A weekly digest of small stories and subtle signals with one eye on the long term
Story 175
The heart of this blog is the Manifesto: ideas grounded in evidence, shaped around people, and attentive to both climate and community. This week, Bridged introduced a new organising frame — Trends — completing a four-part structure:
Trends - signals from the present which might point toward the future
Visions - plausible futures viewed based on values and experiences
Principles – small number of guiding ideas that shape how decisions are made
Proposals – specific interventions, big and small to change Barnes
Infrastructure - Richmond council to discuss HGVs on The Terrace
One of Bridged’s more ambitious proposals concerns the future of The Terrace. Walking every road and street in Barnes in early 2025, it became clear this was one of the most important and undervalued roads on the peninsula.
Encouraging, then, to see the Barnes Community Association’s (BCA) Travel Barnes Ponder Group (full disclosure — I’m a member) press the issue, launching a petition aimed at reducing heavy goods vehicle traffic through Barnes, including The Terrace.
This week, the BCA reported,
[The petition] received 1,192 signatures in support of our petition which now goes to [Richmond] council’s Transport and Air Quality Committee meeting in March for their consideration.
Much of the momentum behind the effort comes from the indefatigable Jan ‘The Petition’, called out in the BCA newsletter with this photo.
Anyone who has walked the High Street recently will likely have seen — or heard — her. A gem.
Richmond council has already committed to improvements on The Terrace, alongside broader medium-term plans. Pedestrian crossings should sit near the top of that agenda. For a reminder of how transformative small design decisions can be, this short film revisits the story behind the UK’s first pedestrian crossing.
Albert Bridge
Albert Bridge could remain closed to vehicles for upto a year after a structural crack was identified. Kensington and Chelsea council said,
This is not confirmation that we are closing the road for a year, but a precaution to ensure that, in the worst case scenario of a long running repair, other road authorities are aware of the closure and we can work together to limit traffic impacts
Economy - Richmond council Growth Plan
There’s a passage in Richmond council’s draft Growth Plan, that talks to the age. Every layer of government is fixated on securing growth,
The Growth Plan outlines how Richmond might evolve over the coming decade.
Bridged will return to the document in more depth, but several themes stand out.
The plan identifies key economic sectors,
And here are the enablers that will power those sectors,
Homes for all with 5,500 new homes
Transport, connectivity and infrastructure
A leading green and sustainable borough
Dynamic, thriving and safe town centres
What might this mean for Barnes?
Barnes already supports three — arguably four — successful retail parades. Its defining assets are its blue and green spaces. Housing growth opportunities remain limited. Growth, here, will almost certainly look different from growth elsewhere in the borough.
Still, the borough-wide targets are striking. By 2036, the goal is to increase the number of employee and self-employed jobs by 20%.
Governance - coping with Hill of Hysteria
More on the ‘Hill of Hysteria’, this time from from Alexander Premm, at The Lab of Thought. He explains ‘Why every car-free city policy faces public resistance (and then acceptance.)
He is particularly good on the importance of local politicians and these four lessons,
Resistance is temporary
Speak up for the change you want to see
Mind the language we use
Remember: resistance is part of every transition.
Against that backdrop, the Streets Ahead podcast discuses how local councils officers struggle sometimes to cope with the volume and nature of public challenge.
Transitions are rarely smooth. They are negotiated.
Lifestyle - how do we consume?
Without data, it’s incredibly hard to get a sense of scale.
One area where this is extremely apparent is in energy use and carbon emissions.
It’s hard to know what matters a lot, and what very little.
A lot of my work with data is about getting a sense of whether something is big or small, effective or not. Is that a big number?
Introducing her new interactive tool, Hannah Ritchie returns to a recurring problem in climate discussions: intuition is a poor guide to magnitude.
Her tool allows users to compare the energy use of everyday products and activities.
It is unexpectedly clarifying.
Try it.
Civic - Barnes Food Fair, off
BCA has paused the Food Fair after it described as a ‘fantastic’ 13 year fun,
In recent years .. changes within our volunteer team, together with rising infrastructure and delivery costs, have made it increasingly challenging to run an event on the scale of the Food Fair.
With a small part-time team supporting a growing programme of activities, we feel this is the right moment to pause and reflect.
In the meantime, they want to focus on
.. enhancing our Christmas events, developing new projects that serve different interests and groups across the community, and rebuilding and growing our volunteer base
This is a good move by BCA. The known story of Barnes since 1086 has been one continual change. There’s a skill to knowing when to stop, regroup and start over.