Public Life Studies on Dudley High St — Why, How and What we found

Jo Orchard-Webb

Published in

CoLab Dudley

10 min readJun 22, 2020

WHY Conduct Public Life Studies on Dudley High Street?

Public Life Studies focus upon the social significance of the street.

“Good Cities are all about People” (Gehl & Svarre, 2013:159) and Public Life Studies make the people who use cities and towns visible.

The data collected in these studies will help us design urban space experiments for sociability (Nik Tyler) and collective imagining (Rob Hopkins) — both integral to our ambition as a collective for a more creative, connected and kinder Dudley High Street.

Before the pandemic, lab member Holly had developed a series of lovely participatory sessions where she planned to lead anyone who wanted to get involved through a range of Public Life Studies inspired by the work of Jan Gehl. After the workshops we would then share those collective observations so that we might all be involved in making more informed decisions about community and artist led low cost and DIY experiments that can help to make the High Street a place of kindness, creativity and connection.

The intention for shared learning from the participatory sessions was a response to a High Street that we had observed and been told by fellow doers was failing to encourage social interaction, connection, feelings of security, or creative collaboration. In contrast, good street value factors should according to the work of Allan Jacobs and Donald Appleyard include:

liveability
identity & control
access to opportunity
imagination
joy
authenticity & meaning
community & public life
urban self-reliance
an environment for all

While the pandemic means the public workshops are currently on hold, we realise the Public Life Studies observations have become even more urgent as we work out how we all return to a High Street that is both safe AND friendly. Perhaps one can’t exist without the other. 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?

Dudley High Street is a shared space.
Shared spaces bring shared challenges and
Shared responsibilities.
But most of all they need
Shared dreams.

This shared responsibility, a collective duty of care if you will, has never been more important than in our response, recovery and renewal from the shared trauma of Covid 19. More than ever we need a safe AND friendly High St. We can create a safe AND friendly High St together, but we need to ask ourselves some questions first:

As pedestrians, in order to care for each other and keep each other safe, we need to be able to be 2m apart. How can we do that?
As neighbouring businesses we need to make sure our customers and workers feel safe, comfortable and welcome. How can we do that?
As car drivers we need guidance on how to better share the space and so where to park conveniently. How can we do that?
As a community we need to show each other we care, recognise our shared purpose, and work together for a safe and friendly High St. How can we do that?

To begin to answer these questions we have undertaken Public Life Studies on Dudley High Street.

HOW — METHODS USED

Public Life Studies encourage us to explore the relationship between the built environment and patterns of space use. This is done through the systematic documentation of the performance of urban space (e.g. levels of pedestrian flow, levels and length of stationary activity, observations of human contact and social interaction).

For Gehl the urban landscape must be considered through the 5 human senses and experienced at the speed of walking. He focuses upon sustainability of materials and resources, the quality of shared spaces, security and pedestrian comfort. He looks to design for places of staying, stopping, and lingering. He looks to design for multi-functional spaces. His designs prioritise pedestrians.

These tools are mostly very simple, immediate and require a very modest budget. This also means that anyone can conduct the studies.

This works for us as we love making stuff that everyone can get involved in!!

Chatting to our neighbours about a safe AND friendly High Street

We tweaked them a little to account for our pandemic context and went about:

Observations — repeated 10 minute interval observations on the High Street over a 2 week period before the 15th June lockdown easing. We collected data on: people counts; car counts; pinch points; social distancing adherence; driver behaviours; pedestrian behaviours; street space use and function
Conversations — we chatted to our fellow pedestrians and to our business neighbours to conduct straw polls around creative DIY interventions that they wanted to see in a safe AND friendly High St.
Desk Research — this was useful for capturing formal guidance from government policy and world leaders in urban street design, but also for collecting lots of real life inspiration of formal and less formal interventions. Truly people are creative!
Historical listening on the High Street — we have been supporting local people to design and carry out experiments on the High Street since 2017, as well as talking to the people of Dudley about their High Street experiences. As a result we have valuable longitudinal research insights to supplement our current Public Life Studies.

Chatting to fellow pedestrians about their favourite creative DIY High Street experiments

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

So how do these insights inform our collective designs and High Street experiments for a safe AND friendly High Street?

Firstly, our Desk Research (Part 1 summary below) has guided us to what is recommended by central government and by those authorities and communities that have already tested these experiments and witnessed their benefits. While Part 2, the research on the High Street, has shown us the risks and challenges faced in making Dudley a safe AND friendly High Street.

Part 1 — Public Life Studies Desk Research

What experiments on other streets during and before the pandemic can we use as inspiration or guidance for our experiments?

