![]() ![]() Walking along it once involved by-passing hundreds of school children and families, countless students and tourists queuing at entrances or dawdling lost and confused, all upon a narrow pavement that couldn’t contain them all. As a cultural mecca hosting three of the biggest cultural venues in the country as well as educational institutions such as Imperial College London, this road attracts over 11 million visitors each year. Take the example of Exhibition Road, in the museums district of South Kensington in London, U.K. “It civilizes and humanizes a city center,” he argues. Hamilton-Baillie argues that drivers become more aware of their surroundings and respond to human interaction, just like people do in everyday life. “If people feel unsafe that’s good because they will then be cautious as they interact with traffic”. ![]() “Introducing ambiguity is central to shared space,” explains Hamilton-Baillie. They may feel confused, but that’s exactly the point. Road signs, traffic signals, roundabouts, crossing points and curbs are done away with and replaced by flat, smooth roads without markings, on which cars and people interact regularly. “It defines a public space where movement is subject to social protocol and informal regulation, not traffic rules.” Monderman pioneered the idea in the Netherlands claiming if traffic rules are taken away, people behave more carefully. “Shared space breaks the principle of segregation,” says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street designer who coined the term with the late Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman and brought these spaces to the U.K., which now hosts more than any other country. Most importantly, these rules would be social, not formal, to befit the increasingly popular trend of ‘shared space’. ![]() Spaces where these usually segregated members of the population live – or move – by the same rules. The future of urban roads may be one where motorists, pedestrians and cyclists act as one. ![]()
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