It occupies public space. And, increasingly, quite a lot of it.

Much of Barnes2050’s thinking about designing Barnes SW13 for people first, not cars has focused on movement around the peninsula: Hammersmith Bridge, School Streets and pedestrian pop-ups.

But there is another question:

What about cars when they aren’t moving?

A change introduced by Bath & North East Somerset Council offers one answer.

You could call it an ‘SUV charge’.

But it is better than that.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

How much?

Bath now asks two questions about a resident’s car when calculating the price of a parking permit:

How much does it pollute?

How much street space does it occupy?

The first establishes the baseline price. Bath doesn’t simply distinguish between electric, petrol and diesel cars. The charge rises through a series of CO₂ bands: the more CO₂ a car emits, the higher the starting price. Diesel cars pay a further premium because of their impact on local air quality.

Then comes something more interesting.

Bath calculates the physical footprint of the car, its length multiplied by its width, using manufacturer’s measurements and including its extended mirrors.

Small cars get a discount. Bigger cars pay progressively more for their first permit.

An enormous electric car can pay more than a small electric car, even though neither produce exhaust emissions.

A second car attracts no small-car discount and a much larger size charge. Bath is putting a price on multiple-car ownership as well as pollution and size.

In case you are wondering, Bath says Blue Badge holders living in an affected area are entitled to a free permit and aren’t affected by these size charges.

Why is Bath doing this?

The council’s argument for these changes isn’t primarily climate-related. It’s about street space and safety,

To support public health and the safety of pedestrians, we already link the cost of parking permits to a vehicle’s emissions.

By also linking permit costs to the size of a vehicle, we encourage ownership of smaller vehicles that reduce risks for pedestrians and cyclists.

There is a reason this is becoming an issue. Cars have been getting bigger, says the council, and these bigger cars more popular,

SUVs became the most popular car type in the UK in 2024, accounting for over 60% of all new car sales, a significant increase from less than 50% in 2020.

Bigger cars consume more road and kerb space. They can make it harder to see and be seen. Their greater size and weight can also increase the consequences of a collision with someone walking or cycling.

Bath’s answer is to put a price on both costs: pollution and occupation.

How does this works in practice?

The easiest way to understand the policy is with actual cars.

Start with three electric vehicles.

All three begin with Bath’s basic £120 emissions charge because none produces CO₂ from its exhaust. What changes the final price is their size.

That is a £67 difference between two zero-emission cars simply because one occupies considerably more street space.

Same emissions. Different footprint. Different price.

Now turn the experiment around.

Take these three BMW models with almost exactly the same physical footprint: an electric iX1, petrol X1 and diesel X1.

Their size charge is essentially the same, at about £28.

This time what changes the price of the parking permit is pollution.

In this case the £38 price difference is caused by exhaust emissions.

Same footprint. Different exhaust emissions. Different price.

Put the two examples together and Bath’s system becomes surprisingly simple:

Bigger cars pay more.

More polluting cars pay more.

If your car is both, you pay more for both.

Notes and thoughts

This feels particularly relevant to Barnes.

A people-first approach is not simply about making it easier to walk or cycle. It also requires us to ask a more awkward question:

How much public space does your car consume?

That matters in Barnes with its frequently narrow streets, constrained kerb space and high levels of car ownership.

A parked car is, after all, private property occupying public land.

Bath has decided that the price of doing this should partly reflect the nature of that occupation.

Barnes2050 agrees.

That is why it supports an SUV parking charge. Bath has devised something more sophisticated: a charge that distinguishes between the pollution a vehicle produces and the space it consumes.

That is a better model.

Political leadership

Bath consulted the public before introducing the change. The size-based proposal was not universally popular, but neither does the evidence suggest overwhelming opposition.

The consultation attracted 490 responses; 50% supported it and 44% opposed it.

There’s also a lively Bath Reddit discussion which is also not representative but useful.

• Several highly upvoted comments strongly welcomed charging larger vehicles more because of space, safety and environmental impacts.

• Others thought the additional sums were too small to change car-buying behaviour.

• There were also objections from people saying they genuinely need larger vehicles — including one commenter describing needing a wheelchair-accessible vehicle.

Bath & North East Somerset Council, which has a Liberal Democrat majority, went ahead.

Between now and 2050, local politicians will encounter repeated opportunities to make decisions that may initially feel unfamiliar but which help places adapt to a changing climate.

