Manual for Streets! The DMRB! Women! And… A Bob Ross Painting?
Or, why we’ve spent twenty years obsessing over bin lorries while ignoring the "forever hum of fear”
“It is therefore recommended that as a starting point for any scheme affecting non-trunk roads, designers should start with MfS.” – Manual for Streets 2 (1.3.2)
Hold onto your malbec, folks! The Department for Transport has recently released its Road Safety Strategy and buried within the fine print is a call for an updated Manual for Streets (MfS).
Hurrah!
On the surface, this sounds like a win. We loved the original MfS so much that a sequel was produced just three years later. Since 2007, we’ve had the technology to tell us how to design a good street.
That’s almost 20 years(!) of street design goodness.
I quote MfS a lot. Particularly when the highway authority are demanding DMRB junction designs on residential developments that have no connection to the strategic road network. That kind of design nonsense needs to stop.
But I digress.
Manual for Streets and MfS 2 currently mention women exactly zero times. We have many, many words dedicated to the safe operation of a 12-meter refuse vehicle, yet the safety of people actually using the streets isn’t given much air time.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because on 4 February I lamented the fact that women aren’t mentioned in the draft revised NPPF.
And if I’m calling for a mention there, it only stands to reason that I should call for a mention in any update to MfS. I’m all for consistency and a steady message. If we keep using the word “women”, maybe the message will finally get through that our current approaches aren’t working for half the population.
I think it’s time to stop pretending that inclusive design is something we can just conveniently stumble into by following design guidance written primarily by men. This isn’t a Bob Ross painting where there are no mistakes, only happy accidents. I think it’s time to explicitly recommend design interventions aimed to support women and, as placemakers, do our bit to mitigate the challenges set out in the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy. Streets designed to keep women and other vulnerable people safe isn’t a nice to have, it’s critical.
And while I can’t, on my own, do much to keep women and girls safe online, I can, on my own, do my bit to ensure that if they’re going to school, or the shops or to visit their dear old mum, they can at least travel on a street that feels safe to use.
I will continue to quote extensively from MfS where designs clearly put vulnerable road users at risk and favour the car over actual people.
And I’ll also talk about the Equality Act. It isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a statutory duty. When we approve developments that fail to accord with current good practice – DMRB junctions in residential schemes, anyone? – and that are riddled with areas of concealment, poor lighting, and yet more nowheresville sprawl that forces women to deliberately alter their behaviour to stay safe, we aren’t just making a sub-optimal design choice. We are failing in our legal – and moral – obligations.
At best it’s negligence. At worst we’re approving layouts that are actually unlawful. And yet nothing is done about it until someone gets hurt.
As the Urban Design Group pointed out in May 2022:
“It would be extremely difficult to defend an action in negligence where a highway authority has required, in urban settings that are likely to be used by children, disabled and elderly people, the use of the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges, a design guide which is expressly intended for trunk roads. If you are required to produce masterplans or designs that use trunk-road style design guidance, you should obtain a formal written indemnification from the client or highway authority.”
Just sayin’.
As I’ve noted before, 72% of women change their outdoor activity routines during the winter months. They carry their keys like knuckledusters and their phones like shields. If the upcoming Manual for Streets – and NPPF for that matter – doesn’t specifically mention women, it cannot possibly begin to provide the leverage and guidance needed to fix this. It’s like trying to bake a cake using a manual for an internal combustion engine.
I’ve been looking at a 2024 document on the 20-Minute Neighbourhood, and it highlights something our current manuals conveniently ignore: women use cities differently. While the traditional (read: male-centric) model focuses on a linear commute from the suburb to the office, women’s travel patterns are often characterised by “trip-chaining”—dropping kids at school, heading to work, nipping to the shops, checking in on an elderly relative.
A 20-minute neighbourhood isn’t just about distance and timings; it’s also got to be about density and diversity. It’s about having a critical mass of people out on the street at different times. Jane Jacobs called this the sidewalk ballet. But our current iterations of MfS don’t seem to go far enough to balance movement and place to ensure that ballet can actually happen.
And unless highway authorities have to follow the guidance, even with specific design guidance in place to support women getting about, it’s unlikely to happen. If we can’t even design a site access in line with current good practice so it supports pedestrian desire lines and caters well for cyclists, what the heck is going to happen to the streets inside the development?
Writing a new footnote in the NPPF requiring compliance with national design guidance – i.e. Manual for Streets – to inform how policy TR4 (Street design, access and parking) is applied ain’t gonna move the needle.
As Jan Gehl says, “you get what you invite”. If we continue to invite motonormativity and car-dominated sprawl, we invite isolation and intimidation. But if we invite women back into the public realm by designing specifically for their safety, we automatically make the street safer for everyone else: children, the elderly, and even the lads on the Graham Norton Show who thought clutching a phone was a joke. Bob Ross could well be onto something.
The proposed update to Manual for Streets is our big chance to move past the bland nonsense that has blighted our country for decades. Let’s make sure the designers are no longer unconsciously biased because their handbook forgot to tell them half the population exists.
We have the guidance. We have the policy. Now, let’s see if we have the spine to actually put “women” in the manual.
Amirite ladies?
Question: Should the new Manual for Streets specifically mention women, or is the general language enough to secure inclusive design?
#urbandesign #womenssafety #manualforstreets #equalityact #janejacobs #motonormativity #placemaking #amirite #placemakers #nppf #urbandesigngroup
… and if you enjoyed it? Why…