Making Manchester more liveable than Melbourne or Sydney

It looks like Manchester City is moving ahead to make it's streets more liveable spaces, for congregating & socialising rather than for a racetrack between points a & b.

Linky - article
Linky - The Masterplan

Looking towards benefits for the wider community by spending close to $900,000,000 on infrastructure.

On idea what the UK stats are for pedestrian death but this may go a long way towards reducing the number.

The goals:

There are eight design principles for the project

1. Streets should be places where people choose to spend time socialising rather than just save time passing through
2. Street design should focus on moving people rather than traffic
3. Dedicated separate space should be provided for walking and for cycle traffic
4. People should feel safe, relaxed and secure on the street and not just in a car
5. People should feel like they can stroll without delay and linger without issue
6. Protection and priority should be given to people cycling and walking at junctions
7. Health benefits should be highlighted and quantified for all street improvements
8. Walking, cycling and public transport should go hand-in-hand

At least someone is taking urban design seriously and addressing the growing population rather just building freeways.

 

All great goals for sure! Tragically it won't happen here due to the various levels of incompetent government who are needed to cooperate to achieve these outcomes.

 

More likely, because of nimby residents who refuse to do things differently. Can be hard to change the idea that cars and other motorised vehicles should always be preferenced.

Also, governments have been including walkability, street ‘activation’ etc in their plans for a while. But then a developer complains that making great streetscapes with ‘line of sight’ for pedestrians, gathering spaces, permeability etc, impedes their profit margin too much.

 

Nimby residents usually do not get much traction with local councils. I have been to many council meetings where 50+ Nimbys turn up and council does what council wanted to do anyway. Usually the best solution would have been somewhere in the middle between the Nimby wants and the Developer wants but this usually does not happen.

 

We've been talking about the Low Rise Medium Density Housing Code here quite a bit and thats another good example. I felt the focus on Missing Middle Housing made so much sense on bridging all the high rises and detached houses in a visually appealing way. Yet a streamlined code so simple can't even be delivered in agreement without a large portion of the councils fighting back and asking for another 12 months to strengthen their LEPs to resist it.

I can't even imagine a discussion of anything of that scale like Manchester City.

 

Yes, 50 councils have been given 12 months to make this new SEPP basically useless.......