"10,000 new homes in Carlisle's St Cuthbert's Garden Village includes plans for underpasses like this one in Castle Street - we must make sure women & other vulnerable people feel safe - natural surveillance necessary from houses and roads" - Cllr Brian Wernham, That'sTV (freeview channel 008)
"St Cuthbert's Garden Village is planned to be 10,000 new homes and there's been some active travel there, which is the code word for walking and cycling, but unfortunately some of the routes they've chosen as the walking routes and cycling routes actually aren't covered by what they call natural surveillance. That is, they're not overlooked by houses, they're not overlooked by passing traffic. In other words, they can be quite lonely places and in a couple of places they've planned underpasses. So I thought I'd do this on location from the Castle Street underpass in Carlisle. We can see it's not a very hospitable place. We've even got a problem with the disabled access now. You can see behind me the lift has been shut off. It's no longer in operation and the actual look of the place and so forth is not very friendly. There's no mirrors. You can't see around the corners and if I turn around the other way you can see the way that it underlates around. So women generally speaking, and here I am in the middle of the day, in the middle of a very busy city and you can hear the sirens going past upstairs, there's no natural surveillance down here and women and other vulnerable people I feel could be very, feel very vulnerable. So I think the St Cuthbert's Garden Village plan is meant to include an equality statement and in that equality statement we've got to make sure the biggest minority there is, that is women and females in general, which is 50% of the population, are not disadvantaged by the plans that have been drawn up which assume that they're going to feel safe using underpasses like this one."
๐ฌ Discussion
"10,000 new homes in Carlisle's St Cuthbert's Garden Village includes plans for underpasses like this one in Castle Street - we must make sure women & other vulnerable people feel safe - natural surveillance necessary from houses and roads" - Cllr Brian Wernham, That'sTV (freeview channel 008)
