---
title: "The Healthy Streets Approach: What Does This Mean for Transport Assessments?"
url: "https://www.systra.com/uk/expert_insights/the-healthy-streets-approach-what-does-this-mean-for-transport-assessments/"
type: expert_insights
date_published: 2019-05-15
date_modified: 2023-09-14
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  @type: WebPage
language: en-GB
word_count: 862
reading_time: 5 min
canonical: "https://www.systra.com/uk/expert_insights/the-healthy-streets-approach-what-does-this-mean-for-transport-assessments/"
featured_image: "https://www.systra.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2023/06/l2-market-cities-and-urban-mobility-website-header.jpg"
type-insight:
  - Creating Places That Thrive
---

# The Healthy Streets Approach: What Does This Mean for Transport Assessments?

![The Healthy Streets Approach: What Does This Mean for Transport Assessments?](https://www.systra.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2023/06/l2-market-cities-and-urban-mobility-website-header.jpg)

**Healthy Streets as a concept was introduced into London planning policy in 2014 and has since developed into a recognised design approach for streets. The vision links the physical design of the street with both transport and health matters, promoting the uptake of active travel and places an individual’s well-being within and experience of the urban environment at the core of planning the city.**

Streets can be used in place-making strategies to form spaces where Londoners
interact, where children play, where individuals shop, work and travel and where
daily life is the fundamental element. As 80% of Londoners’ trips are undertaken
completely on streets, high quality design will have a significant impact on
improving quality of the life. Despite this, many streets are still dominated by
a ‘road’ mindset intended for vehicles and this is where the Healthy Streets
Approach is designed to make a difference.

### THE POLICY CONTEXT

As outlined in the Draft New London Plan (2018) and the Mayor’s Transport
Strategy (2018), the Healthy Streets Approach is designed to improve personal
health and reduce health inequalities through promoting active, sustainable
travel throughout the capital.

![Street scene with pedestrians, street performers and bubbles](https://www.systra.com/uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2023/01/manual-for-streets.jpg)

SYSTRA’s approach is to respond more directly to the urban fabric and quality,
using real journey data, and to represent that information not just as a series
of scores but as a visual matrix, a map of interconnectivity by time. This is a
far more intuitive approach than just another ‘data-in-data out’ black box.
Using the matrix map, all stakeholders can more easily envisage where facilities
might need to be enhanced, a street pattern altered, or a constraint such as a
railway line overcome

It situates transport as part of the fabric of a place rather than just another
structure within it. It is a way of thinking about places, not simply a tool for
ordering priorities. Tools like these can help address thorny problems such as
how to masterplan for 20-minute communities in developments that have to scale
up in stages, sometimes from an initial development of tens of dwellings to a
final development of thousands. They situate the process in a framework that is
always focussed on place-building no matter how powerful the counter currents of
other commercial incentives might be at any stage of the project. It is only by
keeping that idea of place alive at all times that we can avoid the mistakes of
the past, mistakes that will be paid for the negative impact of climate change.

Jane Jacobs, a journalist, activist and campaigner credited with saving New
York’s Greenwich village from the highway-centred developers of the 70s,
described cities as ‘immense laboratories of trial and error, failure and
success’. Less pithy than Shakespeare, perhaps, but driving at the same thing.
Successful cities and towns are formed over time in response to the needs of
their populations and that is where they get their energy and life

Not everything works; and that is OK if there is space to respond and to change
and learn from the mistakes of the past. The 20-minute community builds in that
space if we do it right. We all live in our own separate geographies and these
are layered and overlapping. The 20-minute community doesn’t lock anyone into a
single mode of life but adds layers to the fabric.

### THE CAR LOSES ITS DOMINANCE

The car loses its dominance but doesn’t disappear. In fact, even drivers gain
when more people choose to cycle and walk as congestion decreases along with all
its stress. Some people will always rely on their car, of course. Yet, how we
use cars will change over time, car ownership may reduce outside of cities too
as we begin to hire or share cars more, as proven in our larger cities. Electric
vehicles and how we charge them will be part of the future transport mix. But if
we can build places that tempt people out of their cars instead of only coercing
them, we can turn the energies that are currently being wasted on campaigning
against LTNs and temporary bike lanes into something positive.

We can open the door to the discovery of advantages that go far beyond the gains
in health that a more active and less polluted life brings. We can highlight the
deeper social and emotional connection with home. The pleasures and excitement
of chance meetings and discoveries. The simple joy of more human connections –
and more opportunities to live our lives.

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