Shared streets — play, walking, cycle lanes (e.g. Milan, Paris, Leicester)
Open streets — parklets and widened pavements (e.g.Milan, Hackney, Auckland, Hammersmith)
Temporary markets and dining zones (streateries) (e.g. Tampa, Vilnius, Kalaw, Costa Mesa)
Fun signage and street art to guide/ inspire (e.g. Leamington Spa, Stratford, Auckland, Dunedin)
Temporary pedestrianisation (e.g. Brighton, Manchester) or slow streets (e.g. Brussels, Dunedin, Oakland)

Benefits of DIY Street interventions found through desk research of examples in other towns and cities

Reduce risk of Covid-19 contagion to keep the whole community safe
Increase in trade for local cafes/ food outlets owing to: a) increased sense of safety and confidence to return to the High St; b) increased outside seating area to encourage longer average stays on the High St; c) increased connectivity across town enables greater customer walk by
Increase in active transport with health and wellbeing benefits
Reduction in air pollution with health improvement and health cost reduction
Safer streets for all especially children and elderly — making the High St a space for all the family
Reduced incidence of traffic accidents
Increased sense of pride and joy in your home town owing to creative and arts led interventions
Increased mental wellbeing through improved number of spaces for safe physical distanced connection after months of isolation (e.g parklets, streeteries, widened pavements and pedestrianisation)
Low cost DIY temporary interventions are helpful pilots to test longer term recovery stage interventions with reduced risk

Part 2 — Public Life Studies Research on the upper High St

Current upper High Street uses are for the most part limited to:

Access to essential services
Short term parking with rapid turn over
Pedestrian connection link to lower High Street
Vehicle through route

Current risks/ challenges that we observed and local people described:

Majority of the pavement space is not wide enough for 2m distancing, this is made more challenging by street furniture such as bins, lamp posts, advertising boards
There are multiple pinch points — long queues outside Barclays and Nationwide, cafes, and road works
Employees working in neighbouring businesses told us their working environment on the High Street did not feel safe
We noticed during our observations that the majority pedestrians did not observe social distancing
Unsafe road for pedestrian use: to take action to distance properly would require stepping through parked cars (impossible for those with prams or mobility scooters); the High Street is a very busy road with regular speeding incidents observed; the road is in constant use with very short periods of stay as witnessed in the regular change of car park space use; there is only one safe crossing point.
Economic viability: business worker anxiety over employment; and business owner fears over survival with social distancing reducing the number of customers at any one time (food outlets especially concerned); we know High Streets where it is easier to criss cross encourages trade — this part of the High Street has only one safe crossing point.
Absence of cycle lane meant use of pavements by cyclists as the road is one way, creating less space for pedestrians to safely distance.
Customer lack of clarity on opening and procedures observed with erratic movement in shop unit frontages/doorways creating further pinch points.
No safe spaces for seating/resting/spending time on the High Street.

When we chatted to local businesses and fellow pedestrians they were most excited about shared streets with fun colourful street art and parklets. They also loved the idea of street markets (like there used to be on this part of the High Street), and outside streateries to help the local economy.

**Colourful pavement widening** **by Tactical Urbanistas, Islington, London**

Our public life studies research shows that the High Street is currently not able to function safely to reduce Covid-19 contagion, or to offer the conditions to give confidence for the recovery of the local economy and convening of communities.
BUT it also shows us that it is well placed and well inclined to embrace community and artist led low cost DIY temporary interventions. These would help reduce the risk to community, and help fulfil the upper High Street potential as a safe AND friendly place to visit, work in, and care for each other.

SO NOW WHAT?

Upper High St view from Top Church end with extended pavement railing on right post 15th June

Dudley High Street is a shared space.
Shared spaces bring shared challenges and
Shared responsibilities.
But most of all they need
Shared dreams.

Drawing upon the desk research and High Street observations and conversations we have drawn out some design principles we think are really helpful in responding to our shared challenges and responsibilities, while also nurturing our shared dreams.

We will be supporting the local community, makers and creatives to design these into their DIY experiments:

Support artist and community led, temporary/ DIY experiments to help build a safe AND friendly High Street.
Design the experiments to support our local economy to thrive in collective and creative ways.
Design these experiments out in the open so that we can welcome missing voices and perspectives from this conversation.
Design these DIY experiments so that we can both act now AND adapt over time as we learn more and more about what nurtures a safe AND friendly High Street in Dudley.

Since its publication last year we have been inspired by Rob Hopkins beautiful and hopeful thesis “From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want” These insights encourage us to continue to nurture shared dreams via:

gathering platforms and intentional spaces for us to come together for collective imagining …
where we forge pacts of collaboration with doers, creatives and encouragers that meet the imagination halfway to take action for a kinder, more creative and connected High Street.

If you fancy getting involved we are always keen for a (virtual) cuppa: colabdudley@gmail.com