Focus of work
Throughout the UK, public street infrastructure fails to meet the standards of the best European cities. Public space is dominated by fast-moving vehicles, rather than being beautiful but practical places that people can enjoy. Streets are often shabby, with potential improvements starved by lack of funds. At the same time, communities increasingly feel left out of decision making.
A key challenge in many parts of the country is that funding to improve the highway network is scarce, and local authorities are becoming increasingly reliant on developers of new housing and commercial buildings to help fund improvements.
CycleSteets has created StreetFocus, which provides a user-friendly national interface to planning applications to help the public see what is happening locally.
Impact
As part of this project, CycleStreets has:
- Provided modern mapping of planning applications from across the UK,
helping local people see what is proposed to change in their area at a
glance. - Provided a unique analysis of the size and type of each change, so that
people concerned with more strategic issues (such as transport) can see the
major changes and filter out more localised applications. - Enabled a new feature where local people and communities can add their
proposed projects directly onto the map. - Worked to pick out key documents in each planning application, helping
to avoid wading through the vast amount of less relevant information
provided by developers. - Developed a planning alerts feature where people can subscribe to
monitor particular areas. - Developed a new StreetFocus website, including liaising with stakeholders for their feedback, planning blogs and social media, and seeking media coverage and interest from local campaigning groups.