Creating a Safe and Friendly High Street Together
We are a social lab that lives on Dudley High Street. Not the shiny, pedestrianised and well lit part of Dudley with new street furniture and new market stalls. We’re nestled among the boarded up shop fronts, where the street furniture and shop frontages are falling into disrepair, where traffic congestion and parked cars dominate the public space available.
The experiments and research we supported on Dudley High Street in 2017 and 2018 led us to understand that what local people desire is a kinder, more creative and connected High Street. From the beginning of 2019 we focused our efforts on growing a Collective of doers, creatives and social entrepreneurs who shared this vision and were keen to lead experiments which would help us understand how to nurture such a change together. The emerging Collective developed a 3 day festival of street experiments (Do Fest 2019), during which local people were invited to play with and in public spaces in creative and unexpected ways.
By early 2020, Collective and now lab team member Holly Doron had built on the mapping activity she led at Do Fest, and developed a series of participatory sessions which would be open to anyone, and introduce them in a hands-on way to Public Life Studies inspired by the work of Jan Gehl.
After these sessions we intended to share the collective observations. Working openly and collectively with data, we might all be involved in making more informed decisions about community and artist led low cost and DIT (Do It Together) experiments.
While the pandemic put a pause on the delivery of public workshops, we recognised that Public Life Studies observations were even more urgent to help work out how we all return to a High Street that is both safe and friendly.
As lab team member Jo notes, “Gehl describes the twin human needs in urban space of protection and expression. It is not enough for us to design for physical distancing when that is devoid of opportunities for expression. While Nik Tyler talks about the real threat that some physical distancing interventions present around the sociality of our public space. He argues now more than ever, after months of isolation, it is crucial to design sociality into our High Street experiences. But how to do that?”
In drawing together our initial Public Life Studies observations we identified a need for a relationship between changes to the physical infrastructure on the High Street (which would be led by colleagues from Dudley Council) and experiments and creative interventions supported by the social infrastructure on the High Street (our lab is a form of social infrastructure).
We also recognised three phases of activity to think about, thanks to this great Streets for Pandemic Response and Recovery model/learning from the National Association of City Transportation Officials in America.
- A response phase in which safety measures are swiftly implemented, conversations initiated, and designs tested in low cost ways.
- A recovery phase in which some changes to the High Street are added to and perhaps become semi-permanent. Alongside this opportunities for local people to join or lead sociable and creative activities will gently be introduced.
- A renewal phase in which Dudley High Street is home to more creative and friendly spaces, happenings and activities, along with a resulting shift in how local people view and treat public spaces, taking on responsibility and co-ownership, in incremental ways.
Through sharing our observations, data, design considerations and desk research with Dudley Council we were invited into dialogue around plans for Reopening High Streets Safely work (EU funded) and wider shared aspirations for a kinder, more creative and connected High Street.
We are preparing to embark on more Public Life Studies, experiments and interventions as restrictions lift over the summer, so thought we’d bring together our documentation and Lab Notes to date which we will be building on.
Documents drawing together observations, conversations, designs and experiments in 2020
1. We can create a safe and friendly High Street Together ~ June 2020
This document is the first in our series of observations and conversations on Dudley High Street to inform pandemic response and recovery, and High Street renewal (published 25 June 2020).
From our premises on Dudley High Street we were well located to observe public life on the High Street in the wake of the first wave of COVID-19. We also initiated conversations with our neighbours on the High Street, and people using the High Street. These revealed an appetite for community and artist led interventions which will help to create a safe and friendly High Street. This document shares what we learned over the first two weeks in June 2020.
Data visualisations included in this document include:
- Observations on footfall, social distancing, traffic and parking on Dudley High Street over 2 weeks during lockdown (coronavirus alert level 4.)
- Indications of desires of local businesses and pedestrians for the High Street.
- Ways that physical and social infrastructure design might be bought together to create a safe and friendly High Street through response and recovery measures.
2. Reopening Dudley High Street Safely: a co-design process ~ August 2020
This second collation of observations, conversations and co-design ideas to inform a collaborative pandemic response and recovery, and High Street renewal in Dudley was published on 19 August 2020.
In our work on ways that we can create a safe and friendly High Street together, we drew on desk research to shape some design considerations and suggest some ideas which could be tested on Dudley High Street during the response phase of the pandemic.
This document details a proposed co-design process for such experiments, illustrating traditional and emerging functions of the High Street which can be reanimated and encouraged through any of a range of prototyping possibilities. Learning through this ‘consultation by trialling’ approach can inform the longer term renewal of Dudley High Street, post-vaccine. We propose that by considering physical and social infrastructure in harmony we can reprioritise Dudley High Street as a place for people, with equitable access and the potential to thrive post-pandemic.
Included in this document are:
- Benefits we anticipate through co-designed street experiments.
- Functions of street interventions which help to create a safe and friendly High Street.
- An example Recipe Card we would use during a co-design process.
- Prototype possibilities #001 — #008
3. Notes of conversations with our neighbours; people who run and work for businesses on the High Street ~ September 2020
This one page document captures responses to our enquiry with local businesses in relation to ways that the Reopening High Streets Safely funding might be used for pavement extensions on Dudley High Street. We shared this information with council colleagues on the day we captured it.
