The Shirley/Papanui Community Board is helping develop a Living Streets cluster in Papanui. There are eight streets located within the small residential catchment known as the Papanui Cluster.They are Proctor, Mary, Gambia, Loftus, Horner,Wyndham, Frank and Grants.

The Christchurch City Council’s mission with Living Streets is to, “create living streets and a living city where a variety of road environments support and encourage a greater range of community and street activity”.

The Living Streets concept challenges the increasingly common assumption that streets are for cars and that those cars should therefore have priority over people in all streets. Instead, Living Streets attempts to instil an ideal that streets should be designed or redesigned with the priority on living and community interaction, where residents, businesses, pedestrians and cyclists at the very least have equality with cars.

A Living Street does not exclude cars and other motor vehicles, but it is designed to make drivers aware that they are driving in an area where pedestrians and other users are important. A Living Street encourages better driver behaviour, and discourages heavy trucks and through traffic. Any street, apart from a motorway or expressway which has a pure transit function, can become a Living Street.

The Living Streets vision is to create a living city where a variety of road environments support and encourage a better quality of life and a greater range of community and street activity.

Living Streets come in many forms. In Christchurch we already have several streets which have been created with community participation in the design, or which demonstrate some of the elements of the ideal Living Street. In comparison with many other cities around the world, Christchurch has received acclaim for its many Living Streets, which are now being promoted as role models for other council developments.

The ideas which underpin the Living Streets Charter are:

• Street environments to set the stage for activities that enhance quality of life
• Everything we do should be measured against quality of life
• Living streets help create living cities
• Living streets require more than technical engineering solutions
• All streets except motorways are for living
• Change priorities to ensure better balance between pedestrians, cycles, public transport, taxis, service vehicles and cars
• Ensure change in priorities does not compromise current levels of service
• Car drivers give way to people and vulnerable road users
• Accept rooms and corridors
• Vision zero for road fatalities, and growth in car kilometres travelled and emissions

In the Papanui Cluster, three of the eight streets are earmarked for Living Streets “showpiece” projects, but in practical terms it is considered better to consider the entire cluster as a showpiece.

All eight streets are scheduled for kerb and channel renewal over the next six years. And whilst the renewal is spread over several years, it is proposed to develop a comprehensive planning process for the entire area at the outset with implementation being spread over the forthcoming years.

In November last year Council staff held workshops with residents and business people from Papanui and technical and professional staff from within the Council. Nearly 700 submissions were received concerning what people liked, or didn't like and opportunities for improvement within the area.

Those submissions have been analysed and a series of draft objectives have been formulated and are to be considered at the Shirley/Papanui Community Board�fs meeting on 30 April.

An endorsement of objectives by the Board will allow option development to proceed.

It is expected that draft objectives and a series of options will be taken back to residents and businesses for comment in late April or early June.

• More information about Living Streets is available on the web, at www.ccc.govt.nz/LivingStreets/