The rationale for this live symposium in Glasgow is to develop a cross-institutional network of researchers interested in the design and material culture of active travel, shared space and cycling. The three organisers – Eleanor Herring, Nicholas Oddy and Bruce Peter - are all design historians and educators working at GSA. In 2022, we formed a research cluster with the aim of generating publishable research outcomes around the theme of design in the public realm. Together we have a strong track record of research in this area.
We believe that critical discussion around the contemporary challenges facing the design of the public realm is vital. As designed environments, the city streets, roads, parks and pavements – as well as the artefacts within those spaces - shape our interactions with each other. How such spaces are designed either encourages or discourages different kinds of movement and public participation, from walking to driving, cycling, scooting and so on. Planning is increasingly expected to accommodate different forms of movement by a broad range of different users, with diverse needs, speeds, abilities and desires. This approach has particular significance in the post-pandemic civic context, in which there is greater awareness and appreciation of the importance of open-air public space, and spaces that are truly shared. Internationally, there is broad agreement that our dependence on cars is damaging our health and the health of the planet, and redistributing rights to space is of great importance. Yet despite this increasingly accepted understanding, efforts to reshape public space to accommodate journeys by non-car users in the UK are often difficult and divisive.
Our in-person symposium will address these tensions from a design perspective in the context of Glasgow, a city that is heavily dependent on cars and which is divided by motorways – themselves products of post-war urban renewal. Due to concerns about the health impacts of air pollution and a number of other factors, Glasgow City Council (GCC) aims to reduce car use in the city by 30% over the next decade. A Low Emission Zone is now enforced, and the city is investing in initiatives that encourage community cycling engagement. Glasgow’s role as host of COP in November 2021 and host of the UCI Cycling Championships in August 2023, presents a unique opportunity to develop design research around these themes, and raise the profile of design history as an important discipline providing context for debate and theoretical insights.
Opening with a keynote speech by Thalia Verkade, acclaimed co-author of Movement: How to take back our streets and transform our lives (Scribe 2022), this symposium aims to explore how design might figure in the process of rethinking and reshaping public space. We have begun advertising the symposium via the Design History Society and the Cycling and Society forum. We invite proposals for papers that engage with a broad range of themes centring around design and the public realm, including the role of traditional urban design features such as road signage and street furniture in encouraging active travel by different users; the issue of speed; convergence and tensions between active travel and shared space; design’s role in framing equal and inclusive access to the civic realm; how global events like the Cycling Championships encourage and promote everyday cycling; debates around the sustainable and smart city; collective citizen participation and civic action; and the extent to which superficial understandings of design replace meaningful structural change.
Our objective is to bring together a wide range of informed and interested parties, and already a number of organisations and individuals have agreed to present their perspective. These include design historians researching urban artefacts and street layout, engineers and planners from GCC, the Convenor for Climate and Transport, a local councillor, representatives from Transport Scotland and Sustrans, local cycling charities and community groups (such as the Shawlands Bike Bus and Bike for Good), and researchers in public health. The director of Sm@rt Technology will present a paper on designing smart urban devices, and representatives from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association will discuss shared space design.
Bringing these diverse groups together will raise the profile of design history within Scotland, and provide opportunities for impact. We intend that the symposium will also act as a first stage in realising a book proposal based on papers delivered at the event, to be followed by other potential outputs. The development and staging of both outcomes – the symposium and the book - will provide opportunities to exchange knowledge and develop research networks.