Evaluating the English Home Zone Initiatives

Abstract

Problem: What lessons on street design can professional planners take from recent English home zone initiatives?

Purpose: This article is a comparative evaluation of English home zones, or streets shared by vehicles and pedestrians based on the Dutch woonerf concept. This approach to street design is intended to improve livability.

Methods: I used monitoring data on 14 home zone projects to draw generalizable lessons from the initiatives.

Results and conclusions: Although the concept of the home zone has not been fully implemented in all cases, these projects exhibited lower traffic speeds and continued low or reduced numbers of traffic accidents compared to conditions before the home zones were implemented, and residents report that they now feel their streets are safer for their children. Residents also report finding the home zone streets to be more attractive than they were previously, and some of those in high crime areas experienced reduced levels of crime and antisocial behavior, although these results were not obtained everywhere. Evidence that the treatments resulted in more socializing among adults is less convincing. In general the projects are very well received by residents, demonstrating that this approach to street design improves livability. However, the evidence suggests that similar effects might be realized with less comprehensive and expensive solutions.

Takeaway for practice: The introduction of home zone design qualities has contributed to improved livability in established residential streets.

Research support: None.

Keywords:

• home zones
• woonerf
• street standards
• liveability
• shared space

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the six reviewers who provided comments on previous versions of this article for their considerable help in revising and improving the final draft.

Mike Biddulph is author of Home Zones: A Planning and Design Handbook (2001, Policy Press) and Introduction to Residential Layout (Elsevier, 2007).

Notes

1. The modern meaning of a mews is a small street behind a residential street, originally lined with stables (the word actually referred to cages for royal hunting hawks), which are now likely converted to apartments.

2. It must be stressed that when the line of sight is only 20 meters, other traffic calming features must be employed on the cross streets to ensure safety at intersections. (This note is not in the original.)

3. The projects were built between March 2002 (Methleys, Leeds) and August 2006 (Normanton, Derby).