From traffic in towns to people in streets: Exploring the relationships between behaviour, design, and regulation

Flower, Jonathan

Abstract

This research investigates how street environments and culture are shaped by behaviour, design, and regulation, and explores the implications of this shaping for street users who walk and cycle. The work of Buchanan and Smeed in the 1960s helped create urban street planning that allowed motor traffic to dominate, with the consequence that some would-be street users have been marginalised. Such marginalisation is a manifestation of a lack of justice in the context of everyday travel. Street environments, culture and justice have been researched using Q-methodology, which lends itself to the study of subjectivity and is appropriate for exploring the opinions of street users in relation to behaviour, design, and regulation.
Focus groups with 19 street users, and interviews with seven professionals, developed a set of 64 statements that characterise behaviours, infrastructure designs and regulations, that either contribute to, or detract from, streets that are conducive to movement on foot, a cycle, or using other human-scale modes. These statements were used in a Q-method ranking exercise undertaken by 49 participants. Factor analysis generated five groupings of viewpoints. These are summarised as follows: ‘we are the traffic’, a view that streets are places people pass along; ‘safety and comfort first’, streets are places where some street users want to stop and linger; ‘access is not optional’, streets deny access to some; ‘designed for all’, which suggests that unless streets are designed for everyone, many people will never choose to walk or cycle; and ‘rules matter’, street rules should prompt those that can harm most to take a greater share of responsibility for others. In an innovation of Q-methodology, thresholds that need to be exceeded to allow people to walk or cycle were also identified.
To guide the research a new theory was postulated, the Social Ecological Model of Ability, which combines the part-behavioural and part-anthropological Social Ecological Model (SEM) with the Social Model of Disability (SMD). The model defines the interrelations among the relevant factors, with a particular focus on barriers in relation to personal abilities. It fills a gap that exists between behavioural and anthropological theories, and theories of disability. Drawing on the SMD, some individuals are marginalised by layers of barriers in the ecosystem of their environment that remove choices and may hinder participation, and this is a highly relevant adaptation of the SEM for street environments. The Q-methodology findings confirm there are layers of barriers, validating the need to have developed the new theory. The SEMA is a way to understand street use and to promote more inclusive sustainable travel, and this has not been done before in transport studies. The research is important given the emergence of (electric) micromobility and connected and automated vehicles in urban areas.
There was strong consensus among the research participants that physical separation between means of travel would contribute the most to the creation of street environments conducive to human-scale movement. Practitioners and decision makers have the authority to develop the policy, design and regulation changes to streets that will enable active travel. However, drivers of motor vehicles and other street users need to address their own intimidating behaviours (such as speeding, close passing, and inappropriate interaction with strangers in the street) otherwise many potential street users will remain deterred from walking, cycling, and using other human-scale mobility.

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 3, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 31, 2022
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/7442253
• Award Date: Oct 31, 2022