A living street is a street designed primarily with the interests of pedestrians and cyclists in mind and as a social space where people can meet and where children may also be able to play legally and safely. These roads are still available for use by motor vehicles, however their design aims to reduce both the speed and dominance of motorised transport. This is often achieved using the shared space approach, with greatly reduced demarcations between vehicle traffic and pedestrians. Vehicle parking may also be restricted to designated bays. It became popular during the 1970s in the Netherlands, which is why the Dutch word for a living street is often used as a synonym. Country-specific living street implementations include: home zone/play street, residential zone, shared zone, woonerf and zone résidentielle Spielstraße.
History
Legislation was introduced in the United Kingdom with the Highway Act 1835 which banned the playing of football and games on the highway. In 1859 a total of 44 children were sent to prison for failure to pay fines for playing in the street in London and Middlesex, rising to 2,000 young people under the age of seventeen by 1935. As the level of fast motorised traffic increased during the 20th century it became apparent that the social and recreational functions of the street were being severely impaired by the volume, speed and dominance of vehicular traffic. The woonerf movement originated in the Netherlands in the 1970s as a way of re-balancing the relationship between people and the movement of vehicles.
Design
These streets are often built at the same grade as sidewalks, without curbs. Cars are limited to a speed that does not disrupt other uses of the streets, or through traffic is eliminated using bollards or circuitous one-way operation. To make this lower speed natural, the street is normally set up so that a car cannot drive in a straight line for significant distances, for example by placing planters at the edge of the street, alternating the side of the street the parking is on, or curving the street itself. Other traffic calming measures are also used. However, early methods of traffic calming such as speed humps are now avoided in favor of methods which make slower speeds more natural to drivers, rather than an obvious imposition. Implementations of living streets that fail to address motor vehicle speed and volume usually result in domination of the street by motor vehicles and the marginalisation of walking and cycling. Furthermore, the elimination of a clearly defined boundary between vehicles and pedestrians can negatively affect walkability for those with sensory disabilities, most notably blindness.