This is one of them.

Richmond council should learn from its political colleagues in Bath and introduce a similar system across the borough.

If - when? - they do, they can return the favour by sharing their design of an ease to use online application form. The Bath council website is (unnecessarily) bad.

Is the price high enough?

This is where things become more interesting.

Our two electric examples suggest a Fiat 500e would cost roughly £110 a year to park, compared with about £177 for a Lotus Eletre.

Would someone spending £85,000 on a luxury electric car choose something smaller because the residents’ permit costs an additional £67 a year?

Perhaps not.

The difference may simply be too small to alter car-buying behaviour. Early discussion of the policy in Bath has raised exactly this issue. But that does not necessarily make the policy meaningless.

It establishes a principle: the amount paid for storing private property on a public street can reflect how much of that street the property consumes.

The model may prove more powerful than the price signal currently attached to it.

That deserves another story.

So does an even more fundamental question,

what should it cost to occupy a piece of public street in Barnes for a year?

My space in a bike hangar costs me nearly £72 annually. A residents’ car-parking permit can cost less, £68.50 in some Richmond control parking zones.

I have no beef with paying to store my bicycle there. The hangar has to be installed and maintained.

The interesting question is the other way round.

Why is storing a car on public land so cheap?

That is for later.

For now, Bath has done something worth watching.

It has begun to put a price not only on what a car emits, but on the space it occupies.

Continue exploring: Designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Barnes should be shaped around people living, working, playing and belonging, not chiefly around the movement and storage of cars.

More stories about designing Barnes for people first, not cars.

The London Assembly agrees. The Green Party supports the idea. As of August 2025, Richmond’s Liberal Democrat-led council does not. Bath council in the west country, also boasting a Liberal Democrat super majority, has implemented such a scheme.

This proposal is part of a wider Manifesto for a better Barnes: a collection of ideas grounded in local insight, climate responsibility and a people-first approach. You’ll find the full list of proposals, along with the thinking behind them, throughout this section.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Growth in SUV sales

Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) are now the best-selling type of new car in the UK. Along with 4x4s and they make up nearly a third of all cars on the road.

What’s more, like most cars they’re growing in size. Cars sold in the UK are growing in size by an average of 1cm every two years. The Vauxhall Corsa has widened by 24cm since its debut. The Ford Fiesta is 19cm broader than it was in 1989, while the Nissan Qashqai is 6cm wider than it was in 2008. This phenomenon—known as car bloat or carspreading—is not an accident. It’s market-driven, and councils have yet to catch up.

SUV’s pose a particular challenge, then. Their importance, growing popularity and size means action is needed now.

Why SUVs should pay more to park?

SUVs pose several threats to our environment. SUVs are different from smaller cars in ways that matte especially in a borough like Richmond. Additional car parking fees are one way to disincentives ownership or compensate for their use. The main problems:

• They take up more space

• They wear out roads faster

• They’re more dangerous to people walking and cycling

• They produce more carbon emissions

• They pollute more through tyres and brakes

This particular charge is useful, more generally, as

• Disincentive to private car ownership

• Strengthening the polluter-pays principle

They take up more space

Most SUVs are too big for Richmond borough’s 1.8m standard parking bays. A record 1,200,000 cars wider than 1.8 metres were sold last year. Many SUVs are now 2m wide.

This affects residents in different ways.

Let’s start with other car owners. SUVs demand to a larger proportion of all the available car parking. Given the growth in the sales, it is expected this problem will become even worse. CleanCities reports,

.. cities expected to lose 8.5-14% of on-street parking by 2040 if the (car spreading) trend continues unchecked.

London and Berlin are each predicted to lose about 100,000 parking spaces.

The pedestrians suffer too. In an area with so many Victorian streets, the SUVs jut into pavements, hampering pedestrians. When the space doesn’t fit the car, it’s the street that loses and in particular the people who walk on them.

The best way to address this challenge is to design Barnes around people first, not cars, a principle key to how Barnes2050 believes the next generation of this area should developed.

They damage roads faster

SUVs can weigh 30% more than a standard car, putting extra pressure on residential roads not designed for them.

The Times reported,

The damage done by a vehicle to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle weight — a principle used to describe the relationship between axle load and damage to the road surface.

