“I was a loser before, and now I'm a winner!”: Perceptions and lived experience of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

A recent policy intervention being implemented across UK cities is Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs). The purpose of LTNs is to remove through-traffic from residential streets by strategically placing bollards and planters at key locations to block passage of motor cars while allowing cyclists and other micromobilities to pass through. LTNs are intended to bring proposed benefits including improved road safety for walking and cycling, a better-quality environment and improved public health. There has been much debate about the likely ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of LTN interventions and reactions from the public have been divided. This article reports a study that investigated the perceptions and lived experience of residents who lived in, and along the boundary of, LTNs in the east of Oxford city, UK. Our starting premise is that LTNs reconfigure everyday lives, not just through infrastructure, but through emotion, identity, and contested claims to space, and that they are never merely infrastructural, but are political, affective, and shape, and are shaped by, how people move. To investigate this we used a combination of interviews and mobile ‘go-long’ interviews with residents who self-identified as ‘supporters’ or ‘opponents’ of the LTNs. This allowed us to reveal the complexity and nuance of opinion of LTNs based on personal and household circumstances. We highlight the disruption that such interventions can make, both positively and negatively, to a sense of belonging and point to the importance of citizen participation in the development of well-intentioned city policies that inevitably create both ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. • Provides evidence of the perceptions and experiences of residents living in and along LTNs in the city of Oxford, UK. • Demonstrates divergence and nuance in opinion of LTNs based on personal and household circumstances. • Provides important lessons for strategies targeted at reducing traffic in towns and the relative role of LTNs.