Children, Youth and Environments 16(1), 2006
Home Zones in the UK:
History, Policy and Impact
on Children and Youth
Tim Gill
London, England
Citation: Gill, Tim (2006). “Home Zones in the UK: History, Policy and
商务英语口语900句
Impact on Children and Youth.” Children, Youth and Environments 16(1): 90-
103. Retrieved [date] lorado.edu/journals/cye/.
Comment on This Article
Abstract
This paper considers the evolution of the home zone concept in the UK over the last ten years or so. It outlines its background, history and links to the Dutch woonerf model. It traces the development of the UK government’s engagement with home zones, and the emergence of wider public and policy interest. It also prents opinion and rearch into the design and implementation of home zone schemes in England, Scotland and Wales, including new rearch on the impact of home zones on the lives of children and young people. Further, it reviews the extent to which British schemes have, or have not, followed the legal and design principles of their Continental counterparts. The paper concludes that the home zone concept has created new, fascinating, fertile territory for exploring profound questions about children’s stake in society and the built environment.
Keywords:s treet, transport policy, home zone, children’s play,
children’s independent mobility, woonerf
© 2006 Children, Youth and Environments
What Is a Home Zone?
A home zone is a group of residential streets designed so that the street space is available for social
us such as children’s play, while car access is also allowed. The concept originated with the Dutch woonerf (the literal English translation for which is “residential yard”). Woonerven first emerged in the Netherlands in the late 1960s and 1970s, initially as a citizen-led respon to the dominance of the car in neighborhoods and associated safety concerns (Kjemtrup and Herrstedt 1992).
The UK Department for Transport’s website (2005a) gives the following definition of a home zone:
Home Zones are residential streets in which the road space is shared
between drivers of motor vehicles and other road urs, with the widerair supply
needs of residents (including people who walk and cycle, and children) in mind. The aim is to change the way that streets are ud and to improve quality of life, by making them places for people, not just for traffic.
A Short History of Home Zones in the UK
Origins
The road safety advocates C.I. Howarth and Barbara Preston first coined the term “home zone” in th
e early 1990s to describe their proposal for residential streets in which “child pedestrians should have priority and any driver who injures a child should be presumed negligent” (Preston 1995). For them, a home zone was defined by a change in the legal status of child pedestrians. Alongside this proposal, which was never adopted, some local authorities and housing bodies in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s introduced street designs that were inspired by, and to a greater or lesr extent consciously followed, the woonerf model of level carriageways and shared surfaces (Biddulph 2001).
The term “home zone” gained ground in the late 1990s with its adoption and promotion as an English-language equivalent of the Dutch “woonerf.” Its application signifies a street with a unique function, legal designation and a distinctive design, advocated in a campaign led by the non-governmental organizations Children's Play Council and Transport 2000 (Children's Play Council 1997).
Alongside the lobbying work by the and other organizations and individuals, some active and enthusiastic neighborhood and residents’ groups promoted home zones. Perhaps the most prominent and certainly the most creative was The Methleys, a community in Leeds that famously laid grass over one street and put on a “village fête” over the August Bank holiday weekend in 1996. The Methleys subquently became one of the government’s pilot schemes (e below) and one of t
he first completed home zones.
Becau the UK home zones campaign took inspiration from the Dutch woonerf model and designs in other European countries, trips were organized to e Dutch and German home zones. One trip in 1999, organized by Transport 2000, was documented in a video called At Home in My Street: Exploring Home Zones in the Netherlands and Germany that was then made available to campaigners and communities.
1999: The First Pilots
Policy makers and politicians quickly took up the notion of home zones, a
process that was arguably helped by the change in political and transport policy climate after the Labour party’s victory in the 1997 general election. In 1999
the government announced a modest pilot program for England and Wales.
There was no new funding for schemes, but local authorities were invited to
submit proposals for schemes that would then be evaluated in detail. Nine
projects were lected, eight in England and one in Wales. The Scottish Executive followed with a similar program involving four pilot schemes. Transport Rearch Laboratory (TRL) was chon to evaluate the nine English and Welsh schemes in a rearch project with a budget of approximately £500,000 (around US$870,000 or €700,000). The evaluation gathered “before” and “after” information from each scheme on traffic speeds and volumes, accidents and the attitudes and views of children and adults. The results of ven of the TRL evaluations have been published and are discusd below.
