Time for proportional representation?

The debate over how we should choose our leaders has some interesting parallels with how we choose to design our streets

Camden High Street – as was: the needs of the many pedestrians unfairly represented in the layout

Camden High Street – as was: the needs of the many pedestrians unfairly represented in the layout

Central Cheltenham: designed to suit a "majority", even for times when they don not want it

Central Cheltenham: designed to suit a "majority", even for times when they don not want it

Exeter High Street: a reasonable balance taking everything into account?

Exeter High Street: a reasonable balance taking everything into account?

So we now know whom it is that will run the country for the foreseeable future (however long that may be). But while that particular intrigue will have run its course, the controversy about the system we’ll use to choose the next Government will still be raging. It so happens that I’ve been a supporter of electoral reform ever since I first was able to cast my ballot. Even though some form of proportional representation would sometimes have been to the parliamentary detriment of the crew I voted for, it has always seemed quite clear to me that, whatever its alleged merits – and there are some, first-past-the-post is just wrong in at least two respects.

Firstly, what kind of system is it when, after all is said and done, considerably well over half the people who made their mark in the voting booth were, for all practical purposes, simply wasting their time? ‘Your favoured candidate wasn’t first – you needn’t have bothered’; ‘Your guy only got 49% – what a loser!’ Earlier this week, I heard the odious associate editor of a daily red-top express apparent moral outrage that the ‘loser’ Nick Clegg should dare to try and bargain with the ‘winner’ David Cameron. The logical conclusion of such an argument is that ‘more is all’.

I’m sure that that’s one of the reasons why one third of those able to vote last week didn’t, and it brings me to my second concern: first-past-the-post has a very distorted view of what constitutes a minority. If I’ve got my facts right, the outgoing Government had a very healthy parliamentary majority despite having only just over one third of the votes.

OK, John – get off your soap-box and tell us what on earth this has got to do with urban design. Well, my train of thought on these lines began a few years ago when it occurred to me that a potentially helpful term to describe how we should approach the design of large parts of our towns and cities might be ‘Democratic Streets’. I got so far as to include the phrase in a presentation I made at a ‘Shared Space’ event, but then I realised that it was likely to be far from helpful and possibly actively confusing.

I had initially thought that Democratic Streets would emphasise the idea that we should design and manage the public realm according to the needs and aspirations of the people who use them – building on the notions of Streets for People and Streets for All that were already out there. I never tire of acknowledging that this isn’t an easy task, bearing in mind the complexity arising from the range of often competing demands and aspirations that different members of the public have (and which change at different times). But it’s a challenge that must be faced if we’re not effectively to disenfranchise a large number of potential users.

The problem was that appealing to the idea of democracy as most commonly understood in practice in this country would be likely to communicate quite the opposite approach: that we should design streets according to the requirements of the single largest user group and let the rest take it or leave it. Which has been, of course, more or less exactly how we had approached highway design in this country for well over half a century, with results that we’ve now largely realised are unacceptable. First-past-the-post design left the motor vehicles in almost complete charge of far too many streets, with the consequence often being that the minority groups became more and more disenchanted, often quitting the scene altogether or changing sides (alright, modes) because that was the only way to participate.

An analogy too far? I don’t think so. Indeed, there’s more. On the question of what constitutes a minority, the recent to-ing and fro-ing over coalitions has centred largely on what common ground people from different groups might share. When we design from the more or less sole perspective of a single user group, which we have taken to be the effective majority for whatever reason (it may be actually numerical; it may be because some are considered more equal than others), we ignore the possibility that the shared interests of some or all of the ‘minority’ groups might amount to an effective majority. Looking at the 2005 General Election, the Conservatives and LibDems never got the chance to work out if their total 54% of the votes might provide the basis for a different approach to running the country than Labour’s 35%.

I’m aware that the mere mention of political alliances or coalitions raises all sorts of justifiable concerns, including those of (a) a lack of clarity about objectives and actions and (b) the potential for tiny minorities to have far too great an influence on the whole. This latter issue is of particular relevance in the case of the well-intentioned move to ensure our streets are as inclusive as possible. Although it’s often very difficult to articulate such views without being jumped upon, most of us will have entertained the thought that if the needs of 1 conflict with those of 99, let alone 999, then those of the 1 may well simply have to go unmet for the present. It’s not what we’d want, but it’s what makes best sense in the round.

The point I’m making in all this is that, whether we’re engaged in strategic transport planning, detailed traffic engineering, street design or broader urban design, we ought to feel obligated to take into account the needs and aspirations of all existing and potential users. Real people. It may not – in fact almost certainly will not – be possible to devise outcomes that will make everyone content, and this may cause problems. However, adopting an approach where a winning group – and it’s not always been motor vehicles – takes all has already caused all sorts of problems that most of us spend much of our professional lives trying to solve. Let us, at the very least, not make those mistakes again. It’s definitely complex; it isn’t going to be easy; it may get a bit murky; and we’ll need to deal with a lot of narrow interests along the way. Politics, anyone?