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Pedestrians take to the streets; motorists learn to coexist

Philip Langdon , 06 Dec 2010, New Urban Network

Britain is energetically designing streets that intermingle foot and vehicular traffic; the US follows ever so cautiously.

Where pedestrians have been made to feel comfortable


Maybe it’s a reflection of American car culture. Or maybe it’s a sign of how risk-averse the United States has become. Whatever the reason, the US is a long way from catching up to Europe in designing streets that allow the flexible, unchoreographed mixing of cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians.

A recent presentation by Ben Hamilton-Baillie at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, highlighted how far Europe, and especially Great Britain, have gone toward letting motorists and pedestrians sort things out for themselves rather than having traffic engineers impose a strict order on circulation.

The Netherlands pioneered much of Europe’s modern work in “shared-space” streets, under the influence of traffic engineer Hans Monderman. Since Monderman’s death in January 2008, the United Kingdom seems to have taken the lead, thanks in large part to Hamilton-Baillie, whose Bristol, England, firm, Hamilton-Baillie Associates, has designed the UK’s most notable shared street spaces.

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