Slowth

Slowth is a New mobility transport planning concept, describing a physical situation, usually in a city, in which lower top speeds can lead to shorter overall travel times.

(The traditional "model" for this is of course Aesop’s tale of the race between the tortoise and the hare, in which the slow turtle arrives well before the fast rabbit.)

This is a powerful model which urban planners and traffic engineers, with a few notable exceptions, are only recently starting to take seriously. Also referred to as "slow transport".

A traffic system based on slowth is carefully calibrated to lower top speeds – 20 or 30 kph on most city streets is one common target – but where the entire system leads to far steadier flows and throughput, and, with it, greater safety, lower emissions, and higher quality of life all around.

The Australian environmental planner Peter Newman wrote this about slowth in a communication to the New Mobility discussion group on 1 January 2008 (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewMobilityCafe/message/2642):

  • "Great concept. It is at the heart of traffic calming of course and now '[...] Streets' as well as the Slow Cities idea from Italy. It is interesting that 20 to 30 kph is the speed that we are biologically made for as our maximum. It is the speed that sprinters reach and of course over thousands of years our hand eye co-ordination has adapted to that speed so we see so much more at or below that speed. Birds can see at much faster speeds and have adapted their skills and observation accordingly. We can’t do much at high speed other than stay straight so we have awful accidents all the time due to 'human error' and somehow get surprised by it."

Proponents

  • John Adams, United Kingdom.
  • Donald Appleyard, USA
  • Eric Britton, France
  • Dan Burden, USA
  • David Engwicht, Australia
  • Jan Gehl, Denmark
  • Ben Hamilton-Baillie, United Kingdom.
  • Mayer Hillman, United Kingdom
  • Hans Monderman, The Netherlands
  • Peter Newman. Australia
  • Stephen Plowden, United Kingdom

See also

  • Cittaslow (Slow cities movement, in English)
  • Home zones
  • Livable Streets
  • New Mobility
  • Pedestrian#Pedestrianisation
  • Public space management
  • Road traffic control
  • Shared space
  • Slow movement
  • Street hierarchy
  • Sustainable transportation
  • Traffic calming
  • Walkability
  • Walking
  • Woonerf