Using the formula, a two-tonne SUV does 16 times more damage than a one-tonne car.

Councils foot the bill for repairs; SUV owners should too.

SUVs are more dangerous

SUVs sit higher, with bulkier front ends and larger blind spots. That makes collisions with pedestrians and cyclists both more likelyand more deadly.

Road safety data backs this up: the bigger the car, the greater the harm. Put another way, a child struck by an SUV is 82% more likely to die than if hit by a smaller car.

SUVs produce more carbon emissions

Even newer models of SUVs emit more CO₂ than mid-sized cars. Richmond Greens said

Petrol and diesel SUVs burn around 20% more fuel than medium cars

Indeed as reported earlier this year by the BBC,

If ranked among countries, the global fleet of SUVs would be the world's fifth largest emitter of CO2, exceeding the emissions of Japan and various other major economies.

SUV shed more toxic particles through tyres and brakes

Weight matters not just for fuel, but for friction. Heavier vehicles wear down tyres and brakes faster, releasing microscopic particles into the air. That kind of invisible pollution worsens asthma and enters our lungs and our children’s.

Disincentives against private cars

Richmond council says it wants fewer private cars and trips. But its policies tell a different story, the ‘car credibility gap’. Today, SUV owners pay no more to park than those with smaller, cleaner vehicles. That’s a missed opportunity. A stiffer car parking charge for SUVs would have a significant impact because they form such a large part of the borough’s private fleet of vehicles.

Price makes a difference. When cities raise parking charges, people drive less or park for shorter periods. In London, one study found that car trips into the centre dropped sharply when the Congestion Charge was introduced and fell even more when parking costs were added to the mix.

National research shows that when councils raise parking prices, demand usually falls. The effect varies by place, but the average change is big enough to matter.

Strengthen polluter pays principle

Richmond borough has the second highest level of consumption in London. We buy a lot of things. That is a function of the borough’s relative wealth. As we adjust our behaviours to reduce emissions - a Richmond council priority - a wider adoption of ‘polluter pays’ is the logical foundation for any disincentives in support of this ambition.

Practical considerations

SUVs are getting bigger with every passing year, creating congestion, taking up limited space on our pavements and streets as well as adding to road danger.

A smarter approach to parking charges isn’t just good policy. It’s a necessary step toward cleaner air, safer streets, and a better public realm.

Let’s put our kerbs to better use.

Barnes2050 has identified contested kerbs as one of the key trends through to 2050. Traditionally the preserve of cars, it is clear there are other often socially more useful uses. Removing some of the SUVs occupying vital space on our streets would make a meaningful contribution to that change.

Richmond pioneered emissions-based parking charges 20 years ago. In the short term the council should revert to that approach. And rejoin the other 20 London boroughs who do this.

Meanwhile, with one eye on a growing EV fleet, the council should investigate ways of shifting to a combination of size and weight. Again they do not need to work alone: they should act in concert with other boroughs starting with Liberal Democrat colleagues in Bath.

This proposal is a work in progress.

It will be reviewed and improved on a regular basis.

It was first published on 05 August, 2025.

It was updated on Thursday 17 September 2026 to include the link to lessons from Bath & North East Somerset Council as well as the relevant parts of the Barnes2050 Manifesto. Several other smaller stylistic changes were made to the presentation to bring into line with the evolving house-style.

You can find all the current proposals listed here.

There’s more about the principle to design Barnes around people first, not cars.

And if you want to know what role parking reform played in reclaiming the streets of Paris, you should try this video report.

Big Barnes Ponder has left an indelible mark on Barnes SW13 over the past decade, all for the better.

I support it, unequivocally.

So why am I writing this?

My answer begins in October 2023.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Ponder 1: What I missed — and what I learned

I wasn’t part of the first Barnes Ponder, run by the Barnes Community Association (BCA) from 2013 onward. I say ‘missed’ because I hadn’t grasped the scale of what others had been doing.

Yes, I saw, felt and enjoyed the changes: the new High Street scheme, the Suffolk Road playground, the parklet, open-air events on Barnes Green, the 22 bus campaign, re-routing of the 378, the rickshaw, the defibrillator phone box, the 20mph campaign, the Barnes Day Out project, the shop-local initiative and the murals.

Another version of the BCA’s blog includes a sentence that struck me,

Placemaking lies at the heart of the transformation — benefitting the whole community and drawing visitors .. year-round.

