Don’t mention Sh… you know what | John Dales

It’s time to stop using a phrase that only serves to confuse

(Readers recognising, in my title, an homage to the 1960s/early 70s TV ad campaign for Schweppes, voiced by the suave William Franklyn, get a bonus point. The rest of you – Google it.)
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I’ve just got round to watching the coverage that BBC Breakfast gave recently (29th September) to what the presenter introduced as “So-called ‘Shared Space’”. The coverage comprised three separate live visits to Poynton in East Cheshire along with the repetition of a pre-recorded piece featuring both Poynton and a scheme just off London’s Sloane Square, in Holbein Place.

He designed it.

He likes it.

She doesn't like it.

They both like it.

He doesn't like it...

...and Lottie has no idea what 'it' is.

In keeping with so much contemporary journalism, the primary intention of the coverage seemed to be to describe a controversy, air opposing points of view, and get viewers to respond with anecdote. As a contribution to a debate on how our streets should best be laid out and used, it was worthless; there being no real attempt actually to inform people about what is an extremely complex field of interest.

However, in all fairness to the journalists, presenters and producers involved on this occasion, many (most?) of those who spend a lot of their professional and/or campaigning time engaged with “So-called ‘Shared Space’” also have a poor grasp of the inherent complexity. Thus, while ‘Shared Space’ is a phrase that’s typically bandied around as though it means something quite specific, it’s used to describe a very wide variety of schemes, many of which have little (if anything) in common. From Kensington High Street to the ‘piazza’ by York Minster; from busy thoroughfares to essentially pedestrianised lanes: ‘Shared Space’ has been used to describe almost anything that’s had its guard-rails removed, its kerbs lowered, or a few tons of natural stone installed (especially if in a fancy pattern!).
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In the BBC Breakfast treatment, in addition to Poynton and Holbein Place, reference was made to a scheme in Leek, Staffordshire, one in Southend, and one in Ashford, Kent. The latter alone is not so much a scheme as a street design laboratory, with numerous different features used in a range of contexts to achieve different outcomes. I know all but the Leek scheme very well, and they’re simply not the same kettles of fish. When you look at the list of well over 150 ‘Shared Space’ schemes cited in last year’s ‘Holmes Report’, you realise, in fact, that people have started applying the term to virtually anything that’s ‘a bit new-fangled’.

This report was, as far as it’s possible to tell, the personal project of Lord Holmes of Richmond, a blind and much be-medalled former Paralympian and life-peer, who, it’s clear, doesn’t like the idea of ‘Shared Space’ one little bit. I mention him because he was interviewed in the pre-recorded BBC piece; and I put the report’s name in speech marks to ensure you don’t mistake it for one of those things that’s the product of a rigorous, lengthy, Government-commissioned investigation.

That doesn’t make it of no value, of course, but it’s important to know that what it presents are the answers to an online Survey Monkey questionnaire completed by 614 people (91 of whom said they had never actually used a ‘Shared Space’). So, while I don’t doubt that the authenticity or sincerity of the views expressed, I do think it is misleading for the report to state that “People’s experiences of shared space schemes are overwhelmingly negative”, that “Over a third of people actively avoid shared space schemes”, and that “63% of people who have used shared space schemes rated their experience as poor”, without first making it crystal clear who the ‘people’ in question are. They were a comparatively small group (an average of fewer than four respondents for each of the schemes listed) that volunteered to answer a survey that “was publicised in various media, via local and specialist news organisations and was also distributed via websites, blogs, email and Twitter snowball sampling”. I knew nothing of the survey before the report’s publication.

The findings do not, therefore, represent the voice of the people, as it may seem. The report itself is mostly a long list of statements of personal experience and opinion; and while, again, I don’t doubt the sincerity of anyone whose experience and perception of “So-called ‘Shared Space’” is negative, I do question the helpfulness of this report in enabling a rational discussion about the complex matter of how to make our streets better.

It’s even less helpful when the unrelated personal achievements of the report’s author are brought in to the debate. The BBC Breakfast interviewer’s opening statement-question to him was this: “How many gold medals? Nine gold medals, and this (negotiating Holbein Place) for you is an absolute challenge.” Sadly, he played up to this by responding, “I represented Great Britain for 17 years, and yet local areas are now almost impossible for me to access independently when these so-called ‘Shared Space’ schemes get put in.” 

It’s the very so-called-ness of ‘Shared Space’ that makes piloting a rational way forward so difficult. Professionals, campaigners and others with an interest in street design all struggle to make it clear what they mean by the phrase. Proponents and detractors alike either love ‘it’ or hate ‘it’ without really clarifying what ‘it’ is.

