it likely to win an urban design award? This is one of the questions that I and some colleagues have posed to one another these past three summers and are about to ask ourselves again, as we ponder the relative merits of the candidates for the Urban Transport Design Award presented at the annual Transport Practitioners' Meeting.
This year's knees-up takes place in Reading in mid-July and I can already feel the pressure, and guilt, associated with having to choose one entry over its deserving competitors.
One of the problems I have is that I'm committed to certain principles: namely, that big isn't necessarily beautiful and that beautiful isn't necessarily good. Yet still, somehow, there's a nagging thought that unless the winning scheme is visually impressive in some way then people simply won't be, well, impressed. I was recently partly responsible for the removal of swathes of guard-railing on a complex High Street in London.
It was a professionally and intellectually challenging task, and very worthwhile. The pedestrian environment has improved considerably, early indications are that safety has not been compromised and the whole enterprise was wonderfully cheap. But, frankly, the final product of an initiative that puts a big tick in many of the 'good urban design' boxes isn't exactly what you'd call a looker!
"I've had numerous schemes featuring fancy paving materials, shiny stainless steel and exquisitely manicured landscaping presented to me as examples of good urban design practice when, to be honest, they're no more than 'lipstick on a gorilla'."
If it weren't my scheme, would I consider it for the award? I trust I would but the best way of putting me and the rest of the judging panel to the test on this is by nominating something you've been involved with for this year's award, even if it is far from glamorous.
It's not that glamour is wrong, mind: it's just that it can get in the way of judging a scheme's true merits. I've had numerous schemes featuring fancy paving materials, shiny stainless steel and exquisitely manicured landscaping presented to me as examples of good urban design practice when, to be honest, they're no more than 'lipstick on a gorilla'!
With Dublin's newly made-over O'Connell Street, however, I'm glad to report that the beauty I trust you can glimpse from the accompanying photo is more than skin-deep.
According to the CABE website, the scheme cost £13.5m, which makes it big as well. But the street remains a really hard-working thoroughfare, and indeed those fixated on surface beauty would probably object to the fact that the view is often largely obscured by phalanxes of yellow buses and other traffic.
That's just cities for you, to my mind, and I consider that the works to O'Connell Street have achieved the really difficult trick of turning a traffic-dominated thoroughfare into a much more pedestrian-friendly place without having cheated by merely dumping that traffic on some other less well-loved street nearby.
O'Connell Street isn't sublime, of course, but then neither is my next example ridiculous, even though it may seem outclassed in comparison. It's a loading bay not far from my office in Camden and it's definitely a case of small being beautiful, as far as I'm concerned. As you look at the picture you might even have a job working out where the bay is - which is a large part of the point!
Try picturing in your mind a conventional loading bay: typically a wedge shape of tarmac gouged out of the footway and lined by a kerb upstand that announces clearly that this part of the public highway is for vehicles only. Pedestrians are not welcome, however narrow the remaining footway in the vicinity might be. In sharp contradistinction, the facility in the photo is a fully-fledged loading bay when needed for the purpose and a perfectly serviceable part of the footway at all other times. So simple it's brilliant, you might say. I certainly do, and while I know it's not particularly unique or innovative these days, it's nevertheless a relatively low-cost, high-value scheme that other authorities would do well to copy.
My final photo this month is of one of the two footbridges that flank the Hungerford rail bridge between Charing Cross and Waterloo East stations. How these bridges got to be built is a victory of vision over pragmatism.
After all, there had been a footbridge here since Brunel's original structure opened in 1845 and, although by the 1990s the pedestrian link bolted on to the rail bridge route was distinctly unattractive compared with its illustrious antecedent, it still did the job of allowing people to cross the Thames in this location. Under the circumstances, why on earth spend around £50m replacing it with not one structure but two, be they ever so pretty?
The very fact that the scheme cost such a huge sum shows that there are still people out there willing and able to make a persuasive case to create transport infrastructure that would usually fall at the first procurement hurdle.
I keep meaning to ask around to get the detailed stats but the evidence of my eyes is that pedestrian volumes on the new bridges are many times greater than those on the old one: a triumphant demonstration of what happens when you actively encourage pedestrian movement, instead of merely allowing it.
Since the Urban Transport Design Award is intended to showcase good practice that others can learn from and apply in their own circumstances, hugely expensive schemes like these footbridges and, for that matter, O'Connell Street tend to rule themselves out by being hard for most others to replicate. But if you've got or know of any scheme that you want to put up for the 2008 award, be it big or small, pretty or plain, then feel free to contact me for a nomination form via j.dales@urbaninitiatives.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you.
John Dales is on the Commission 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.
