Beyond the Pandemic: Reclaiming our Streets
We’re facing a radical transformation of our high streets and town centers, catalysed by the freezing of the local economy with COVID-19 lockdown and held to ransom by the prospect of another wave of the virus.
As we imagine the future of our neighbourhoods and public realm, reassess the use and value of civic spaces and try to harness some of the good that has come from the last couple of months, an intelligent strategy is needed to prevent us returning to old habits and letting cars rule our city.
We need to re-evaluate our relationship with cars — polluting machines that are greedy with our space, create dangerous environments for pedestrians and hostile spaces for visitors. Here is a chance to reshape our neighbourhoods and enable them to trial new radical ways to improve the lives of locals, boost the trading environment for businesses and address the air quality public health crisis in London.
Who are our cities designed for, and who should benefit from them?
Can We Leave Behind the Status Quo?
The absence of cars and activity from our high streets has allowed us to visualise a future for public realm design that prioritises people, independent businesses, experience and culture. Pollution is connected to 9,400 deaths per year in London — this is a public health emergency. The current lockdown has seen a total departure from our usual habits and convenience, shifting our perspective on what we value. This is an opportunity to force through the radical changes we need; that seemed almost impossible just a few months ago.
Although there are so many positive noises being made about the possibility of pedestrianisation throughout the city, we know that because of social distancing requirements, TfL expect just 13–15% of pre-lockdown traveller numbers. With 56% of London households owning cars, there is potential for a significant increase in car use throughout the city — something that, being in the top 10 most congested cities in the world, our road networks would not be equipped to handle. Centre for London’s survey recently revealed that whilst a third of respondents said they plan to cycle more, a third also said they plan to increase car use.
The Mayor of London is working towards 80% of all journeys in London being via walking, cycling or public transport — but the trends even before lockdown do not suggest we will succeed. In order to prevent a dangerous reversal of the progress that’s been made in reducing car use we need to actively design walking and cycling in to our urban environments, whilst simultaneously designing out cars.
This period of quiet and reflection enables us to test and implement radical ideas. The context has changed dramatically and measures such as pedestrianisation may be essential for the survival of restaurants, cafes and pubs.
Learning from Copenhagen
Across the world, countries and cities are and have been adopting a more pedestrian-friendly approach to the design of their civic spaces, as far back as the 1960’s with the dawn of Copenhagen’s ‘human scale’ approach. Architect and planner Jan Gehl implemented measures that would facilitate human interaction, and a city centre was born that would host the boom of café culture. Today, it is still celebrated as one of the best examples of pedestrianisation in the world.
How did Copenhagen achieve this public space bliss back in the 1960’s, whilst other cities are still scrambling to develop strategies that are supported by stakeholders and allow the city to its potential?
1. Stroget was the first street to be pedestrianised in 1962, and a gradual process of reducing traffic and car parking began
2. Car parking lots were transformed into public spaces
3. Neighbourhoods of a modest scale began to flourish with defined cultural identities and an architectural sense of place
4. Infrastructure that enabled walking and cycling as a major mode of transport was introduced
5. Storage and repair stations for bicycles were made widely available
These measures seem simple and yet they resulted in a transformative process that changed the way Copenhagen operates as a city. Copenhagen continues to set the tone, with a current ambition to be carbon free by 2025. This will require completely phasing out combustion engines and introducing a fully electrified bus fleet. Much of this cost will be shouldered by public coffers; the Danes pay some of the highest taxes in the world, but are consistently ranked among the happiest people.
More recently, cities including Milan, Brussels, Hamburg and Rome have adopted their own ambitious strategies and commitments to a more sustainable future and people-centric streets. London is also making important strides, with temporary walking and cycling lanes between major transport hubs, restrictions on deliveries and the congestion charge. Following lockdown, however, the battle will begin — and supporters of car use in the city have the benefit of the status quo on their side.
What can be done with all this space?
To help inspire grassroots support for pedestrianisation, let’s imagine the myriad ways we could re-purpose the space taken up by cars — the 1.3 million car parking bays, totalling ten Hyde Parks. There is an entrenched wariness of drastic change, so the alternative needs to be something local stakeholders can relate to, with benefits to their community and neighbourhood. The pedestrianisation of Trafalger Square was vehemently opposed in 1998 but the space before the National Portrait Gallery is now in the ownership of pedestrians and no longer contested.
With all this space freed up in a condensed city, there would be capacity for: street food stalls, restaurant seating, event space, performance space, community allotments, green infrastructure, parklets, street furniture, bicycle storage, bicycle repair stands, general storage, well designed bins and even public art installations. Car parking lots provide generous civic spaces that could be markets or collective seating areas, and more permanent re-designs like coworking spaces or pocket parks.
A City-Wide Approach
Proposals for Oxford Street were defeated by the argument of displacement of traffic. The scheme’s focus was too concentrated, not taking the wider context and knock-on impact in to consideration. We must avoid this pocket thinking, and instead consider this a departure from car dominance for the entire city. This means a gradual decline in car use everywhere, and the walking and cycling infrastructure necessary to enable people to leave their cars at home. On bigger roads where pedestrianisation is not possible, investment must be made in to electric car charging and zero-emissions vehicles. Multi-modality should be facilitated across the city, such as allowing bikes to be taken on buses.
Empowering communities to enact the changes that will benefit them will galvanise local support in a way a faceless top-down approach could not. Thoroughly assessing how the space is used and encouraging local contribution to ideas for alternative uses of the roads and car parking spaces will help to create a trusted environment.
