We have forgotten what cities are about. We have forgotten that they are about people and places, not merely transportation links between distant destinations.
Some of the characteristics which make a city livable are: a sense of history, pleasing architecture and natural beauty, lively diversity, strong community spirit and social cohesion, ease of movement, equality and a healthy environment. Conversely some of the qualities of an unpleasant city are: congestion, corruption, crime and violence, pollution, disease, lack of community and social qualities.
A major determinant in defining the kind of city, which will result and hence, to a large extent, how people's lives are spent is how it's urban and transport-infrastructure issues are resolved. It becomes clear that the social, environmental and economic well-being of a community is inter-related.
Some of the damage caused by an overdependence on the personal automobile is:
- Isolation of people.
- Death of street life.
- Damage to the social fabric of the society.
- Fosters suburban sprawl.
- Endangers other street uses.
- Disturbs other people with its noise.
- Causes air pollution.
- Wastes energy and natural resources.
- Mars the city's beauty.
- Impoverishes the nation.
The conception of the city as a product of urban functions dominated by transport deprives the street of it's role and meaning and such functional analysis leaves the urban street without an existence or a reason for being.
"Urban areas exist for human beings." Francis Tibbalds. [1]
They were not meant to be overwhelmed by cars, lorries and huge architectural or construction projects.
However the converse of this appears to be true. A casual walk through a busy Chennai road would quickly dispel all such notions of a human/pedestrian-friendly city. A street here offers almost nothing to a pedestrian. Not in scale, not in detail and certainly not in pedestrian facilities and amenities. Basically a comfortable human environment is one which is to human scale, not that of fast plying vehicles. The perception of buildings at eye-level - close to people walking about is very important. It is at this level that we achieve or fail to achieve human scale in a place.
“When you get there, there isn't any “there” there.” Gertrude Stein on Oakland, United States.[2]
Francis Tibbalds in his classic “Making people-friendly towns” very cogently puts forth the argument that places matter much more than either individual buildings or vehicular traffic. He insists that we should stop worrying about individual buildings and other individual physical artifacts and think about places in their entirety. We should concentrate on attractive, intricate places related to the scale of people walking, not driving. We must exploit individuality, uniqueness and the difference between places.
New environments are usually characterized by spread-out mediocre buildings, lots of leftover space and often awkward facilities for pedestrians. On the other hand, traditional cities emphasize the space between buildings and usually produce an attractive, organic whole with a variety of useful pedestrian areas on a comfortable human scale. They have a richness, intricacy and user-friendly quality that have evolved from years, even centuries of adaptation.
“The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless rhythms forever and forever. " [3]
New development is often bland and mediocre. Miles Kingston writing in The Independent in July 1988 and explaining Offbeat England to tourists is extremely cynical at the plight of modern cities:
“Is a city a town with a cathedral?
No. A city is a town with a high-rise car park blotting out the view of the cathedral. Other features of a city include a branch of Laura Ashley, a twinning operation with more than one foreign town, a railway station inconveniently far from the center, a local evening paper which hasn't sold out by 3pm, a football team that hopes to get back into the first division, a local radio station playing the same American records as everyone else, branches of all the clearing banks plus one other, at least two concrete overpasses, a taxi rank with more than five cars waiting and a ring road. On the ring road you will see the signs to the city center. If you follow these, you will eventually end up in a cul-de-sac behind the cinema. Nobody knows why.”[4]
Successful and attractive cities are also characterized by a variety and mix of uses and activities in one area, as opposed to the modern principles of horizontal separation of use and activity. The best urban places offer a mixture of uses and a variety of activities and experiences.
“The freedom with which a person can walk about and look around is a very useful guide to the civilized quality of an urban area.” - Sir Colin Buchanan in “Traffic in towns” (1963). [5]
Four decades later the pedestrian is still being given quite a raw deal in most urban areas. Pedestrians and cyclists face daunting hazards in most city centers. Accidents, pollution, unfavorable traffic signals, obstacles to walking on pavements, the ever-increasing number of cars and large and slab-like buildings that block pedestrian movement.
“However did it come to this?” [6]
Many areas could easily be much more pedestrian friendly than they are at present. Pedestrian streets should be extended; through traffic excluded and traffic-calming techniques employed to reduce the hazards and intrusion of motorized vehicles. Waiting times on pedestrian green phases at road intersections should be kept to a minimum.
Total exclusion of traffic is not always a good thing - some traffic can give life and vitality to a city. Streets can be successfully shared by pedestrians and vehicles. The Dutch “Woonerf” concept is one such idea. Woonerven are shared surface areas in which essential traffic movement is allowed, but through the design of the street, it is subservient to the needs of the pedestrian.
“Pedestrians, on the whole, are not merely interested in walking. They want to get somewhere and do something, and they will not take kindly to planners who simply push them up to the first floor to do their walking, out of harm's way, particularly when it entails ruining the appearance of many streets and buildings, spending a great deal of money and making them go a long way around as well. For this reason, the chief hope must lie in trespassing on street space at present reserved for traffic, and converting it to pedestrian use.” – “How do you want to live?” (The Controller, HMSO Publications, 1972).[7]
Unless some limit is placed upon traffic volume and its freedom of movement, the destruction of streets and squares as places of social contact will continue - a process that will be accompanied by the degradation of local environmental quality.
Thus it is imperative that we address the issue of people-friendly urban areas as early as possible in order to arrest the slide of our urban spaces into vehicular chaos and reclaim our cities for ourselves - which is what they were initially meant for.
“The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I'd something more to say.” [8]
References:
[1] "Making people-friendly towns" – Francis Tibbalds, Spon Press, London, 2001.
[2] "Making people-friendly towns" – Francis Tibbalds, Spon Press, London, 2001.
[3] "High hopes" - David Gilmour. (Pink Floyd - Division Bell, 1994.)
[4] "Offbeat England" - Miles Kingston, the Independent, Rogers, Coleridge and White Limited, 1988.
[5] "Traffic in Towns" - Sir Colin Buchanan, HMSO Publications, 1963.
[6] "Yet another Movie" - David Gilmour. (Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse Of Reason, 1986.)
[7] "How do you want to live" – HMSO Publications, 1972.
