Evaluating the English Home Zones Initiatives
This paper discusses a comparative evaluation of the English Home Zone initiatives. Home zones are shared surface streets based on the Dutch woonerf concept. The UK made the concept legal in 2000/1 and subsequently revised its highway guidance for the design of highways in residential areas to embrace the concept. UK governments have initially promoted a set of unfunded pilot projects, and subsequently in England £30 million was invested in 61 schemes across the country. This paper reviews comparable data emerging from the monitoring of fourteen of these projects to determine more general lessons from the initiatives. It found that the concept had not always been fully implemented in some cases, but that traffic had been slowed to a safe pace and residents felt that they were able to let their children play more freely in their streets. Streets were also found to be more attractive, whilst some schemes in high crime areas had an impact on levels of crime and antisocial behaviour, although this was not the case in all areas. Less convincing was the extent to which the treatments resulted in greater socialisation between adults. In general the projects were very well received by residents. These initiatives prove the value of the concept as an approach to street design that embraces liveability concerns, but the evidence suggests that similar effects might be realised with less comprehensive and expensive solutions.
Journal of the American Planning Association, Volume 76(2), (2010)