Placemaking. I’ll return to that.

Ponder 2: The reboot

The BCA Ponder team decided to reboot the project for a second cycle. This presentation even without the commentary explains that process

By the time of the ‘Town Team Meeting’ meeting in October 2023 the co-ordinating group had bundled a subset of the proposals into six thematic workstreams - One Barnes, High Streets Barnes, Placemaking Barnes, Safer Barnes, Green Barnes and Travel Barnes.

Progress continues.

A disclosure: I’m a BCA member. I happily pay my £18 a year. I helped with the traffic team at the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Barnes Fairs. I also offered my time for Ponder 2.

Notes and thoughts

Three impressions from that October 2023 meeting stayed with me:

• Don’t mention the Bridge

• Computer says no

• Back to basics, at least for me

Hammersmith Bridge was the elephant in the room. It came up as a joke, repeatedly. Everyone knew we could spend hours discussing and disagreeing, so, without saying as much, we avoided the topic. Like Brexit before, the Bridge was the unspoken B-word.

The Ponder team, understandably, concluded they had no real influence over the decision, and so chose not to engage with it. Ponder time should be focussed on the things that could be addressed. The right call.

But I wanted to talk about the Bridge.

I knew people in the room had strong, opposing views. I wanted to hear them and try to understand them. The BCA’s thoughtful report, published a year after motor traffic stopped crossing, captured the complexity well.

I wasn’t interested only in the mechanics. I wanted to explore what it might mean if the Bridge never reopened to private cars. What would that imply for Barnes? For the wider area?

That question has since become less hypothetical. But the more interesting question was always larger: what kind of place might Barnes become if we stopped treating the old pattern of movement as the inevitable one?

That interests in how an urban area works probably makes me as much urbanist as a placemaker.

Another memory: frustration. Not with the Ponder team. But in the room from people who deal with others when trying to make things happen. Sometimes it is silence from businesses; sometimes from government bodies. Transport came up a lot, particularly buses and rail.

I understand why this is off-putting. But this has been my life for over twenty years . I am drawn to these seemingly intractable ideas.

Ask some of the many (so many) financial professionals in Barnes about patient capital and they will assume you are talking about long term investment. But there is another kind: the intellectual and social capital required to stay with an idea that is initially rejected by your peers.

My public service experience shows it can take years, sometimes more than a decade, for radical ideas become reality.

Finally, I remember listening. To more than a hundred thoughtful, impressive residents. I felt out of my depth. A novice. I realised I held untested opinions. I needed to go back to basics. Build my own case, from the ground up.

I’ve done this before. I find that journey from not knowing to some understanding, intellectually and emotionally rewarding.

Where do I stand?

Ponder and Barnes2050 are walking the same ground, but sometimes looking towards different horizons.

Ponder is largely concerned with what can be improved now, working through local knowledge, voluntary effort and the institutions that already exist. It turns ideas into practical action. Barnes would be poorer without it.

Barnes2050 takes a longer view. It looks for signals of change already visible, imagines several possible futures and asks what choices made now might lead towards one rather than another.

The difference is not simply radical versus practical. Nor is it Ponder versus Barnes2050. It is partly a difference of method and timescale.

Ponder generally works within the constraints Barnes has inherited. Barnes2050 is more inclined to ask whether those constraints will, or should, still govern the place in 2050.

Cars are the clearest example. Ponder’s transport work understandably looks for achievable improvements within a place where high car ownership and use remain facts of life. They are making progress.

Barnes2050 starts with a different question: what happens if we design Barnes for people first, not cars?

That does not mean no vehicles. It means fewer unnecessary car journeys, better alternatives and public space that does not automatically put the movement and storage of private cars first.

That question has led in several directions. The disappearance of thousands of journeys after Hammersmith Bridge stopped carrying motor traffic challenged forecasts of permanent traffic chaos. Asking what happened to those journeys produced evidence about disappearing cars.

Accepting that some people cannot comfortably walk or cycle across the Bridge led to the idea of a lightweight public-transport connection. That developed into considerations about a different sort of Barnes bus and a possible Hammersmith Bridge pod pilot.

The method has become clearer too: observe, interpret, imagine. Look for evidence. Make the possibility tangible. Then test new thinking with purpose, accepting that some ideas will fail or change.

