The Shared Space Phenomenon as a Tool for Rediscovering Mixed–Use Street

Abstract

Strengthening the place quality and the balance between different users of the traditional central or local main street with mixed functions is the most topical issue for all modern developed cities, where car traffic and transport infrastructure dominate over a wide group of other transportation modes and land uses. Traffic hierarchization and segregation principles, in addition to the division of responsibility areas in streets between different professions, created two different, incompatible worlds — the highway and the public place. Nowadays, we can create a good highway for cars and perfect places for people individually, but when we try to combine them, the worst public space appears. It prevents the existence of mixed use streets (in both theory and legislation) and it still weakens their place quality in real life. The need to find a more suitable approach to calm traffic on the main, multifunctional streets in the Czech Republic is emphasized by the growth of the global phenomenon of shared space theory.