Response to Review of
Home Zones: A Planning and Design Handbook

Mike Biddulph
School of City and Regional Planning
Cardiff University, UK

Citation: Biddulph, Mike. (2004). “Response to Review of Home Zones: A Planning and Design Handbook.” Children, Youth and Environments 14(1). Retrieved [date] from http://colorado.edu/journals/cye.

The home zone concept requires a completely different approach to thinking about how the street space between homes should be used. The focus is on creating a shared space where it is possible to drive and park, but also where both children can play and adults are more free to socialize. This is an approach to urban design that fits relatively comfortably into a European planning and development context where developments tend to be denser and forms of traffic calming are treated as a norm. Within the UK, however, it is only very recently that shared surface streets were regarded as legal. This publication therefore came out of the fact that many groups, including house builders, could see the “family friendly” potential of the concept and wanted to know in more detail how home zones could be taken forward.

The publication balances a need for general design advice with ideas about how existing streets could be replanned using appropriate public participation techniques. This is because within the UK there is a belief that in many areas, existing streets should be remodeled to reduce vehicular speed and allow environmental improvements. Such approaches to residential street design are the norm in the Netherlands and Germany for example, but in the UK, until now, many urban streets have really been dominated by parked cars.

Changing how we think about our streets also plugs into a number of other urban policy agendas. We want to regenerate our cities, we want our environments to be less polluted, we want adults to walk to the local shops, we want our children to be free to play outside, we want children to walk safely to school. Along with other areas of policy, home zones contribute their bit to making an environment in which these things can happen.

As the reviewer indicates, such a concept wouldn’t seem to fit comfortably into general subdivision practices within countries like the U.S. or Australia. However, there is plenty of evidence of innovation in the U.S., especially in New Urbanist developments where a genuine concern for the quality of the public living environment seems to be paying dividends for developers. During a recent visit to Seaside in Florida I spent the entire time walking slowly down the middle of the streets (see Figure 1). If this is some of the most expensive real estate in the U.S., as I hear it is, then concern for home zones may have some wider relevance.

Figure 1. Seaside, Florida successfully adopts many of the attributes of a shared surface street or "Home Zone" making it comfortable to walk or play within the entire area of the street. Such an approach to street design is established in northern continental Europe, but has only just become legal in the UK. (Photo: Mike Biddulph)

Mike Biddulph is Lecturer in Urban Design. He conducts research on innovative street design, forms of residential development and ways to encourage concern for urban design within both development processes and through statutory and non-statutory planning systems.