This remains ambitious. I may not have a role in achieving much of it. I’m still learning. Others are already doing important work. I may be late to the conversation. But if the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second-best time remains now.

And I want to do all this while helping Ponder improve the Barnes we already have.

One works patiently on the inherited place. The other asks what that place might need to become.

Yes, and…

Updates to this page

The first version of this story was published on 09 April 2025. You can read it here.

The story was updated on 15 September 2026 to reflect the following:

• The original defined the distinction between Ponder and this project too narrowly, with cars figuring prominently. Since spring 2025, Barnes2050 has developed beyond transport. It is now more clearly about taking the long view, reading signals, imagining alternative futures and developing ideas that conventional civic processes may have little room to accommodate.

• The original story only implied Barnes2050’s method. The project now has a recognisable discipline: observe, interpret, imagine; connect trends, visions, principles and proposals; then test ideas in public.

• The contrast with Ponder was too binary. This change reflects the evolution of my thinking, not any change in the position of the BCA. Ponder concentrates mainly on improving Barnes within today’s constraints. Barnes2050 also asks whether those constraints will, or should, still govern the place in 2050, and what Barnes may need to become.

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have said we should design Barnes for people first, not cars; prioritise getting buses and vans moving; embrace the e-bike generation; and test new thinking with purpose, regularly.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops, these principles will inform the proposals to help Barnes, place and people, thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

Barnes doesn’t get many opportunities to rebuild things from scratch. When one comes along, we should build for the climate we are going to have, not the climate we used to have.

We’re talking about you, Hammersmith Bridge. But not just you.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 5 - Use local renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

London’s development from the Romans onwards is a story of incremental change. Accumulation not re-invention.

There was no grand reset like Paris under Haussman or Rotterdam after the Second World War. Take the the Great Fire of 1666. Grand reconstruction plans by Wren and others were rejected and London was largely rebuilt on its existing street pattern.

Re-use, rebuild, retrofit is the London story.

But there are moments when enormous change happens locally. Between now and 2050, Barnes needs to seize those opportunities and build with one eye on the climate to come.

As the UK’s Climate Change Committee has made clear, we need to start adapting to the climate we are now expecting. So much of the discussion in the UK is about cutting emissions. We also urgently need to look at how our homes, schools and public spaces cope with the climate already coming.

Barnes has form.

Look at the WWT Wetland Centre. A stunning re-purposing of four Victorian reservoirs, a substantial piece of Barnes. The choice was to turn them into a vast green-and-blue space rather than more intensive development.

The Wetland Centre opened in 2000. Today it is difficult to imagine Barnes without it. The benefits go beyond biodiversity. The centre attracts between 170,000 and 250,000 visitors annually, supporting the local economy too.

It is a reminder that decisions made when land becomes available can shape Barnes for generations.

Two live developments are worth calling out to which this principle must apply.

The first is the overhaul of the Vine Road Recreation Ground. Barnes2050 has argued that key is the Eco-Community Hub, a proposed climate refuge for anyone in Barnes SW13 in the event of extreme heat or flooding. An example of building for the climate we are about to have.

Further north Hammersmith Bridge is presenting a related opportunity. For more than seven years, it has been open to pedestrians and cyclists but not general motor traffic.

Even if the UK government changes its mind and decides to fund the restoration of the Bridge to vehicles, we will have lost a wonderful opportunity if we simply recreate what was there before: more than 20,000 vehicle crossings a day.

Keeping the Bridge primarily for walking, cycling and other low-emission transport would use one of Barnes’s rare infrastructure renewals to help reduce transport emissions. Vine Road asks the other half of the climate question: how do we prepare Barnes for the effects of climate change that are already coming?

We need to do both.

The key is being honest about the climate we are going to have. The Met Office have provided a useful guide.

Or we could just look at Barcelona today.

Continue exploring: Use major renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

When Barnes gets a rare opportunity to renew infrastructure, it should build for the climate of the coming decades rather than the climate of the past.

More stories about using developments to make sure we are climate-ready

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have said we should design Barnes for people first, not cars; prioritise getting buses and vans moving; and embrace the e-bike generation.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops, these principles will inform proposals intended to help Barnes, place and people, thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

Some ideas will work. Some won’t. The problem is finding out which before spending too much money, causing too much disruption or making something difficult to reverse.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 4 - Test new thinking with purpose, regularly

Choosing an idea is one thing. Finding out whether it actually works is another.

