EUKN - European Urban Knowledge Network - EUKN nominates Shared Space for Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize

EUKN nominates Shared Space for Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize

Introduction

Shared Space is a concept to develop and maintain safe en attractive public spaces – for responsible citizens and with responsible citizens. By doing so, it creates quality – in the streets, in society, in policy making and in governance. The Shared Space concept has given way to achieve key improvements in the interrelated areas of road safety, spatial quality, economic prosperity, community capacity and confidence. It stimulates the capacity of communities to be more creative in the way they tackle a broad range of issue and assists politicians, decision-makers and citizens to 'think outside the box' when looking for ways to address public issues. EUKN has nominated Shared Space, developed by the Dutch Shared Space Institute, for the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize.

Problem

Shared Space started from concerns about the impact of traffic measures on public spaces. Intended to improve the safety of vulnerable road users, the strict segregation of traffic turned out to have unintended consequences on towns, villages and cities. With this an excessive and ‘nannying’ approach to safety issues came up. In the streets, road signs became the chief way to improve safety and to enforce behaviour. Shared Space proves that safety and proper behaviour can be effectively modified by returning responsibility, by working out new designs, building new working teams and entering a process of mutual learning.

Description

Over the past decades, traffic objectives and traffic legislation have determined the way in which public spaces were designed. In contrast to current practice, Shared Space combines rather than separates the various functions of public spaces.

Shared Space is based upon a working process that encourages all stakeholders to rethink the way in which we design and manage our public realm. To achieve its objectives, three principles are worked out:

Organisational change: departments need to 'get off their cloud', relinquish part of their power and, above all, co-operate;
Linking the skills and experience of numerous disciplines into a new body of knowledge;
New citizenship: 'Thinking yourself' and 'thinking beyond business as usual' are the main qualities towards sound co-operation and well functioning shared public spaces.

Results

Shared Space creates environments that would benefit all of us. However, experiences of the last few years pointed to wider and more far-reaching implications than was anticipated at the outset. Starting at traffic safety and efficiency, the topic turned out to be of relevance to a much wider range of issues. Shared Space therefore has to be viewed as a starting point rather than as a complete and finalised exercise. It is an attitude rather than a fixed set of principles. This is demanding for all stakeholders and it requires an ongoing process of knowledge creation.

Beneficiaries

local communities, by enjoying vital and safe neighbourhoods, and by being empowered to tackle a broad range of local issues;

politicians, decision-makers and city staff, by discovering new ways to address public issues;

experts in the fields of road safety, spatial quality, economic prosperity, governance, community capacity and confidence, by co-operating and mutual learning;
local entrepreneurs, by seeing their businesses revitalised.

Resources used

Shared Space stems from a recognition from behavioural psychologists that single-purpose motorways and high-speed highways demand different cognitive skills than the complex human context of public space. The former require standardised, simple, repetitive signs and signals, the latter emphasise the distinctiveness of towns, villages and landscapes.

Another essential resource is the research on risk perception and management of emeritus Professor J. Adams of Geography at the University College London. He cleared up the complex interdependencies between safety, risk and responsibility. Most striking however, was binding together the capacities of different spatial and social knowledge fields.

EU involvement

From 2004 to 2008, transnational exploration of the Shared Space concept was supported by the European Interreg IIIB North Sea Programme. This support has provided opportunities to test the principles of Shared Space in a wide range of urban and rural contexts, and to generate transnational exchange of knowledge between five countries and seven municipalities. It has also facilitated understanding of Shared Space across the rest of Europe and much of the rest of the world through the unusually high levels of publicity generated. New European projects on the research of Shared Space are currently being developed.

Contact info

Shared Space Institute
Lavendelheide 21
9202 PD Drachten
The Netherlands
Phone: 0031 880 200 470
mail@sharedspace.eu
http://sharedspace.eu
Willem Foorthuis (Head of Research and Development), tel. 0031 880 200 470

Project start date

//2000

Links

Click here to visit the website of the Shared Space Institute

Download the publication 'Room for everyone: A new vision for public spaces' (PDF, Eng, 149 kB)

Download the publication 'From problem to process: A task for everyone' (PDF, Eng, 3 MB)

Download the publication 'Spatial Quality: Places that attract people' (PDF, Eng, 1.8 MB)

Download the publication 'Shared Space: final evaluation and results' (PDF, Eng, 1.5MB)

Document type

case

Themes

Urban Policy

Keywords

Urban environment

Institutional characteristics
Other