INVESTING IN (POST-COVID) STREET APPEAL

Matthew Carmona

Whether we are walking to school, waiting at a bus stop, cycling to work, shopping, or even driving through a city, how streets handle and balance the varied, complex and often conflicting needs of users has a profound impact on our daily lives and wellbeing. Streets are often highly constrained physically – and were even more so in the Covid-19 dominated world of 2020 and 2021 – and we need to make hard choices about which functions to prioritise and where. Drawing on (pre-Covid) research which examined the multiple benefits of investing in London’s local high streets (its mixed traditional shopping streets) and on UK-wide research conducted during the pandemic, in this chapter the case is made for investing in the social, visual and economic appeal of streets as places for people, not cars.