New Official Guidance Puts Women's Safety at the Forefront of Urban Design
English councils are set to receive groundbreaking new guidance that prioritizes the safety of women and girls in public spaces, marking a significant shift in urban planning and community development. The guidelines, produced by Active Travel England in collaboration with the national charity Living Streets, aim to create streets and pathways where everyone feels confident walking, jogging, and exercising without fear.
Personal Experience Drives Campaign for Change
Reetta Vaahtoranta, a software developer and resident of Newham, knows firsthand the challenges women face in public spaces. She used to enjoy evening runs along the Greenway, a four-mile pathway in east London, but increasingly encountered harassment from lone male passersby. "I switched to baggier running clothes because the less attractive and weirder you look, the less likely you are to get people following you," Vaahtoranta explained.
Ultimately, she made the difficult decision to stop jogging there after dark. "If I know it can be a bit dodgy, then I just stop doing it. Which is a shame because in the centre of the borough there aren't that many green spaces." This personal experience motivated Vaahtoranta to become a campaigner with Living Streets, advocating for safer walking environments in her community.
Contrasting Designs: From Isolation to Inclusion
The dimly lit Greenway, with no quick exit points for someone being followed or harassed, represents exactly the type of public space the new guidance aims to transform. Vaahtoranta contrasts this with the neighboring Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in Stratford, which was intentionally designed with safety and multiple uses in mind.
"It's just really mixed use," said Vaahtoranta. "So it has a lot of reasons for people to come there and it means that it's always used. You need quite a density of people to feel that if something happened to you, someone would step in and help." The park's wide avenues remain busy throughout the day and night with parents pushing prams, schoolchildren, friends meeting for coffee, and unusually for London parks, joggers and cyclists who feel safe from morning until late at night.
Key Elements of the New Safety Guidance
The forthcoming guidance from Active Travel England is expected to include several crucial measures:
- Enhanced lighting systems throughout public spaces and pathways
- Strategic CCTV placement to provide surveillance without being intrusive
- Replacement of dark underpasses with street-level crossings
- Well-connected walking routes with multiple exit points
- Passive surveillance elements like benches that encourage community presence
Councils will be able to bid for public funding to implement these improvements, creating opportunities for widespread transformation of public spaces across England.
International Inspiration and National Innovation
The guidance draws inspiration from successful international schemes, including programs in Spain and Sweden that allow women to request bus drivers to drop them between stops at night for added safety. It also builds on pioneering national initiatives like Liverpool's "halo points" – well-lit, highly visible devices directly linked to emergency services and CCTV networks.
Tanya Braun, director of external affairs at Living Streets, emphasized the importance of consultation in the design process. "We know that lighting's really important in terms of women and girls feeling safe getting out and about, passive surveillance. There being lots of people on the streets and things like benches, well-connected walking routes and CCTV has been cited as something that's quite important as well."
A Fundamental Shift in Urban Planning Philosophy
Braun highlighted the growing recognition that traditional approaches to urban design have often excluded crucial perspectives. "A lot of our towns and cities have been built without consultation with certain groups of lived experience. That really needs to happen, because without consultation how is a designer supposed to know what that local community needs?"
The new guidance represents more than just practical improvements – it addresses fundamental issues of fairness and accessibility while simultaneously aiming to boost physical activity levels across communities. By creating public spaces where women and girls feel genuinely safe, the initiative seeks to transform how people interact with their urban environments, encouraging more walking, jogging, and outdoor activity regardless of time of day.
As Vaahtoranta noted about the well-designed Olympic Park: "It's really well lit as well. So I don't have a problem walking through it to get to the train station at night." This simple freedom – to move through public spaces without fear – is what the new guidance aims to make commonplace across England's towns and cities.
