by Mark Drane (LinkedIn; Instagram)
Reflections on a part-time PhD undertaken alongside healthy urbanism practice and during a global pandemic.
…the street remains a social space like no other. Even in the context of divided and segregated cities, gated communities and ‘privatopias’, streets continue to provide spaces for public congregation, encounter and community making (Hubbard and Lyon, 2018).
Two things you should know about me when reading this are that since childhood I somehow knew that I wanted to be an architect and the second thing is that my parents told me I always told the truth even when it would get me into trouble as a child.
Twenty years after becoming an architect a difficult truth I have learned about architecture is that when it comes to health we are often causing harm and failing to create the conditions to support good health.
I didn’t get into architecture to contribute to such harm. Yet, as I stood in front of the burned structure of Grenfell Tower I found myself reflecting on my role in a wider system where this tragedy could be a terrible but logical outcome.
It is sometimes claimed that designers and built environment practitioners are creating healthy places or that designers need a Hippocratic oath. What I came to realise was that my own training and understanding of human health (intrinsically linked to planetary health) was severely lacking. Despite two degrees, a professional diploma, and 20 years’ experience in professional practice I lacked the skills and knowledge to address this topic. I don’t think I’m unusual: it’s a systemic problem.
This raised the question: if I couldn’t evidence I was contributing to health how could I know that the opposite – creating harm – wasn’t true? Maybe it was jumping in at the deep end but in 2016 the answer seemed like a self-funded, part-time PhD, alongside practice was a way to address this question.
So why streets? Well streets are identified by UN Habitat as the most prevalent public space globally. In many places they have become viewed as means to get from A to B, in fact they are vital social and public spaces right outside our front door and potentially – was my interest – a resource for health and wellbeing.
Nearly everyone in the world lives on a street. People have always lived on streets. They have been the places where children first learned about the world, where neighbors met, the social centers of towns and cities, the rallying points for revolts, the scenes of repression (Donald Appleyard, 1981).
Streets are designed and created by many different actors so are immediately interdisciplinary. They are the smallest scale of public space outside of the more private space of the home. They are arguably an easier scale for local authorities, designers, and others who control them to make changes. What is less known is whether this is actually an effective scale at which to make changes and which ones we should be making.
Through undertaking a systematic review of the evidence I was able to demonstrate that yes the street scale does appear to have an impact on health independent of scales like the neighbourhood but the evidence base is quite small for example very focused on physical activity outcomes not things like mental health and social wellbeing. First there was a need to know more about what matters to residents and how they use their streets so that’s where the study turned to next.
Within weeks of receiving my ethics approval in spring 2020 Welsh Government introduced national lockdowns in response to Covid-19 but a mixture timing and a flexible approach meant research was able to proceed. I invested a lot of time in meeting people not like me – a white man with multifaceted privilege – and time spent doing this resulted in profoundly meaningful conversations with participants.
A key finding and argument of the research is that the street environment should be addressed as a health promoting setting. I won’t recite the thesis findings here and it will be available online in due course. Another key aspect is that what people do in their street – their health practices – really matter for health and wellbeing and unsurprisingly they are far more diverse (street bingo with prizes anyone?) than design guidance currently provides for.
“Lowly, unpurposeful, and random as they may appear, sidewalk contacts are the small change from which a city’s wealth of public life may grow” (Jane Jacobs, 1962).
A significant aim of undertaking a PhD was to influence policy, practice, and future research – not least the closer integration of these three. Three headline recommendations are:
Closer integration of policy, practice, and research.
Policy, practice, and research should be integrated far more closely. Yes they are different yet divisions between them these get in the way of actually shifting the dial on the problems we might hope to address. The last eight years for me have been a test bed of precisely this: PhD research in the morning and working in my practice, Urban Habitats, in the afternoon.
Street smarts for practitioners.
Codes of practice and ethical codes for design practitioners increasingly incorporate duties for public benefit. Engineers in the UK have one of the clearest: “Engineering professionals work to enhance the
wellbeing of society.” What is needed is the guidance and definition that operationalises this intent. Public health practitioners in the UK for example must work to reduce inequalities and also have a duty to “…protect and improve the health of populations… based on the best available evidence…”. Crucially this includes a position toward evidence and its ethical use, something arguably lacking in design practice.
Inclusive streets:
Creating inclusive street environments is a priority for practice and policy. My research identifies many groups who can be excluded from the street environment – and worryingly this is often just accepted as an immovable norm. The street physical and social environment contributes to these norms. Improving population health implicitly implies reducing health inequalities. In this sense, streets either work for everyone or not at all. A start would be to address inclusion, more meaningful would be supporting residents to create and change their streets, as they already do, through their everyday practices.
For me doing a PhD has enabled a change of career path and a way to address my personal and professional values in practice in a meaningful way. The Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, my supervisory team, and UWE Bristol more widely has been an incredibly supportive and productive place for me to be based at for my PhD.
Clearly not every practitioner can have a PhD spanning health and urbanism. There seems a need for integrative practice and practitioners which is where I see my own future. I have ideas about new forms of practic/se that bring together research and practice in one dimension; different disciplines in another; and redefine the relationship between people with specific expertise and expert residents in local places.
What we must avoid the trap of making claims to create health and wellbeing without being able to reasonably justify such claims. Supporting residents to create health in their streets is a good place to start.
References listed in this blog:
Appleyard, D. (1981) Livable Streets. Berkley: University of California Press. [Accessed 3 July 2018].
Hubbard, P. and Lyon, D. (2018) Introduction: Streetlife – the shifting sociologies of the street. The Sociological Review [online]. 66 (5), pp. 937–951. [Accessed 21 June 2022].
Jacobs, J. (1962) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Reprint. London: The Bodley Head, 2020.