Manual for Streets published

Highways engineers and planners already know that the Manual for streets was published the other day. But a key feature of the cultural change that it implies is that street design is pertinent to a wider range of people than just technical experts, it's also significant for community activists and neighbourhood managers. MfS seeks to promote 'greater collaboration between all those involved in the design, approval and adoption processes.'

During the draft stages I said that I thought it would be a historic document. Scanning the final version, I get the sense that some of the ambitious attempts to make it 'community-centred' may have been diluted (including community involvement, curiously, but this may be because there's perceived to be too much woolly and insubstantial rhetoric emanating in government documents on the topic already); but they're not lost. Just take the first few identified changes in approach that distinguish it from the guidance which it replaces:

• applying a user hierarchy to the design process with pedestrians at the top;
• emphasising a collaborative approach to the delivery of streets;
• recognising the importance of the community function of streets as spaces for social interaction;
• promoting an inclusive environment that recognises the needs of people of all ages and abilities...

I welcome the numerous references to the public realm, and the insistence that residential streets should be places where people can move about. MfS applies in England and Wales. The prelims tell us that it 'does not set out any new policy or legal requirements': but I think it will come to be seen as a key marker of cultural change which begins the end of car-domination of neighbourhoods.

Living Streets response is here.

CABE response.