Urban Design Group
Urban Designand Public Realm research use and needs
Report of a pilot survey undertaken spring 2012
Introduction
Emails were sent to members of the StreetsX Email Forum and Urban Design Email Forum (Jiscmail) a group totalling 450 individuals. 55 individuals responded.
1. Have you used any research from a university over the past 12 months ? (or any other research body - eg TRL)
Just over 60 percent of respondents said they had used research.
2. Please list some of the key pieces of research you have used
This question was answered inconsistently, with respondents citing research, guidance, opinion pieces, books etc.
This finding is likely to mean that the answers to question one overstate the use of research.
In any future survey practitioners should be given explicit guidance as to what is meant by research.
3. How could university research be made easier to use?
This open ended question produced the following suggestions:
- Free access
- Accurate titles – that fairly represent the work undertaken
- Good quality abstracts which properly summarise the research / concise summaries which contain useful information: clear conclusions, (with size effect etc) with clear statement of qualifications/limitations , including statistical significance tests, sample sizes (where appropriate), demonstration of applicability to real life.
- Improved visibility on search engines
- Central list of research
- Getting practitioners into the habit of looking for research
- Greater respect being shown by policy makers to research findings.
- Create a national clearing house for research in the UK similar to the American Association for the Advancement of Science website: Eurekalert.
If you don’t use research….
4. Which most reflects your position
If you don’t use research….
5. What would help make you a regular user of research?
6./7. Suggestions for Research
For the next section, practitioners were invited to suggest areas of research which would address problems they faced through work, opportunities for research they could identify.
The responses reflect their perception of need. And whereas there will be research already in existence that address some of the points, they are clearly unaware of its existence.
6. What problems or opportunities do you face where research might help? / 7. Do you have any other suggestions for subjects that universities should be researching?
Placing a value on better design and management
What is a “better street”, a better public realm”, a better neighbourhood, a better High Street, better urban design and what is its value?Including
- personal security
- health
- happiness
- prosperity
- ability to lead a successful life
- value of property
General comments:
- There is a lack of after studies that present results, especially safety, footfall and economic benefits. Those that do often contain no statistical review, allowing for regression to the mean, bias or statistical significance.
- Lack of solid evidence base around most social aspects.
- Growing but unsubstantial evidence base around environmental sustainability. (regular misuse of term sustainability to mean environmental sustainability)
- Opportunity to 'join up more dots', with interdisciplinary research and practitioner/academic collaboration
General Design and Management
These subjects were cited repeatedly- Existing settlements & their regeneration
- Urban extensions
- New settlements
Specific suggestions:
- Sustainability of cities as distinct from individual buildings
- Planning new “Sustainable Urban Extensions – SUEs” Research illustrating 20th Century SUEs that have worked and why, and SUEs that have not worked and why.
Tools
Urban characterisation
- general research on materials, styles and techniques, and at a larger scale, morphology
- creation of national database of local building and paving materials and techniques, backed by samples held by planning authorities. .
- development of an approved palette of materials in each conservation area based on robust research, rather than each application being dealt with separately, sometimes with weeks delay while approval is awaited.
- Extension of materials palette to other areas.
New Tools to measure the perception of place
Opportunity and Risk Assessment of innovative schemes - Methodology for addressing risk with an untried design approach that would stand up in court.Detailed topics
Human behaviour
- More research needed on conscious and unconscious decision making, attitude formation (around individual/collective wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours) and links to built/social environment
- On the nature of a community and community cohesion – what is the impact of segregation by class/income, compared with neighbourhoods where rich and poor live next to one another. What impact does it have on perception of security, health, social mobility, choice in local shops and leisure facilities etc. Is there an optimum combination.
- Neo-Cortex and urban design – should the innate ability of humans to form and maintain a finite number of relationships (as influenced by the size of the neo-cortex) be reflected in some way in the urban design of streets and neighbourhoods.
- Loneliness – what design measures can be used to counter loneliness in modern towns and cities.
- Happiness – what design measures are effective in engendering happiness; what soft measures are required
- Play – and design
- Soft measures – on the basis that personal travel plans appear to be a highly cost effective way of getting people to walk and cycle more, what is the potential for other soft measures to achieve other benefits in the urban environment, eg greater contact with neighbours, greater use of leisure facilities and the public realm, greater use of local shops and amenities etc.
Personal Security
- Do better streets and public realm improve perceptions of personal security and impact on behaviour (as distinct from road safety)
- To what extent is crime an accurate measure of personal security
Public health and happiness / wellbeing
- Does urban form influence health/healthy lifestyles?
- In what way do different street environments affect walking and cycling?
- Health impacts of different types of travel
- How different environments improve health and how this could shift funding from one to another
- how the quality of a place affects mental health
- studies of the impact of physical design on the human.
- Blue zones (ie places where people live long and healthy lives) what do they have that other places don't - (such a study would counter a tendency to research problems rather than solutions)
- Anthropological research on how the built environment can be used to support the formation of "natural communities"
- Linking socio-biology with practice
Complexity
- Dealing with complexity of urban issues and design problems
- Interrelationship of built environment, human behaviour and wellbeing.
- Active lifestyles and public health
- Impact of urban design on socialisation, friendships, mental health, social support networks and burden on health service / care in the community vs care by the community.
Social contact and design
- Teenagers: Why are there no good places for teens to hang out
Financial
- international spend on streets related issues
- international comparison of spend on design quality in buildings and urban design.
