Less is More: How Walkable Cities Save Lives and Make Us Happier.
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A presentation for a TedX Fulbright Talk in the Smock Alley Theatre, Temple Bar, Dublin April 2014
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Less is More: How Walkable Cities Save Lives and Make Us Happier.
- 1. Walkable Cities Less is More: How Walkable Cities Save Lives and Make Us Happier.
- 6. Overweight and obesity is now the most common childhood disorder in Europe.
- 7. Overweight and obesity is now the most common childhood disorder in Europe. One in ten of 5-12 year old Irish Children is overweight and further one in ten is obese.
- 8. Overweight and obesity is now the most common childhood disorder in Europe. One in ten of 5-12 year old Irish Children is overweight and further one in ten is obese. In total, 22% of 5-12 year olds are overweight or obese
- 9. Overweight and obesity is now the most common childhood disorder in Europe. One in ten of 5-12 year old Irish Children is overweight and further one in ten is obese. In total, 22% of 5-12 year olds are overweight or obese Irish Heart Foundation
- 17. Left-turn filter lanes of Dublin
- 18. “If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.” Fred Kent, Project for Public Spaces
Editor's Notes
- It was our son’s first day in secondary school.It’s a time that changes everything. It’s a time of hope of excitement, of fear, of joy, and that’s just the parents.It’s that moment when you let go of your child’s hand and find finds their own way in life, literally and metaphorically. We walked out of house, ten minutes down the road to Stoneybatter and hopped on the 39 bus. Soon we were at the stop on the Old Cabra Road, and off we got. We walked for a few seconds up to a junction and my heart sank.
- The intersection was like something from an industrial landscape. Sure it had dished kerbs, tactile pavements and pedestrian operated signals, but it was all wrong.
- It’s essentially a design that accepts pedestrians on sufferance, and cordons them behind metal barriers that resemble cattle crushes.
- Vehicles have it easy, one stop, one signal to get through the lights, and you don’t even have to push a button.
- Clearly pedestrians are second class citizens.These type of junctions need to be redesigned to make it easier for those who walk to get from A to B and back again. Unless we do something about this we’ll continue to build ‘obesogenic environments’ for our kids.
- In 2007 the UK Government’s Office for Science raised concerns about the creation of ‘obesegenic environments’. That is ‘the sum of influences that the surroundings, opportunities, or conditions of life have on promoting obesity in individuals or populations’. Lack of access to good food is clearly a factor, but poor quality physical environment that encourages driving rather than walking may also be a factorThat’s why organisations like the Irish Heart Foundation are working hard to get us out there walking, and I commend their efforts.
- However we’re not doing all that great on child safety by the way. Ireland is lagging behind other European Countries, and that’s before we even consider children who don’t walk or cycle.Sure, overall road deaths have shown a dramatic decrease over the last ten years, but our child casualties are still far too high. Some creative thinking and smart design is required to solve this problem.
- Here’s another of those junctions, in this case a superwide corner of Dublin’s Parnell Square, Ireland’s answer to Formula One racing.
- These superwide junctions are dange
- And the flowers are a sad tribute to a child who lost his life
- Filter lanes are also part of the problem. Road engineers love them, They keep those cars moving.
- I prefer people and places to these cattle crush triangles
- They’re everywhere, and they spread like a rash during the late twentieth century. Each yellow triangle on this map represents a filter lane in Dublin’s inner city. Tourists don’t come to Dublin for the filter lanes. The space between buildings can facilitate traffic, economic activity, or social life. In Dublin we’ve maxed out the traffic, and the city and its people are suffering. I want to take out those filter lanes, make the streets narrower, and hear the sound of conversation above the noise of cars.They all have to go, let’s start with the ones along the Quays and slowly but surely reclaim the street.
- But as Fred Kent from the Project for Public Space says“If you plan cities for cars and traffic, you get cars and traffic. If you plan for people and places, you get people and places.”
- Sometimes too many barriers and signs can actually speed up traffic. The late Hans Monderman a Dutch road engineer suggested that we need to reduce the number of signs, and allow for a bit of confusion. Done correctly this can reduce vehicle speeds and make roads safer for pedestrians and other vulnerable road users. This shared space concept is not without its critics, but it can help improve safety and make it easier for pedestrians.
- This street scene has the allure of the back of a lorry on a wet november morningI believe that improving the environment for walking can save money, make us healthy and save the planet. In can also help us civilise our cities and towns.
