![]() ‘The trend is that the traffic engineer with the rule book under his arm is no longer claiming the exclusive right to redesign the city centre space, but is choosing an approach that covers the full spectrum of interests,’ says Nota. In this project, a typical busy access road became a pleasant campus square where buses, bicycles, pedestrians and motorists coexist in harmony. ‘The goal is to create a high-quality environment offering equally high quality of life, serving people, not traffic,’ explains traffic engineer Sjoerd Nota of the firm Ruimte voor Iedereen (Space for All), also affiliated with the Shared Space Knowledge Centre at the University of Applied Sciences in Leeuwarden where the faculty of Civil Engineering, Civil Technology and Mobility initiates and performs research and offers advice, and which also implemented a successful Shared Space project, completed some three years ago, right in front of the university. This leaves little of the quality and the essence of the place you move through it is then no longer a place where you can slow down, stay, breathe, relax, meet. Road signs, speed bumps, traffic lights and zebra crossings all diminish that responsibility, shifting the emphasis of a space to the technical and the legal. He was a long-time advocate of reducing rules and increasing personal responsibility. Monderman headed the project’s teams of experts, both in the Netherlands and at the international level. In 2004 his philosophy was developed into the four-year European Shared Space project. Ultimately his concept became known as Shared Space, and it elevated Monderman to national and international prominence. And that’s a dangerous message.’ It was from this concept that Monderman began developing his new vision of traffic safety in the early 1990s. ‘All those road signs,’ he once said, ‘they all essentially tell you the same thing: just drive, don’t worry, drive as fast as you want, no reason to pay attention to what’s going on around you. After completing his studies, he designed roads in his native Friesland and drew on his experiences as a driving instructor to understand how road accidents occur. Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer, or perhaps more aptly, a traffic philosopher, did not believe in traffic laws as we know them. You seem to enjoy a good storySign up to our infrequent mailing to get more stories directly to your mailbox. The only road sign to be seen, reading ‘excepting bicycles and mopeds’, is probably something that Monderman himself would have left out, but he would no doubt have been pleased to be able to look upon this, the successfully redesigned Wilhelminaplein. It is, at first glance, perhaps a curious sight: a few pedestrians walk blithely in the middle of the road, suddenly meandering across it at an angle as there are no zebra crossings to lead them any other way as they do, a car manoeuvres around them, calmly and vigilantly. On the vast square in between, cyclists, motorists, and pedestrians can be seen participating as equals in a harmonious urban flow. The stately old court building now looks directly onto the new Fries Museum and, to the left, onto a new row of shops, cafe terraces, and restaurants, and the apartments above them. New street furniture and features have been added, such as wooden benches and trees. The square (where the weekly farmers’ market is held, and which can easily accommodate the occasional music festival) is distinguished from the road only by the slightly different shade of grey of the paving. All road signs, speed bumps and pavement strips have been eliminated, with the paving of the square and the road combined into a single unit. And the transformation is finally becoming reality: the square has been largely redeveloped in accordance with the philosophy of Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer and native son of Leeuwarden. Now, after years of indecision, the municipality wants to recast this once characterless square, the Wilhelminaplein, as the city of Leeuwarden’s new ‘living room’. In the past, anyone walking from Leeuwarden’s central railway station to the city centre would have passed through a strictly regimented traffic zone consisting, like so many others, of a paved road on which all motorised traffic (including a busy bus route) raced by, a separate bike path, a zebra crossing and a pavement. ![]() It is a philosophy that has been dubbed ‘Shared Space’, a name under which similar projects are being established all over the world. Away with zebra crossings, speed bumps, traffic lights, safety islands, and even road signs! Traffic engineer Hans Monderman (1945–2008) argued for fewer traffic laws and more personal responsibility as the key to increasing road safety and quality of life in urban areas.
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