Your say / Liveable Neighbourhoods
‘Begrudging acceptance among unhappy residents is not sufficient to justify a permanent liveable neighbourhood scheme’
A recent article published in Bristol24/7 on the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood (EBLN) was a masterclass in how to avoid the substantive issues regarding the pros and cons of the scheme while its author claims a spurious moral high ground.
Appeals to the righteousness of a cause are typically relied on when addressing concrete issues proves to be too difficult.
The opinion piece in Bristol24/7 is a disappointing continuation of the author’s disingenuous claims of concern for residents’ feelings.
is needed now More than ever
Their condescending explanation of the academic theory behind urban planning consultations and their purported aspiration to achieve its participatory ethos ironically serve to confirm the failure of the process.
The EBLN is, to use the author’s words, being “paternalistically imposed’”, and no amount of alleged well-meaning intentions can compensate for this.
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Read more: ‘We shouldn’t stop the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood but we have to listen to its detractors’
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Accusing the protest movement of “seizing its best opportunity to recruit disgruntled drivers” is a cynical denial of the very real opposition that the EBLN has engendered.
We are not in a position to manufacture disgruntlement, and the author’s insinuation is not only unwelcome, but is in fact an admission of the failure to adopt a democratic consultative approach.
The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood trial aims to better manage traffic, provide safe journey routes for pedestrians and active travel, and introduce new planters and pocket parks – photo: Martin Booth
The EBLN pilot project “hopes to create a safer, healthier and greener neighbourhood” – image: Bristol City Council
When the author talks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face by turning down a “significant funding package”, they indulge in the idea that if you receive money for a specific purpose, you should use the money regardless of whether the purpose is useful, healthy, practical, wise, desired, or an efficient use of the funds.
Employing the author’s logic, if I am given money to cut off my nose, I should go ahead and do it on the grounds that turning down a “significant funding package” is pure folly.
According to them, to do otherwise would be cutting off my nose to spite my face! This is obviously a nonsensical non sequitur.
Underscoring the undemocratic and paternalistic approach adopted in the scheme’s implementation, the author expresses a strong desire to get the “finalised version” of the scheme in place.
Once in place, we will all simply have to “begin the process of adjustment to a new normal”, irrespective of any valid popular resistance to the scheme.
This is problematic in itself, but the reference to an imposed “new normal” is a fairly contentious phrase to use in such an article if the author wishes to gain friends who are currently sceptical of the EBLN scheme.
In any case, the author makes clear where their allegiances lie.
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The author of the opinion piece is right that there is an imperative to find common ground in the community, and at the same time this is something Bristol City Council should have been engaging in right from the start.
The council claims to have been listening to citizens, but this is clearly not the lived experience of a vast majority of residents in Barton Hill, St George and Redfield.
This is quite evident from the explosion of the Stop the EBLN Facebook group over the past few weeks. As I have said, this is not the result of “efforts to recruit disgruntled drivers” as the author cynically suggests.
The author is correct in suggesting that the language used by the council during the ‘consultation’ phase was misleading.
Not only words like ‘modal filters’ were confusing, though, but also the whole concept of ‘co-design’, used throughout council documents on this scheme.
The only co-design that occurred was in deciding where new Traffic Regulation Orders would be implemented, and not if or what.
The author goes on to state that road closures “work”, without saying what they “work” for.
It is certainly evident that they work for creating traffic chaos, frustration, stress, increased journey times and therefore increased traffic pollution and the likelihood of accidents. I am not sure that this is what the author meant, however.
I wonder who has been characterising the protestors as “an angry mob”? To me, this sounds like the author is using the phrase to give Bristol24/7 readers the impression that the protestors could be “an angry mob” when nobody until now had even thought of that being the case.
People are not feeling ignored; they are being ignored, and have been for at least two years now.
There are, for example, many eloquent people with disabilities and members of the Somali community in Barton Hill who have been spending much time and energy trying to tell Bristol City Council what they think, and they have most certainly been ignored, because the scheme is going ahead anyway.
Beaufort Road in Redfield is a noticeably more pleasant place for active travel since the start of the EBLN trial – photo: Martin Booth
I would be grateful if the author could explain what they mean in this paragraph: “Those who feel hard done by understandably want to achieve some degree of citizen power over the process – and see protest as their only route to this – but I’m afraid that was never likely within the confines of this LTN scheme.”
If they means that it was never likely that some degree of citizen power could have been achieved in this scheme, then can they explain precisely what the several rounds of ‘consultation’ with the frequent insistence on ‘co-design’ were for?
I don’t think it is a good look for Bristol City Council if they were just an expensive box-ticking exercise using taxpayers’ money.
The author goes on to take it as a given that LTN schemes do always work (again, they do not state what they think they work for), without providing a shred of evidence for this.
A brief web search will find numerous examples of such schemes that haven’t ‘worked’ and have had to be removed again.
This has happened in Streatham, Exeter, Newcastle, Manchester and Edinburgh, to name just a few examples.
I wonder if the residents of the EBLN area have that bit of extra time the author says is needed to “get their heads around” concepts like “induced traffic”.
It is possible they might have had this time, but now many are having to waste it on longer journey times as they try to go about their daily business and generally live what were, until the scheme’s recent implementation, their already liveable lives.
A pocket park is set to be created on Cobden Street in Barton Hill at the junction of Morley Street and Victoria Avenue – photo: Martin Booth
The pocket park will help stop through traffic coming from Avonvale Road and Marsh Lane, with cycles still able to pass through the middle of the modal filter – image: Bristol City Council
I am sure the many members of the Facebook group would be grateful if the author could explain to them exactly what the “misinformation” around the scheme is.
The author does not attempt this in their article, but simply makes the allegation that people have not understood properly.
I suspect it might take a while for him to unpick this with them.
The author makes the claim that Bristol is the “cycle capital of the UK”. I am wondering if they have ever been to Cambridge, or noted that Manchester is currently bidding to become the cycling capital of Europe?
Bristol’s hills, narrow roads, pot holes and weather patterns do not make cycling conducive to a large section of the population, and in fact make the push for everyone to get on a bike extremely exclusive.
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Read more: Tips to make cycling in Bristol less sh*t
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The author views a possible future state of “begrudging acceptance” among unhappy residents as sufficient to justify a permanent scheme.
And for this to be achieved by, for example, granting them more “concessions”, for “a small yearly fee”, after the council has listened more “compassionately” to the people it is supposed to be serving.
Again, the offering of sops dressed up in feigned compassion will not make the neighbourhood more ‘liveable’.
The author’s seeming unawareness of their advocacy for a “compassionate” dictatorship is bemusing and disturbing. At no point do they consider the possibility that the scheme might have to be abandoned in the face of opposition from residents.
After a “placatory”, not democratic, outcome, “confrontation” will be transformed into “begrudging acceptance”. In their view, the council machine will, in the end, grind the residents down.
The author ends with a classic rhetorical nudge: they insinuates that the situation is “already getting dangerously out of control” and uses the sinister metaphor of a petrol fire, to link the danger of motor cars with the idea that the general public are becoming a dangerous threat to society.
This tactic is unlikely to come from the place of “compassion” that they purport to represent.
This is an opinion piece by Helen Hughes who lives in Staple Hill. Helen is a member of the campaign group Keep Bristol Moving and describes herself as a keen cyclist.
The East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood trial is currently being installed – photo: Martin Booth
Main photo: Martin Booth
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