- Cost benefit analysis of different types of built environment, infrastructure or behavioural intervention
- High speed rail
- 20mph area wide speed limits
- Intelligent Speed Adaptation
- Personal travel plans
- Personal lifestyle plans
- Funding public spaces, squares etc in new development
Movement
- How do you increase walking? -Evidencing how hard and soft interventions such as those carried out by Living Streets increase walking.
- How do you get people to switch modes to walking?Evidencing how hard and soft interventions increase modal shift to walking
- international comparisons of propensity to walk in public places
- How do you boost bus use?
- How best to organise car parking ?
- Junctions - What traffic/pedestrian flows can be accommodated at different junction types successfully
- Research that places safety within the wider context of public health and sustainability– eg there is a concern that some safety measures have led to an overall decline in active travel with any safety benefit being negated by worsened public health including obesity, heart disease, blindness and diabetes.
- How best to ensure safety - how best to ensure positive use of streets
-what really makes places safer?
- Streets - Robust evidence on relationship between street layout and appearance and use, safety and capacity.
- Driver behaviour – and how to influence it. Behaviour in conventional streets through to Shared Space single surfaces, why do they ignore signs, how up to date with the highway code etc are more 'experienced' drivers, do drivers really change behaviours in shared space etc
Urban form, buildings, housing
High density housing- What design works?
- Housing design
- Design of neighbourhood including streets and public spaces
- What are the impacts on different types of people?
- New morphological urban patterns derived from adaptable technologies in building and how it influences the overall urban form
- Relationship between urban form and CO2/obesity
- The IndustrialVillage – exploring new ideas of mixed use
Utilities – and the space below the street
Better designed utilities - Designs for organising utilities infrastructure found beneath streets, that avoids the need for road opening and consequent damage to streets.Paving systems and designs that enable easy and economic access to underground utilities.
District Heating Piping systems – how to include these into an already crowded subterranean world.
Waste collection - Social cost benefit study of waste collection and recycling systems – including impact of bins on public realm, and perception by the public, including wider issues such as perception of disorder and personal safety.
Trees – best practice, avoidance of interference with utilities and vice versa– cost benefit analysis
Basis of professional practice
- To what extent are existing guidance systems, and professional bodies of knowledge evidence-based; which practices and standards are based on tradition rather than logic, science and robust evidence?
- Examination of specific bodies of knowledge for validity, eg highway engineering, road safety audit, lighting standards..
- And also research into specific design details
- White edge lines
- Kerbs
- Centre lines
- On street parking – is it dangerous? Is it a valid planning issue? .
- Crossings: safety versus usability of zebra crossings and pelican crossings compared with informal crossings
- Long-term, reliable, longitudinal studies are required in many areas of road safety
- What proportion of researchin urban design / public realm is original research?
Language and Terminology
- Identifying underlying concepts within urban design that are relatively permanent, but are referred to by different terms as time goes by. (ref Cowan’s Theory of Urban Words)
- How to discourage researchers from using unnecessary jargon, and to show them how to write reports which do use technical language but manage to create a context where its meaning is immediately apparent.
Quality of Research
Developing an accepted methodology and standards for evidence-based research and evidence based design in the built environment (see system detailed in UK Guide on Risk and Highway Liability Claims (UK Roads Board)Comments
Currently the research base is polluted with poorly designed or naive studies which are statistically invalid.
There is a tendency when quoting research to repeat the primary finding and to ignore the qualifications and limitations. In this way a researcher’s tentative conclusions acquires the air of absolute truth.
Team working and creativity
- is urban design best done in multi-disciplinary teams composed of an ever growing number of specialists: how does this compare with small teams with high skilled and educated individuals?
Innovation
- Innovative practice knowledge bank - Listing of precedents in new approaches and their strengths and weaknesses
- Road safety audit suppressing latest best practice and innovation. Problem of some road safety auditors continuing to use out-dated and discredited practice when assessing new or innovative schemes.
Risk aversion - Not having enough data to back up suggestions for new ideas in transport and traffic planning, where there is reluctance to try something new.
Cultural differences – to what extent do differences in culture limit the applicability of innovation in one country, to another.
Future society
- Will technology affect the way we work / live / travel and when
- Intelligent Transport systems and intelligent speed adaptation (ISA)
- Assessment of the costs and benefits of the using ISA to control vehicle speed in urban areas. Impact it would have on street design and urban form. Impact on lifestyles, strength of local communities.
- Imagining the street design and urban form possible if the speeding vehicle threat could be dealt with by ISA, rather than physical design.
- Urban design for a high-energy cost world.
- High Streets in an age of internet retail and social networking
Policy
Research into the effects of policy decisions.Examples:
- Did de-regulation of public transport lead to the upsurge in casualties amongst older passengers,
- Did "re-organisation" of local government lead to the sharp fall (from 24/yr to 8/yr) in the rate at which fatalities were being reduced in Scotland in the mid 1990s.
- What have been the impacts of the various changes in the planning system post war?
- Urban regeneration models in this country such as New Deal, SRB and City Challenge, which worked best etc
Impact of local or micro-local raising and spending of revenue - exploring the possibility that were people feel immediately involved as a source of funding, they are more likely to take an interest in its use, become more involved in the decision making, and be more committed to its success.
Robert Huxford
April 2012