Lentis/David Engwicht and Street Reclaiming

Street Reclaiming: Creating Livable Streets and Vibrant Communities (1999) is a book by Australian urban planner David Engwicht. The street reclaiming movement aims to reduce vehicle traffic and convert streets into communal spaces.

Motivation of Street Reclaiming

Engwicht argues that streets are an extension of the home. They should be viewed as communal, outdoor living space. At their core, streets serve as connectors. In neighborhoods, they connect houses, and in cities, they connect neighborhoods, work places, and shops. Streets have traditionally facilitated essential community building: they were a place where children played, people met, local businesses operated, and ideas were exchanged. After the introduction of automobiles, streets have shifted from a place of community to a place for cars. The street reclaiming movement aims to restore streets to community centers.

Street Reclaiming Philosophy

Engwicht believes congestion is a social problem that requires a social solution. He contends that societies today employ engineering to solve social problems because we have shifted from a civic model of government to a consumer model of government. In the civic model, citizens take active responsibility for the culture and wellbeing of their towns and cities. In the consumer model, we outsource civic responsibility to officials who use tax money to solve complaints. To return to the citizen model, Engwicht suggests people learn to enact positive change within their own sphere of influence. His strategies for street reclaiming are all actions average citizens can take to reduce congestion in their neighborhoods. His citizen-based approach to street reclaiming can be broken into three components: (1) reducing traffic, (2) psychologically reclaiming, and (3) physical reclaiming.

Reducing Traffic

Engwicht believes that individuals enacting positive change within their own spheres of influence moves society forward. His application of this idea to street reclaiming is based on the idea that car trips are another kind of waste. Like the packaging around products, there is typically no inherent value in the trip itself. The value comes from the people, places, and things to which the car gives access. Thus, citizens can reduce congestion the same way they reduce trash: by reducing, reusing, and recycling. Engwicht expands the 3 R's of Recycling to the 5 R's of traffic reduction: replace, remove, reduce, reuse, and reciprocate.

Citizens should replace car trips with walking, cycling, and public transport; remove unnecessary car trips by saving and combining trips, and utilizing carpools, ride shares, telecommuting, telephones, email, and home or office deliveries; reduce trip lengths by shopping and employing locally; reuse saved space by reclaiming streets for social, cultural, and economic activity, reallocating street space to alternative transport modes, and creating facilities closer to home and workplace; and finally reciprocate through initiatives like bike maintenance clinics, car sharing clubs, incentive schemes for shopping and employing locally, or universal transit passes. Average citizens and their neighbors can adopt the 5 R's to reclaim the streets in their neighborhoods.

Psychological Reclaiming

By building fences and barriers between their homes and the streets, people have surrendered the space to cars. Engwicht believes that to psychological reclaim their streets, citizens should begin living by the philosophy that streets are communal spaces. Rather than waiting for government intervention, citizens can jumpstart reclamation by changing their mindset. Engwicht encourages his readers to use their yards and neighborhood roads as social spaces. Sitting in their front yards or adding outdoor furniture and toys for children makes a difference. These actions stretch residents' zone of influence from outside the home and into the street. Engwicht contends that drivers will automatically respond to these changes by slowing down. Psychological reclaiming empowers citizens to take an active role in improving their communities. It paves the way for physical reclaiming, which provides the infrastructure to further support community needs.

Physical Reclaiming

Physical street reclaiming involves redesigning roads to be public gathering spaces. Examples include increasing sidewalk space and adding bike lanes, outdoor seating, or store fronts. By adding structures that promote social activity, physical reclaiming cements streets as a place for exchange. Engwicht's Seven Day Makeovers are an example of physically reclaiming streets.

Impacts

Seven Day Makeover

Engwicht's creation of the Seven Day Makeover is one of his most important contributions to the street reclaiming movement. The seven day makeover is an agile project management approach to street reclaiming and, more generally, placemaking. Engwicht receives bids from different communities around Australia and New Zealand justifying why they should be the recipient of the next makeover. Once the winner is selected, Engwicht and his team at Creative Communities International travel to the town and form a committee composed of members from around the community, where the makeover plan is briefly brainstormed then documented. This initial plan is nascent as the agile management approach allows for quick changes on an as-needed basis. Engwicht emphasizes that his makeover process is less about planning and much more about doing, citing that "the traditional approach starts by creating a master plan, and then consulting the community. But this often gets bogged down in endless debate, or the report ends up on a shelf gathering dust, or if anything does happen, it can take years, and the result is often disappointing."

The Seven Day Makeover is a quintessential example of the power of Engwicht's civic model of government. The process is citizen driven, and success is dependent on their willingness to take action to improve their community. In his project for the town of Tuncurry, Australia, Engwicht explained to the committee that "everything we do sends messages and tells stories to people. What town would have a bloody yellow safety fence telling me not to go to the shops in that town? So, the [town] council have agreed to let us take it out," making a rhetorical reference to the unappealing, iron fence blocking (both physically, and psychologically) a row of shops from the street, outside of which he stood with the team of local makeover artists. This serves as one of many examples of how Engwicht employs the use of socio-technical tools such as choice architecture in his Seven Day Makeovers to help communities psychologically reclaim their streets.

The Seven Day Makeover project functions on an extremely local level, helping individuals make a meaningful impact within their sphere of influence. It aims to build community by inviting collaboration between local authorities, citizens, and businesses. It returns the streets and town centers to places of gathering and exchange, rather than a means of travel for cars.

In alignment with his philosophy that the street and community is an extension of the home, Engwicht has performed a makeover of his own on his backyard into a public neighborhood park.

Funky Toilet Tour

The "Funky Toilet Tour" is a thought experiment conducted by Engwicht:

A town wants to install a new public toilet block downtown, which they estimate will cost $250,000. The city planners notice that the local businesses in the area all have signs saying "restrooms for costumers only!" They decide that instead of building a new public toilet block, they will give 10 businesses $10,000 each to have an artist remodel their restroom into a funky, one of a kind toilet, with the stipulation that the business must open it to the public. The impacts of this strategy are threefold:

1. The city saves 60% of the proposed budget for the project.
2. The 10 local businesses will collaborate to increase customer traffic by promoting their new "Funky Toilet Tour" as a tourist attraction.
3. Downtown streets can begin to be reclaimed, as travelers who would normally just be passing by may stop and participate in the "Funky Toilet Tour."

The "Funky Toilet Tour" highlights Engwicht's belief in the strength of social as opposed to technical solutions, particularly for the purpose of community building.

Connection to Other Movements

Equal Streets

The Equal Streets movement in Mumbai, India, has been underway since 2014. The movement's purpose "is to address the mobility and safety concerns for pedestrians and cyclists, by seeking the provision of continuous and well-maintained footpaths and non-motorized transport-specific infrastructure." Much like Engwicht's efforts, Equal Streets seeks to reclaim their spaces with little use of technical tools, instead organizing community events in the street every Sunday morning such as yoga, street dancing, sports, and arts and crafts for all ages. As with the Seven Day Makeover, the psychological retreat is combatted by the high level of community involvement, which shows each individual that they have ownership of the street and a right to use it.

Conclusion

The proposed solution to congestion is typically bigger roads, but Engwicht views car-dominated streets as a social problem. His philosophy of street reclaiming exemplifies his belief that social problems are best solved with social solutions. Engwicht empowers locals to take back their streets from cars and repurpose the space for their communities. He believes that citizens must make personal investments in the safety and prosperity of their local communities. In short, if a community want to reduce congestion, each member should begin with the road in front of their house.

References