Do-It-Yourself streets & neighborhood makeover in London

DIY Streets is a sort of grassroots-oriented neighborhood improvement program in the UK, sponsored by the British organization Sustrans.  It strikes me as somewhat like the Texas-based "Better Block" initiatives in the US, but more permanent, combined with a complete streets philosophy and partially designed by activist parents pursuing traffic calming for neighborhood safety.

Laura Laker writes on the Green Living Blog of The Guardian:

"Clapton Terrace is one of 11 'DIY Streets', a nationwide project launched by sustainable transport charity Sustrans as a cheap solution to local traffic problems. By narrowing and raising sections of road to pavement level, planting trees and using street furniture and bollards, the scheme forces drivers to slow down by blurring the distinction between space dedicated to cars and pedestrians.

"Two years ago locals were fed up as drivers were using their street as a shortcut to avoid a busy junction nearby. They resurrected their residents' group and got together to vote on their own DIY Street . . . The road now feels a lot more spacious as two trees were added beside the road, communal wheelie bins replaced 64 individual bins, and a fence around the nearby green was removed. The site also uses Plantlocks – boxes of plants with bike-friendly bars – where residents can lock bikes."

The next step is apparently a pilot project to take the concept beyond a single street to the neighborhood scale.

Streetfilms has produced a nice short video profiling the Clapton Terrace project.  Enjoy:

Move your cursor over the images for credit information.

Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment.  For more posts, see his blog's home page.