Enhancing pedestrian and cycling links will be essential. From introducing a new lighting scheme in an underused alleyway to building customised green infrastructure and seating, walking routes can become both practical and safe links, and destinations in their own right. Ambitious and high value projects such as the proposed Camden Highline (transforming a piece of railway between Camden Town and Kings Cross in to a linear park) have become even more relevant as we look to the city’s post-lockdown existence. Increasing usable pedestrian space allows for social distancing, in an age when we cannot afford to leave space and transport links disused.
There is a justified concern that pedestrianising streets may spur an increase in residential and commercial property prices. The city-wide approach will frame pedestrianisation as the new ‘norm’, thus preventing property prices being impacted and enabling us to retain the vital small and independent businesses that keep our high streets characterful and varied. This is especially important if we are to curate neighbourhoods that provide the necessary services to people in the area. If the offer of one neighbourhood includes cultural experiences, food, health, green space and social spaces we can start to develop a ‘15 Minute City’ inspired by the ambitions of Paris, and called for in our previous Alternative Camden article. This means that in addition to creating easier walking and cycling links, we reduce the need for travel overall and encourage people to spend more time in their local high streets. It’s worth noting that the shift we are likely to see towards more working from home will also naturally impact how much people require to travel within the city.
Our new car-free city will have walking and cycling permeability and connectivity at its very core. We can look to cities such as Paris where cycle lanes are linking the suburbs to the inner city, or in Manchester where the 1000 mile Beeline network connects communities to the city centre — designing out car use and designing in cycling, by reallocating road space to create safe cycle lanes. Copenhagen has introduced a traffic management scheme that divides the urban centre in to zones, and prohibits cars travelling directly from one to another. Instead, they have to go via suburbs — car use is therefore much less convenient, and walking, cycling or public transport become the most attractive option.
Drummond Street: The People’s High Street
On Drummond Street the traders and residents are very concerned about the impact of Hs2 construction on air quality, footfall and the public realm environment. Pedestrianisation was loosely discussed as a potential remedy, until lockdown meant it became a more serious solution to the immense pressure the local communities are under. Social distancing and an al fresco café culture will not be possible if we continue to give vehicles a dominant role.
Drummond Street will need to embrace the concept of the experience economy as we emerge from lockdown — it has much to offer as a visitor destination with a rich culture, independent businesses and authentic cuisine predominantly from South India. This experience economy is about catching the live version of the city — the accidental conversations, random sightings, unexpected events that cannot be captured from a car.
The recent award from Hs2 for Euston Town’s transformational proposals on Drummond Street will also see the development of ‘The People’s High Street’ — a flexible public realm with assets such as a performance area, market stalls and street furniture than prepare it for community events, food markets and more. It is impossible to see how the presence of cars on this street would be beneficial to this forward-thinking vision of the neighbourhood.
Euston Station is to undergo a major redevelopment in the coming years, and it will not be designed to accommodate cars. Drummond Street, its closest neighbour, has an opportunity to foreshadow the progressive changes happening in the area and adapt to this new normal years before it becomes a reality.
In implementing pedestrianisation, we plan to adopt Alternative Camden engagement tools and technology experiments, elevating the proposal to one of a truly futuristic vision to complement the new public realm space. This could include developing an online platform to book out civic space, creating a points system that rewards local people for sustainable behaviour and allocating digital voting tokens to residents, business owners and employees to vote on new uses for the road and car parking spaces.
Plans for Drummond Street permeability play in to our wider connection strategy, known as the Green Loop. New connections between Euston, Kings Cross and Camden Town will help those communities to realise the benefits of nearby developments, which all too often do not provide the promised economic opportunities to nearby neighbourhoods. The Green Loop is a visitor destination as well as a local asset, condensing some of North London’s most exciting attractions in to an accessible day trip.
Drummond Street is an invaluable microcosm, with a mix of cultures and a strong sense of community. This is an interesting opportunity to re-frame pedestrianisation as a force to bring together local stakeholders around common goals, allowing residents to reclaim power over their public realm and communities to celebrate their culture in a well-designed environment. The past few months have reminded us of the value of social interaction, so we should explore how green pedestrian networks can physically connect places. This need not be a politically polarising matter, but instead a rational response to our experience of lockdown.
A Fast and Brave Response
It’s an exciting prospect, to radically re-imagine the hierarchy of our city design and start to shape what the future looks like when walking and cycling are prioritised, and fossil fuel cars no longer dominate the public realm.
What is required now is a fast and brave response to the needs of communities and small businesses, who cannot operate without social distancing. We should use this period to trial and experiment, as we propose for Drummond Street, to determine what the permanent measures will look like. If our neighbourhoods continue to function after lockdown and with pedestrianisation in place, we can show that this vision is not an urban fantasy but a practical way to build a sustainable, people-friendly future.
Learning from other cities and from the people who use our high streets and roads will be essential. This should not be a top-down process; communities need to be taken on the journey to realise a new future and improve the environment for themselves. Drummond Street is a great first foray in to the world of pedestrianisation, being a community that requires radical action and is ready to trial exciting new approaches. But key to being able to tap in to the benefits of going car-free is that the network continues to expand across the city, because too narrow an effort will negatively impact surrounding roads.
And finally, these changes cannot be made without political commitment. Erica Belcher from the Centre for London said: “We need to understand why people are driving, and then we need to offer them a viable alternative. I think we can get there, but it’s going to take a lot more political will and one extremely brave politician.”