- In recent years there has been a big move away from spending billions on new infrastructure to making the most of infrastructure that we already have. This has the potential to be an extremely cost-effective tool for managing cities
- Instead of designing new roads lets redistribute the space on the ones we already have. let’s make space for pedestrians, children and cyclists.
- A central refuge is a guarded location in the middle of a road. A guarded location in the middle of the road…Nice
- Putting at the pedestrian at the heart of the transport equation makes us re-think everything about how we design and manage city streets and traffic. Instead of giving pedestrians a five second cross time out of every two minutes maybe we should give the least time to the most polluting road users; cars.
- Here’s one of those awful footpaths in Dublin where there simply isn’t enough space for the amount of people that want to use it. Wider footpaths are the urban designer’s superpowers and we need to use them more often.
- And there’s one of my pet hates, the signs telling you not to walk beside the Luas track.
- In many of our town centres and suburbs we have made it almost impossible to walk.
- And in some London boroughs 20 mph or 30 kph speed lims have become the norm, because they save lives.
- There’s just an ordinary example from Dalston in London, where the pedestrians know that they’re in charge.
- They’re also reintroducing seating, so you can take a rest when you’re walking across town
- Instead of car revving up at the school gates we’d see kids walking and cycling. Here’s an example from London of how you can improve a junction to make it easier to get across
- There’s a child walking by themselves through a traffic-calmed neighbourhood in Freiburg.
- Earlier this year the Department of Transport published a Manual for Designing Urban Streets and Roads. It shows how we can shift the balance in favour of the pedestrian, but its lessons haven’t yet been taken on board by many engineers. Some of them are still designing urban roads that prioritise cars, and that discriminate against those who walk..What we need is a radical shift in how we get around our cities. If it was easier and safer to walk we could dramatically reduce obesity and give children the outdoor freedom that they so badly deserve.
- I believe the women pushing the trolly in this shot knows more about how cities should work than the traffic engineer who hasn’t moved with the times.
- There’s some Irish kids participating in the An Taisce Green Schools Walk on Wednesday Program.
- Let’s slow down the traffic so that that if there is a collision, the more vulnerable road user will live, not die.However many agencies and local authorities don’t understand this, and continue to waste money on expensive projects that promote car use. They need training and education to understand this paradigm shift. Dublin City Council spent €70 million out of their €800 million budget on roads and transport in 2012. I haven’t seen a breakdown of the figures, but I suspect the humble pedestrian wasn’t at the top of the heap.The City’s website tells us that a request for a pedestrian crossing will investigate the road width, proximity to another crossing, pedestrian flows and age profile, and the traffic and accidents. If If a pedestrian crossing is not recommended, a "central refuge" may be considered instead.
- One practical measure that we can take is to widen foot-paths and increase green times for pedestrians at road crossings. That’s the Liffeycampshires, once used for car parking
- We do have a public Realm Strategy in Dublin, but noone seems to be in charge of it.
- While we’re at it we could bring back some old fashioned simple technologies such as zebra crossings. They didn’t get rid of them thankfully in some country towns, and they’re beginning to make a comeback in Dublin
- . They’re great, because they give pedestrians the right of way, the way it should be.
- We could even go the whole hog and close of some our busy roads, perhaps on one Sunday a month to start off with. Here’s what happens on Bachelors’ Walk on St. patrick’s day,
- and on Customs House Quay during last year’s Flightfest.
- Here’s one of those awful footpaths in Dublin where there simply isn’t enough space for the amount of people that want to use it. Wider footpaths are the urban designer’s superpowers and we need to use them more often.
- Christchurch Place should be one of the great public spaces of Dublin. Instead it’s a traffic junction. Tourists can’t believe that such a road can exist beside a city Cathedral.
- It’s time to redesign these junctions and make more humane public places, and make it easier to get around by walking, cycling or bus or tram.Instead of streets where traffic makes it impossible to hear your voice or have a conversation we could discover the lost art of street conversations and chance encounters. Making it easier to walk won’t save the planet on their own, but it can be one small step in the right direction.
- Thank youI’d like to think that in thirty years time when our son’s children start secondary school that they’ll feel confident enough to let go of their parents hand and discover their freedom more easily than their parents did.I think we can do better than this, I know we can do better than this and I’m sure we will