Being public space and tech nerds, we’ve been following early progress on Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation with great interest - its design team, led by East, are approaching it in many ways as a living urban laboratory, where patterns of use in the current phase will help to guide its more permanent iteration. We’ve been looking at how tech, behavioural interventions and live evaluation can support these aims. [*Technically, more like a kilometre]
Photo: Greater London Authority/Caroline Teo
There was an interesting detail in the overnight coverage of Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation by London Centric on 26th October. After the final bus had driven down and the bright green barriers went up to block traffic from Oxford Circus to Selfridges, they observed how people were still waiting for the lights to change before crossing the road, so ingrained was the habit.
Routines don’t always change instantly. It took until lunchtime that first day for news alerts to pop up letting the country know that cyclists were still using the newly pedestrianised space. Early friction is natural when street priorities flip overnight, but there are straightforward technical remedies here, like dynamic geofencing on shared hire schemes and clear signage. We have seen this in our work testing new mobility solutions. The tech might be ready, but humans need a period of grace to reset their internal maps. It’s perhaps unfair to expect everyone to adapt on day one through enforcement alone.
Now that the greatest hurdle of actually closing the street to motor traffic has been overcome, Oxford Street enters a more intriguing chapter, which we are following closely. Effectively, it’s becoming a live case study in human behaviour, public space and iterative design.
Dr Lara Suraci, Behavioural Scientist at DG Cities, reflected on how the aims of the project could relate to the idea of equilibrium. “In urban spaces, behavioural equilibria are formed based on how the spaces are designed, which unspoken rules and behavioural patterns develop over time,” she explains.
“Big changes like this deliberately upset these equilibria with the expectation – or indeed the goal – that a new one will form. However, it's not always clear what this new equilibrium will be and if further moves are necessary to reach a desirable equilibrium. I think this is especially interesting in the context of a place that sees a lot of tourism: Londoners will adapt in one way, tourists might in another, or the period of adapting will take longer.”
The phased approach reminded us of the often cited urban design experiment at Michigan State University, where the dirt tracks made by thousands of students cutting across lawns were then paved, making permanent the visible desire lines. Oxford Street’s transitional programme embraces that same philosophy of listening before setting things in stone. The project has launched in its ‘transitional’ phase, due to more formally complete in 2028.
Julian Lewis, Director of East, the practice leading the project’s design, highlighted how this phased evolution allows the street to be tested by the public, enabling the team to develop permanent designs for the car-free sections that are directly informed by use. As Nabeel Khan, CEO of the Oxford Street Development Corporation noted, this test phase provides “a vital opportunity for us to learn from people's experiences and work closely with local communities, businesses and accessibility groups to ensure the future street is as welcoming and inclusive as possible.”
Las Ramblas, Barcelona: Unsplash/Jorge Fernandes Salas
As Oxford Street is Europe’s longest, busiest shopping street, comparisons have been drawn internationally, in particular with the pedestrian avenue of Las Ramblas in Barcelona, which in recent years has been expanded. A Guardian article reported there had been conversations between planners in the two cities on some of the common issues, in an interesting echo of the Sharing Cities initiative that led to cross-European collaboration on urban best practice.
Sharing spaces at different paces
Much of the design challenge comes down to how different groups share space once the physical barriers vanish. Londoners navigate Oxford Street at incompatible speeds, for different reasons. Stand outside Oxford Circus or Bond Street tube before 9am and you can see hundreds of commuters emerge, focused on speed, moving at pace towards their West End offices. They share the same ground with more leisurely browsers, families who linger to take photos, tourists who stop to check directions. The old roadway used to act as an informal barrier, with commuters sometimes carving out a fast lane centrally or along the kerb line. Watching how these speeds reorganise across a newly unconstrained space will reveal where the natural resting points, micro-greenery, pop-ups and transit channels should ultimately sit.
This living laboratory approach has its parallels with some of our housing and mobility initiatives at DG Cities too. The simple principle of listening, watching and understanding the existing issues as they affect people before proposing solutions is key – technology is a means to an end, which is social. Where we have used devices such as sensors, for example, to monitor damp and mould in housing, the insights from the tech are only half the story. The numbers only become useful only when combined with an understanding of the practical realities of residents on the ground. This need for a broader perspective on data led to the development of our asset management tool, the Home by Home Plan, which can integrate the scribbled updates of a maintenance engineer, for example, with large stock condition datasets.
That difference between intended and consequences also matters when it comes to accessibility. The recurring concern with any pedestrianisation scheme is avoiding the accidental isolation of wheelchair or mobility aid users, elderly visitors or families with buggies, all of whom might previously have relied on doorstep bus stops. The trial phase allows the team to assess where people actually rest or gather before permanent street furniture is anchored.
Could tech help to unblock the side streets?
At the perimeter, that physical testing could perhaps, in principle, be supported by some of the tech we explored in our kerbside and fleet trials. For example, digital booking systems to dynamically protect bay space on surrounding streets for black cabs, Dial-a-Ride and accessible drop-offs, keeping door-to-door transit reliable and reducing the build-up of traffic on surrounding streets. Down the central boulevard, low-speed, demand-responsive electric or autonomous micro-shuttles, in a similar vein to the shared vehicles trialled around the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, could easily bridge the last few hundred metres for anyone who finds the walk too long.
The same iterative logic applies to the logistics that keep Oxford Street running. Beyond the shop floor, stores rely on just-in-time deliveries to replenish tight stockrooms and banning lorries squashes all freight drops into a competitive pre-dawn window, potentially disturbing residents on nearby streets. Daytime deliveries are restricted to side streets or trolleys wheeled by hand.
One answer lies in the sort of multi-modal consolidation we championed across our fleet transition studies: shifting heavy bulk freight to edge-of-centre logistics points, then feeding the final half-kilometre using quiet e-cargo bikes and electric porters that move safely through pedestrian crowds. Again, it’s interesting to see how the logistics challenge refined through Oxford Street’s iterative approach will unlock insights for other traffic bottlenecks in the city and beyond.
Will it feel safe?
At dusk, the challenge shifts again, and the Oxford Street team is planning a mix of tech and design approaches. Our work in Greenwich with the evening and night time economy team has taught us a lot around perceptions of safety, particularly for women and girls. Once the department stores close and the commuter rush fades, wide pedestrian spaces can become less welcoming. Here, there’s a potential tech solution in IoT sensors and dynamic lighting that transitions from daytime white to a warmer glow, as well as in planning policy, which can encourage outdoor dining and pop-up events to ensure the street has life after dark. But first, the experience has to be understood.
“There could be a case for person-led research methods, similar to those used in night-time safety research, to 'walk with' people, perhaps Londoners that used to avoid the area,” suggests Leanne Kelly, Behavioural Economist. “In essence, to walk or wheel together, or with video capture; have them tell the story of their journeys, where they start, where they lead onto and why, how that felt at different moments, their experience vs expectations.”
“Visual cues and a very curated visual experience can draw attention and footfall through certain points and stops, at times unconsciously, but it is often to the benefit of some businesses – who controls the decisions? An alternative method that follows behaviour and is more deliberative can respond to how people want to experience and enjoy the space.”
Clearing the buses from Oxford Street is a major step in a phased project that has been years in the works, but it’s the first time these best laid plans meet public behaviour. The city is a continually evolving, human system and what we have learned across our projects is that any tech or designed solution works best when it recedes to let the desire lines shape the final blueprint. For now, we’re excited to follow the street’s progress and the role that live evaluation is playing in shaping its ‘final’ form.