In the pre-recorded BBC Breakfast piece, John, a blind man who lives in Poynton, says he likes the scheme because “now, it’s an equally shared space”. But what does that mean, exactly? Interviewed live, ‘anti’ campaigner Sarah said that “the fundamental theory of ‘Shared Space’ is just not working”. But, what exactly is that theory? Even Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a leading advocate of ‘Shared Space’, found it hard to explain precisely what he meant by the term within the time constraints of his interview. (He may well, to be fair, have been thrown into confusion by the interviewer calling him Ben Bailey-Thompson at one point. I like to think that her encounter with a gold medal-winning athlete had discombobulated her to the extent that she conflated Hamilton-Baillie with Daley Thompson!)

Despite various attempts to define the phrase, you see, there is little or nothing in the way of a common understanding about it. Indeed, the very fact that the authors of Local Transport Note 1/11 (entitled ‘Shared Space’) agonised over a definition that many people did and still do take issue with, tells its own story. Others, far too many to mention, and with no greater success in having the final word, have also attempted to describe what ‘Shared Space’ is.

So, my question is: why bother?

Why on earth try to find a phrase to describe a wide range of measures, or packages of measures, that may have little in common and are often trying to address different problems and or exploit different opportunities? Why obsess about what you call a thing, rather than the outcome? How can you object to, or promote, something you either can’t define or is defined differently by those you’re engaging with? Who needs the catch-phrase? Why not, instead, just talk about what we mean: the scheme objectives, the desired outcomes, and the measures and design features intended to achieve those outcomes?

In this regard, the ‘Holmes Report’ is at its most helpful where it says, “the most controversial elements of many shared space schemes are the removal of kerbs and pedestrian crossings”. It’s not ‘Shared Space’ that’s the problem for blind and partially-sighted people; it’s the loss of particular features that they find useful or necessary. 

Now we’re talking. 

By being specific, we can move on. Misunderstandings become much less likely. Disagreements may well persist, but at least they will be over the relative merits of things about which there is clarity. If we refrain from using the phrase ‘Shared Space’, and focus instead on the particulars, a genuine dialogue about pros and cons will be enabled; replacing the differing knee-jerk responses that the phrase engenders on both sides. “’Shared Space’? It must be bad/good*. I’m not listening anymore.”
(* Delete one, according to prejudice.)

Ross Atkin, a researcher and designer, has more to say on this matter in a blog of which I’ve seen a draft, and which I hope will soon be published. In short, he has helpfully identified the fact that designers, and commissioners of designs, tend to use the term ‘Shared Space’ to describe a whole scheme; whereas users (especially those who don’t like ‘Shared Space’) are typically thinking about the presence or, usually, absence of one or more specific features (like kerbs, controlled crossings, tactile paving, etc.)

Guide Dogs (the organisation, not the animals!) once ran an anti-‘Shared Space’ campaign featuring the preposterous slogan ‘Say No to Shared Streets’. What they really meant was ‘We Want Kerbs!’ Wouldn’t that have been better (as well as a good deal less embarrassing)?

Not that long ago, I was at an interview for a design commission where a member of the panel asked, “Do you think ‘Shared Space’ will be part of your solution?’ My answer was twofold: first asking in return what the questioner meant by ‘Shared Space’; and then stating that a definite answer as to a design solution would in any case be prejudicial to a forthcoming process that the interview was all about. (I don’t know if the original question was intentionally leading, or a trick, but we won the job anyway!)

Let me suggest that ‘Shared Space’ should never be part of your solution.

It is a fundamental error of approach to attempt to make a pre-determined, ill-defined, generic solution fit a specific context. “Can we have one of those?” is absolutely the wrong question to ask. “What does this street need?” is much more like it. The answer you arrive at may, by design, introduce some element of sharing between two or more user groups, through the deployment of features that you are confident will deliver an outcome agreed as both desirable and achievable in the context. Or, it may not.

The use of the term ‘Shared Space’ has, frankly, become an increasing hindrance to the creation of better streets for all. That’s not just my opinion; it was also that of most, if not all, of the 50+ attendees at a street design seminar I spoke at a few months back. It’s a term that has led to babies being thrown out with the bathwater; it has led to schemes being implemented that some people find particularly difficult to use; and it has led to streets being shunned by people who might enjoy them, simply because they assume, from the use of the term, that they won’t.

While I’ve had to use the term ‘Shared Space’ twenty-nine times in this piece so far (actually, that makes it thirty), my intent has been to expose how unhelpful it has become. In the future, I’d rather have to use it as little as possible, if at all. 
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Even if you’ve never seen the film of the name, you may still know that “The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club”. (It’s also, incidentally, the second rule.) How would it be if you joined me in not talking about Sh… henceforth? Let’s talk instead, shall we, about exactly what we mean? It would be so much more constructive.