WRITTEN ON September 30th, 2007 BY Ruth Kennedy AND STORED IN Design: Co-creation, Design: user-oriented, What do we want?, Wibbipedia/MindtheGap

I’ve been thinking a bit about this issue of whether increasing regulation and control naturally mitigates against the encouragement of what perhaps might be called ‘pro-social’ behaviour (for eg see here, and here). I was therefore interested to read this weekend of a counter-revolution in the seemingly uncontroversial area of traffic lights, led from the unlikely centre of the solidly Conservative council of Kensington and Chelsea.

Taking its lead from recent high-profile experiments in the Netherlands and Germany, the council wants to begin removing traffic lights. It is part of an audacious campaign by the council to forge modern ‘shared streetscapes’ where eye contact between motorists and pedestrians and simple common sense replace a ‘clutter’ of bollards and barriers, traffic lights, street signs and speed cameras. Building on a radical ‘decluttering’ of Kensington High Street – where railings have been taken down, kerbs removed, signs packed away, bicycle islands added, and accident numbers cut – the council now hopes to turn Exhibition Road into an open ‘naked street’ for cars and pedestrians.

It seems as though a similar scheme in the Dutch town of Drachten, which four years ago took down most of its signs and traffic lights as part of a ‘naked streets’ experiment, saw accident numbers drop dramatically. “Natural caution and negotiation between drivers and pedestrians have taken over”.

[The] council insist[s] there are compelling reasons to believe ‘encouraging drivers to make eye contact to make decisions rather than have decisions made for them by a regulated road system’ cuts accidents.

Apparently the Kensington High Street project has drawn plaudits from traffic experts worldwide. Of course, there will always be the anti-revolutionary mob, such as the august Knightsbridge Association residents, who say:

‘We are not persuaded by the merits of the “naked street” concept and are firmly of the view that proper pavements should be retained,’ said a letter to the council last week, according to sources who have seen it. ‘Period 19th-century buildings were designed to sit in streets with pavements.’

But – ha! – in a wonderful nod to wibbi-ism, Deputy Leader Daniel Moylan has stressed last night that he and the council were concerned not only with buildings – there are some 4,000 listed ones in the royal borough – but with PEOPLE!

‘This is about quality of life,’ he said. ‘It’s about recivilising the city, to the benefit of all people who use the roads. We want to stop this top-down system of signs and signals to keep drivers and other road users apart, and give everyone back a sense of shared ownership and responsibility.’

I just wonder whether any of this is pertinent to issues of security, identity management, co-creation of public services, encouragement of ‘the public good’? WIBBI government policy was always to start with the possible – harnessing the capabilities of people, their families, wider communities and Society at large for the greater good – rather than assuming the worst about everyone, and trying to do things for or TO us, missing opportunities and bringing unintended detrimental effects.