Liveable neighbourhoods provide a great opportunity to reduce traffic and create cleaner air where we live. Liveable neighbourhoods can help create more peaceful neighbourhoods with safer streets and enhance communities with more greenery and usable outdoor spaces. Over 200 similar schemes have been delivered around the UK, offering multiple benefits for residents and businesses. More information can be found below about recent studies and case studies.
Liveable neighbourhoods will help encourage more active travel in our city, creating streets that are safer for walking, wheeling and cycling. It can also encourage the use of public transport, which will improve public health and reduce carbon emissions. The Council has recently launched the draft Climate Change Strategy [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/draftclimatechangestrategy], and the Council’s Transport Strategy [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/transport-strategy-2/transport-strategy] was approved last autumn, which set out our ambitions to create a more sustainable city. Tackling the cause and effects of Climate Change is one of the Council’s top three priorities in our One Coventry Plan [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/theonecoventryplan].
Liveable neighbourhoods can be delivered through a range of ways, including putting traffic filters on residential streets to help stop cars, vans and lorries using the streets as through-roads. Other measures could include improving walking and cycling by adding crossing points, cycle lanes and storage, introducing more greenery through planters and rain gardens, and creating more social spaces such as outdoor seating and parklets.
Here are some examples of what liveable neighbourhoods can look like:
Thanks to Active Travel England’s Active Travel Fund, which is managed by the West Midlands Combined Authority, we will be looking to work with local people to create two liveable neighbourhoods in Coventry. Local people will be at the heart of the design and development.
The consultation for liveable neighbourhoods allows residents to design the streets they live on and give feedback throughout, to create a fully co-designed liveable neighbourhood.
Residents will still be able to drive to their homes and park there, businesses can still get deliveries, and pedestrians and bikes can get through freely.
Monitoring and evaluation will be an important part of the pilots to fully understand the impacts of interventions and inform future decision making about introducing further liveable neighbourhoods across the city in the future. The project team are also using lessons learnt from other areas that have implemented liveable neighbourhood to help ensure Coventry’s pilot schemes are a success.
Liveable Neighbourhood studies
- Department for Transport Low Traffic Neighbourhood Study (2021) [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1004948/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-residents-survey.pdf]
- Centre for London Street Shift: The Future of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (2022) [https://www.centreforlondon.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/CFL-StreetShift-LTNs-Final.pdf]
Liveable Neighbourhoods - Transport Projects Team
Benefits of Liveable Neighbourhoods
Liveable neighbourhoods aim to look at the intended function of roads by stopping cars from using quieter, residential roads as rat runs, and encouraging the use of main roads which are designed for higher levels of traffic. Liveable neighbourhoods will engage with the community and look at traffic flows as a whole before designing any changes.
Liveable neighbourhoods are a great opportunity for businesses to get higher footfall and increase trade. Creating a liveable neighbourhood enables local high streets to become destinations where people enjoy spending time. This means that people want to stay longer, further supporting local shops and businesses.
Vehicle access will be maintained to all homes in a liveable neighbourhood, however, changes may be made to the roads. These changes could potentially include making a road one-way or stopping up one end of the road, meaning that it cannot be used as a through-road for vehicles. Blue lights services such as the ambulances will be fully consulted and involved with potential road layout changes.
There are many benefits to residents' health and activity levels in liveable neighbourhoods. By encouraging more active travel, reducing vehicle numbers and pollution, alongside creating a more attractive environment with more green space, communities will benefit from:
- improved air quality
- increased activity levels, due to better facilities for walking or cycling
- improved physical health and wellbeing
- better community wellbeing
- reduced social isolation
Liveable Neighbourhoods - Transport Projects Team
Earlsdon Liveable Neighbourhood
Our pilot Liveable Neighbourhood will be in Earlsdon.
Construction started on 28 May 2024 following three rounds of public engagement, and the scheme went live on 17 October. Read more about the construction works and the scheme [https://www.coventry.gov.uk/roads-highways-pavements/earlsdon-liveable-neighbourhood-1].