Wednesday 2 March 2011

Southwell Street: Bristol's Shared Space

Just a few photos here to celebrate Southwell St, by the St Michael's Hill hospital. What was once a road has been successfully turned by the BRI into a useful hospital facility, with lots of staff parking.

The presence of paving stones under the cars above has created some tension with the residents association, especially as no evidence has been found proving the pavement was "given" to the hospital. We say there's nowhere else to park.
We also understand why blocking the pavement and forcing pedestrians onto the road was the right thing to do. It is for their own safety.
Furthermore, painting a little sign of someone walking along what was once a pavement makes them feel grateful -and ensures that if they do get hit by a car and were walking anywhere else, well, they didn't follow the signs.
Like we said, we have heard rumours of change here. We now have the documents and some of the emails -and very interesting they are too.

But before publishing them, consider this: this road will be the first sight of the city for all children born in this hospital. To try and make it friendly to pedestrians and cyclists would be an attempt to redefine our city, not just for the adults, but for these newborn. Therefore we want to be the first to say that we are glad that the hospital is attempting to do the least it can get away with, namely painting the bits where pedestrians are meant to walk in more solid colours. We could call them "walking superhighways".

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Like you say, it's a great advert for the future. Can't have babies escaping the widget factory that is St Michaels without them first learning about consideration for other pavement users, such as cars. Next you'll have mothers wanting to push babies around in prams on the pavement like in the old days.