2001: New Legislation and Government Funding
One of the aims of the pilot program was to u the experience of the pilots to shape the future development of the home zone model and to answer questions about funding, design and legislation. However, political support for home zones grew to the extent that before the pilot program was even half-finished, the government launched a new £30 million (US$52 million or €44 million) program in England, and the English and Scottish parliaments took the first steps in giving home zones a legal basis. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced the Home Zones Challenge in April 2001. As the word “challenge” implies, local authorities in England were invited to bid competitively for funding for home zone schemes;
61 schemes were lected, receiving an average of about £500,000 (around
US$870,000 or €700,000) per scheme. All but two schemes were taken forward. Details of the schemes, and the program as a whole, are given in Department for Transport (2005).
The challenge schemes tended to be larger and more ambitious in design than the pilots. This was partly becau of the comparative luxury of dedicated funding, but additionally, ideas about home zones had evolved in the intervening two- to three-year period, resulting in more experience among tho involved in projects and more guidance available to shape schemes.
In addition to the pilot and challenge schemes, a small number of home zones have been developed independently by local authorities, housing bodies or other agencies. Information on some of the schemes is given on the website www.homezones.uk, a site managed by the Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers (a professional institute).
Unlike the Dutch woonerf, there are no legal requirements regarding design. Government and other agencies have produced good practice guidance to support the development of home zones, including Department for Transport (2005b) (a good practice guide bad on the experiences of the Challenge projects), Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers (2002), Biddulph (2001) and a vide
汽车挂件o, Home Zones: The UK Experience. The Department for Transport has also produced good practice guidance leaflets on planning and design (DfT 2001) and public participation (DfT 2002).
Table 1. Key milestones for home zones in the UK
1970s- early 1990s Small number of schemes appear, influenced by the Dutch woonerf model
Early 1990s Term “home zone” coined by road safety campaigners proposing legislation for streets where child pedestrians have special status
Late 1990s Campaigners adopt the term “home zone” in their call for
woonerf-style child-friendly residential streets
1999 Government pilot program of 9 schemes announced
2001 Home Zones Challenge: £30 million funding to support around 60 schemes; new legislation announced to give home zones a legal status
Progress
monster 歌词It is relatively early in the life of home zones in the UK: it is less than ten years since the term “home zone” first gained prominence, and around six years since work started on the first schemes. The streetscapes that have emerged so far are arguably less radical on average than tho in The Netherlands, Germany or other European countries, and few schemes have succeeded in creating spaces between hous that look as if they are genuinely designed for social rather than car u. Table 2 below summarizes some of the differences between home zones and their Continental equivalents.
Table 2. The home zone vs. the woonerf
koppoHome zone Woonerf or equivalent
Legal status Not explicitly defined in
美国总统选举2016law: legislation enables
local authorities to create
home zones
杭州英语培训班Explicitly defined in lawdamn什么意思
Design
requirements
No statutory guidance Statutory guidance Shared surface u Not universal Required by law
Legal change giving priority for pedestrians No Varies from country to
country
There are probably around 80-100 completed schemes in the UK that have been
called home zones, although there is no central databa and the application of
the term is a matter of debate in some schemes, in the abnce of a clear legal
definition. Rearch carried out by the Home Zones for Scotland Network
identified one completed home zone in Scotland, with 25 others at different stages of development (Home Zones for Scotland Network 2005). The rest are
in England and nearly all have involved changing the design and layout of
existing streets, sometimes called retrofitting. They are spread across all
regions, and most are in poorer areas. Their size varies from perhaps 40 hous
to over 700 hous in some new developments. Costs have also varied widely. As stated already, in the ca of the government’s Home Zones Challenge, the average funding received from the program was around £500,000 (US$870,000 or €700,000), though many projects also raid funds from other sources. In
nearly all projects, the lead agency has been the local authority’s highways or
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transportation department. Projects in existing streets have spent much time
and resources engaging and involving local residents through the process, as well as emergency rvices, highways maintenance rvices, refu collection
rvices and other stakeholders, and many have formed project teams and
partnerships to do this.
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In the abnce of strict design guidelines from government, the physical design of schemes has varied more widely than with comparable streets in The Netherlands or Germany. Designs tend to lie somewhere along a continuum from—at one end—a woonerf-style treatment involving level carriageways, shared surfaces and heavy u of visual and physical elements that break up drivers’ sight lines, to—at the other—fairly conventional traffic calming, though with higher quality materials and greater u of soft landscaping than is usual in the UK. Figures 1 – 4 show images of four home zones: Cambridge Street in Lowestoft, Morice Town in Plymouth, Radcliffe Road in Southampton and Deptford Green in the London Borough of Greenwich.
Figure 1. Cambridge Street, Lowestoft (photo: Tim Gill)
Figure 2. Morice Town, Plymouth (photo credit not available)
Figure 3. Radcliffe Road, Southampton (photo: Mark Ellison)
