All Walks of Life
Welcome to our All Walks of Life hub
At Living Streets, we want streets that are attractive and accessible for all. Nobody knows our streets better than the people who use them every day – you. And so we have prioritised being an inclusive organisation to ensure all voices are heard when it comes to having a say about our streets.
We began to review how we worked in 2020, looking at where we focus our time and the stories we tell and holding ourselves accountable for when we fell short of our aim to be inclusive. We have worked with campaigners, communities and local groups across the UK to reimagine our work - asking ourselves whose voices are being heard and whose aren’t.
This hub page brings together stories of our work in action, blog posts, and research that we hope can help us work towards more inclusive streets for all.
As part of a project, funded by the European Climate Foundation, we have developed equitable partnerships and worked with community groups across the UK to support them to call for change. We have reflected on what we have learnt and developed 8 principles to engagement.
2. Listen first and be led by communities' passion, knowledge and experiences.
3. Work together to understand what everyone wants to gain from a collaborative project to create an equitable dialogue and partnership.
4. Ask open questions to find out what needs to change and to develop campaign calls for decision-makers.
5. Organise creative events - photography, poetry and music can enable people who might be put off by language or literacy barriers to participate.
6. Create manifestos for change to capture everyone's input about how streets can be more accessible and attractive.
7. Ensure everyone has input and credit ideas from individual and groups.
8. Share what you've learned within our Local Group network and adapt the model of engagement to work with new audiences
research and reports
You can browse all of Living Streets’ key research and reports via this link, where you will find:
- our research into pedestrian slips, trips and falls;
- findings from our Inclusive Design project, which looked at bus stops and continuous footways;
- Walking for Everyone, produced with Arup and Sustrans;
- and Road Traffic Injury Risk in Ethnic Minority Populations, produced with Agilysis.
Below are some useful research and resources from other organisations:
- Queering Public Space: a collaboration between Arup and the University of Westminster, explores the relationship between queer communities and public spaces.
- Inclusive Mobility: A Guide to Best Practice on Access to Pedestrian and Transport Infrastructure (Department for Transport).
- The path to inclusive footways (Local Government Association)
- Key principles of inclusive street design (RNIB)
- Research Centre for Inclusive Access to Outdoor Environments design guides (Open space)
- Policy briefing: Safer and more inclusive walking and wheeling for everyday journeys (CIHT and Living Streets).