“Woonerf” is what the Dutch call a special kind of street or group of streets that functions as shared public space — for pedestrians, cyclists, children and, in some cases, for slow-moving, cautiously driven cars as well.
Roughly translated as “living streets,” the woonerf (pronounced VONE-erf) functions without traffic lights, stop signs, lane dividers or even sidewalks. Indeed, the whole point is to encourage human interaction; those who use the space are forced to be aware of others around them, make eye contact and engage in person-to-person interactions.
The Dutch term was coined in the 1960s when traditional urban architecture was being rethought, and today the woonerf sign is common, with slight variations, across Europe: a blue rectangle with stick-figure symbols of a ball-playing child and parent, a car, a house. They can even be found in pedestrian shopping zones like the bustling Alexanderplatz in Berlin.
In the Netherlands, more than 6,000 woonerf zones burnish these badges of communal spirit where motorized traffic doesn’t rule the road. Moreover, after a period in which they fell out of fashion, the woonerfs are making a strong comeback, and not only in the Netherlands. Woonerfs and their derivatives — sometimes called shared spaces, complete streets or home zones — are piquing the interest of urban planners in several countries.
The cities and towns that have adopted the model in one form or another span the globe: the artsy Saint-Henri neighborhood in Montreal; narrow, tourist-clogged Commercial Street in Provincetown, Mass.; the Bulgarian spa town of Hisarya; and districts or suburbs of Cologne and Freiburg, Germany, and Auckland and Christchurch, New Zealand.
In England and Wales there are more than 70 registered home zones, the British variant of the woonerf; from hundreds of applicants, Manchester, Plymouth, Leeds and Nottingham were chosen to receive government money to establish the zones.
In the United States, more than 400 cities either currently have, or soon will develop, “complete streets,” which are much more broadly defined than woonerfs, even allowing for the likes of sidewalks and the authoritarian stop sign. Yet, according to the Chicago-based National Complete Streets Coalition, the spirit of the woonerf inspired even the American movement.
The key to the woonerf is the primacy of nonmotorized activities.
Although cars are allowed in most — but not all — of the zones, they are generally restricted to “walking speed” (in Britain, the limit is higher, at 10 or even 20 m.p.h.) with the onus of responsibility for safety entirely on the driver.
Legally, the automobile driver is generally liable for an accident. But there tend to be fewer traffic mishaps when cars, people and bicycles mingle in close proximity; studies have found that accidents dropped by 40 percent or more in Dutch areas converted to woonerfs.
“You either love them or you hate them, depending on whether you’re a car driver or a parent with kids,” said Dirk van den Heuvel, an urban architecture expert in the Dutch city of Delft. “But they’re popular places to live here — low density and lots of greenery — and that’s why the model is making a comeback,” he said.