Parts of Oxford's traffic arrangements are not good for cars or cyclists.
Parts of Oxford's traffic arrangements are not good for cars or cyclists.
I suppose you could say that if Nigel Farage and Jordan Peterson are getting upset about urban design, it shows something is being done right.
Farage is Britain’s hard-right Brexit champion and Peterson is a Canadian obsessed with the way feminism is ruining the world for men. At least, formen like him. They’re both campaigning against plans in the English city of Oxford to limit people’s freedom to drive.
Traffic in Bottley Rd, Oxford.
“Idiot tyrannical bureaucrats,” said Peterson on Twitter. Worse than climate-change lockdowns, said Farage. “We are talking about city councils starting to take control and starting to herd people into carefully controlled spaces,” said one of their supporters.
“We have been receiving many calls and emails from worried residents in genuine fear that they might be locked in their own homes,” confessed Liz Leffman, head of the Oxfordshire County Council.
None of this is true, of course. But the outrage is very real on social media and there have been street protests. Leffman added that they’re getting a storm of abusive and threatening messages.
Cycle parking, Oxford.
What her council actually wants to do is reduce traffic in the middle of town by encouraging drivers to use the ring road around it.
The need is real. Oxford is a city of 160,000 residents, where the medieval streets are so clogged with cars, the morning traffic on main streets moves at less than 10km/h.
The idea is to divide the city inside the ring road into “pizza slices”. If you drive into one, you’ll be expected to drive back out the same way. If, instead, you cross a “filter” from one to the next, you’ll be fined.
Oxford got the idea from the Belgian city of Ghent, where they discovered that 40 per cent of the downtown traffic was just passing through. So in 2017 they introduced a “traffic zone” system and now the vehicles that have no reason to be there have disappeared.
In Oxford, they aim to reduce car trips by 25 per cent, increase bike trips by 40 per cent and cut road deaths in half by 2030. They’re hoping 50 per cent fewer vehicles will drive into the city centre.
Buses will become more efficient, the air cleaner, the roads safer for pedestrians and cyclists, the shopping experience more pleasant and – never forget – it’ll be better for the cars that do need to be there.
Cycling in Oxford.
If the Oxford idea sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Auckland has a very similar plan, although without fines, called Access for Everyone (A4E). It was developed in 2019 under the leadership of the council’s Auckland Design Office, before then-mayor Phil Goff and his senior officials dismantled the ADO.
A4E has never been officially abandoned, but there is no sign of it being introduced anytime soon.
Why do these plans cause such dismay? Farage and Peterson believe the debate is not about traffic. For them, it’s about freedom and it’s the same debate we’ve had about Covid lockdowns and vaccination mandates.
This is urban design straddling a social faultline: freedom to, or freedom from?
Freedom to drive wherever and whenever you like, or freedom from traffic jams, dirty air, dangerous streets and slow buses? In Oxford, Leffman and her council might also be hoping for a bit of freedom from misinformation and threats of violence.
And all of Oxford, presumably, would like some freedom from a collapsing weather system. The city flooded badly in 2014, for the eighth time in 100 years.
Oxford flood, 2007.
Oxford flooding, 2014.
Design for Living appears weekly in Canvas magazine.
