Abstract
This article discusses how street design and traffic affect social relations in urban neighbourhoods. Three street types in the city of Basel, Switzerland were studied: a 50 km/h street, a 30 km/h street and three encounter zones (20 km/h and pedestrian priority, also known as woonerven or home zones). The effects were measured in terms of neighbourhood interactions, use of public space and the personal feelings of belonging of residents. The study, standing in the tradition of Donald Appleyard's liveable street research in the early 1970s, was carried out in the framework programme ‘Social Inclusion and Social Exclusion’ financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation and by the Swiss Federal Office of Sports. The results show that urban neighbourhoods are (still) very lively social places, despite their often lamented anonymity and individualisation. Streets with slow moving traffic, limited space for parking and good environmental qualities offer a large potential for personal development, contentment and social integration. Neighbourhood contacts in such streets are more frequent and more intensive and the separation effects are substantially smaller. Liveable streets in urban neighbourhoods can be great places for public life and social inclusion.
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Notes
In this paper, we will use the term ‘encounter zone’ to clarify that a specified concept of shared space is used, which may differ in some degree from similar arrangements such as home zones, woonerven, etc.
Interestingly, there seems to be a small renaissance of such studies. At the same time, as we worked on ours, there was a study being carried out in four neighbourhoods in New York. That study arrived at similar results as our research (see Transportation Alternatives, 2006).
An additional ordinal regression was calculated for the individual streets also taking into account that not all variables were on interval or ratio scale. The analysis confirmed with few minor differences the main picture of the multiple regression.
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Sauter, D., Huettenmoser, M. Liveable streets and social inclusion. Urban Des Int 13, 67–79 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2008.15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/udi.2008.15