DISCOVERYPROGRAMME

Step into the street, look down, and it tells you what to do. Kerbs and gutters separate walkers from drivers. Painted words, lines and changes of material nudge you forward or make you pause. The street surface shows what is going on underground: scars left by repairs indicate new pipe work; trapdoors, lids, covers and grills point to drains, cables, coal holes and cellars. Signals of activity other than that created by people going from place to place proliferate... The knockdown argument for more signs, lights and barriers is that they make streets safe. But do they? In Tavistock Place a virulently green cycle lane is divided from motor traffic by a kerbed barrier. Four possible streams of traffic – two of cycles, two of cars – confuse you by requiring additional ‘look left, look right’ responses. It feels dangerous...Hans Monderman

inspired and developed a fundamental change in thinking about the relationship between people, places and traffic. Working in the towns and villages of his native Friesland in the north of the Netherlands, in a traditionally conservative and cautious profession, he succeeded in challenging many long-established assumptions about safety and the relationship between pedestrians and traffic . . . Monderman pioneered an approach that respected the driver’s common sense and intelligence instead of reliance on signs, road markings, traffic signals and physical barriers.

The redesign of Kensington High Street in 2003 drew on Monderman’s work. Only two materials – York stone and granite – were used, many pedestrian guard rails were removed, traffic signals were combined with lamp-posts, signage was rationalised and kerb build-outs and lay-bys were removed. Since the changes there have been fewer accidents and it seems that drivers, cyclists and pedestrians are all being more careful. More dramatic plans for a kerbless Exhibition Road, shared by people and vehicles, carry the same thinking further. Pedestrians, like birds in circling flocks, are remarkably good at avoiding one another. Even in the human river that is Oxford Street they rarely bump. It’s a natural ability that should be encouraged.

- 'In The Street', Peter Campbell, London Review of Books, Vol. 30 No. 19, 9 October 2008; quotation from Guardian Obituary of Hans Monderman