By Michael Parkinson
Published June 1995
It has become increasingly apparent during the last 40 or 50 years that the idea of creating livable neighbourhoods has all but vanished from the practice of urban planning and development. Where neighbourhoods were once planned to promote community and provide a balance between the public and private spheres of life, today the focus has shifted most radically to insulating people from each other.
This design sees people separated from each other based on income groups. Even within a distinct neighbourhood, exchange between neighbours is limited to the point where it is now possible to rarely, if ever, meet one’s neighbour. The common activities — of working, shopping, and recreation — have been relegated to such isolated pockets of the urban fabric that it is almost essential to own an automobile to carry out these activities. City streets have become the domain of the motor vehicle.
The results of this isolation are not positive. For children and teenagers, death by motor vehicle has become the number one cause of death. In terms of risk, it is estimated that 1 in 10 children will be involved in a traffic accident before the age of 14 years.
The street environment is now one to be feared. This is backed up in part by a survey of 660 Swedish schoolchildren who were asked what they were afraid of and why. The results showed that the majority of children aged 3-10 years were most afraid on their way to and from school. The dominant fear was traffic.
A landmark study in England showed how parents have reacted out of fear for their children’s safety. In 1971, 80% of schoolchildren aged 7 and 8 were allowed to go to school on their own. By 1990, only 9% were allowed to travel to school alone.
The number one reason cited was fear of traffic, a fear that ranked twice as high as molestation. Ironically, many parents compensated by driving their children to school.
Locally, this fear manifests itself through a steady stream of requests to city and regional councils for stop signs, traffic lights and cross walks. It also results in citizen demands for crossing guards, school buses and reduced speed limits in school zones. In short, anything to slow down the speed of traffic and improve safety.
But how a street is designed to function affects mobility, by limiting access to services and meeting people. A 1981 study found a correlation between traffic and friends or acquaintances. After comparing 3 neighbourhoods, the study’s author concluded that the contrast between the light traffic streets and the heavy traffic streets was “striking: on one hand, alienation. On the other, friendliness and involvement.”
The loss of a child’s mobility diminishes the amount of freedom the child has and thus the opportunities for developing independence, and a sense of community. The loss of the street as a safe place puts a strain on parents who often end up chauffeuring the child around town.
Given the hostility of modern streets towards children and, more generally, the residents of an area, it is apparent that there is a gap between what is and what should be. What has gone wrong?
Part of the problem lies in land use. The form of development in recent decades is one in which the automobile reigns supreme. A change toward development that mixes functions and includes a variety of housing will improve the opportunities for various kinds of transportation that almost certainly will add to the quality of life in a neighbourhood.
Part of the problem also lies with the experts (engineers, planners and other professionals) and their political masters. As with a significant portion of the general population, the combined perspective is one seen through the windshield of a moving car. When I asked members of the Regional Engineering Committee 3 years ago if anyone in the past year could admit to walking, cycling or using transit for utilitarian purposes (i.e. to travel to work), no one could admit to having done so.
For children, this is a critical point, for there are major differences in how children perceive sound, speed, distance and in the way their vision functions. Add to that a world in which everything is twice their present size and the fact that children are prone to act like, well, children. Understanding this is a start to comprehending the futility of expecting a child to fit into a world (the street) created by and for adults.
There are ways of making streets more livable. Traffic calming has had success in Europe and is beginning to gain respect in North America, particularly in school zones. Traffic calming is based on 3 simple principles: streets are not just for cars but for many different functions; residents have the right to the best quality of life that a city can provide; and the present street system must be used efficiently before new infrastructure is built. Citizens direct the redesign.
The simple common sense approach’ is best. The major technique is to reduce the speed of traffic, since it is well established that the survival rate for a pedestrian hit by a car is related to the car’s speed. At 50 km/h, the survival rate is less than 10%; at 40 km/h, the survival rate jumps to 55%; and, at 30 km/h, the survival rate is about 95%. In short, speed kills.
Other techniques improve the street environment by slowing traffic down using structures such as speed bumps and tables, allowing on-street parking, making creative use of planters and creating bike paths. Incentives for using public transit and encouraging ridesharing also help.
The results from Denmark show that the accident rate in traffic calmed school zones decreased by 85%. And in Toronto, where a group of neighbours traffic calmed their street, the results have been equally impressive. Property values have gone up, noise has decreased, the area is more visually appealing, and neighbours meet each other more.
So traffic calming can improve the safety and livability of city streets. For the children of our community, it presents an enormous opportunity for improving what is currently a hostile environment. And it has similar benefits for the young, the elderly, the disabled and those who can’t or won’t drive an automobile.
Planning is not the exclusive domain of the professionals. It is ultimately about the kind of community we want to live in and the kind of community we wish to leave for our children.
