Networking has become something of a lost art in these difficult economic times but Design Liverpool www.designliverpool.org.uk has been doing its bit through a series of excellent lunchtime lectures in their Last Thursday series. Over the last few months the lectures have covered Green Infrastructure with Paul Nolan from the Mersey Forest; an overview of Design Policy in Liverpool 1990 – 2009 by Mike Biddulph from the University of Cardiff (previously a lecturer at Liverpool); Rob Burns from Liverpool City Council guiding us through Copenhagen’s public space design, spatial planning and integrated transport; Oliver Schulze, a director of Gehl Architects, Copenhagen gave an overview of his firm’s philosophy, broadly interpreted as attention to the bottom three metres of cities; and Rosey Paul and Bryan Wynne bringing the first series to a close with Liverpool’s City Centre Movement Strategy and Public Realm Implementation Framework (or PRIF to its friends). 

This final talk started a lively discussion at Places Matter! HQ about the new ‘puffin crossings’ that are springing up all over Liverpool city.  After generations of people across the globe have become accustomed to looking across the road for the green and red man, here in Liverpool and elsewhere in the UK we now have to look sideways at hip height to find out whether it is safe to cross or not, preventing any sense of scanning the street for oncoming hazards.  Opinions varied but none were enthusiastic – what were they for, why were they there, who were they meant to help?  Government policy was the answer and in a bid to cast some light on this change of perspective one of the PM! team dug out the following link on the department for transport website www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/tpm/tal/walking/puffinpedestriancrossing?page=2#a1002

See if you can make any sense of it.  The picture of the elderly lady attempting to cross the road is enough to make any warm hearted individual weep – is this really the best we can offer in a civilised society?

On this note Places Matter! is looking to run a series of one day events from the Autumn looking at Manual for Streets and the forthcoming Manual for High Streets.  The events will take place across the Northwest and will be aimed at a cross section of practitioners.  For details of these events keep tuned to this website and perhaps in the future we’ll be encouraged to look up and about our streets rather than cast our eyes downwards at a fixed point somewhere near hip height.
 
Enjoy your streets!
 
Annie Atkins
Programme Director