Richmond council has a structured approach to trials. Look at its management of the Barnes Primary School Streets. Barnes Primary is operating under an Experimental Traffic Order with baseline monitoring, consultation and subsequent review before a decision to amend, remove or make the scheme permanent.

Barnes already experiments. We just don’t necessarily think of these things as experiments. A School Street, a Parklet and an extraordinary flood-resilient road look like completely different projects. But they share something: try something, observe what happens, learn, decide what comes next.

Kitson Road is the definition of modest radicalism. Could it be any more Barnes? Richmond’s first fully permeable public road, stores more than 100 cubic metres of water beneath the surface and is intended to reduce flood risk to 25 properties. It was explicitly delivered as a trial through Community BlueScapes.

Some residents will struggle with this way of managing change. Sometimes things can look a mess. Think of those garish signs and temporary traffic lights littering the landscape. Trials can force people to change long-held habits. Even a temporary structure can be disruptive, especially annoying if the trial proves the idea doesn’t work.

But that is the beauty of this approach.

Better to find out something is not working as planned having spent a few thousand pounds rather than few hundred thousand or a million. Better a few temporary sandbags and road-signs than permanent changes to the hard-landscape.

Proponents of change need to be honest going into a trial. A trial isn’t simply a temporary version of something you have already decided to do. They need to accept something wont work as they hoped.

Maybe closing part of The Terrace for the Boat Race is daft. Maybe the service challenges will be too much for the proposed BHELT pods.

They also need to be clear how the trial will be judged. A successful trial will gather useful information so the planned change can be improved. The trial itself will alert more people to what might be ahead.

After twenty years practising this approach professionally, on projects large and small, I have become a firm believer in testing ideas before committing to them. Not because every trial works, but because you nearly always learn something when it doesn’t.

Barnes cannot know in 2026 which ideas will prove right for 2050. Nor should it wait until it does. Try things. Decide beforehand what success looks like. Learn from what happens.

Keep what works. Change what doesn’t.

Continue exploring: Test new thinking purposefully, regularly

Barnes should trial is now ideas before implementing them, learn from the results and adapt accordingly.

More stories about testing new thinking purposefully.

Next, using local renewal to build for the climate we can expect.

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. So far, the principles have asked who is Barnes’ public space actually for and pointed out that not all traffic is equally useful.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops you’ll see how these principles inform the proposals for helping Barnes - place and people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

The next principle would have been unimaginable at the turn of this century.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 3: Embrace the e-bike generation

Tell a Barnes resident 25 years ago that one day, he or she would see hundreds of e-bikes in Barnes every day. Pelotons regularly cruising along Church Road heading to and returning from work. Clusters of first light, then dark, hire bikes parked on spare pavement corners. Friday crowds heading on two wheels over Hammersmith Bridge to the riverside pubs.

Well, you would have been laughed at. The word ‘lycra’ would have featured prominently

And it’s not just Barnes. Some 1.5 million hire e-bike journeys were made in Richmond in 2025.

The rise of the e-bike is remarkable. ‘Boris bikes’ started in July 2010, Lime bikes in 2018 although they didn’t reach Richmond until 2021

E-bikes have a particular appeal to younger adults , including Gen Z. Born between 1997 and 2012 , they are amongst the biggest renters. A Department for Transport Survey found 16% of the 13-24 age group used them.

You might call them the e-bike generation.

This makes sense.

Younger people may use e-bikes because they’re cheap, convenient, fun, fast in London, don’t require parking, work well with public transport; or because they don’t own cars. Probably some mixture.

For the rest of us there’s a bigger prize. This is the chance to shift the thinking of a generation away from ‘cars as default’.

If we could do that, fewer vehicles might follow. After all, every person who opts for an e-bike rather than a car leaves a little more room on the road for essential vehicles.

This might be happening. The e-bike demographic extends beyond Gen Z. Lime says its average London rider in 2024 was 34. These Millennials were among the first to enjoy the thrill of zooming into town on a bike. They have stuck with it.

Barnes2050 believes there will be another e-bike generation by 2050. Again, you can see this trend emerging in the data. Boomers (cough) are renting and buying e-bikes. It’s not just the health benefits: they are ‘a miracle pill for older adults’. The pedal assist is welcome even on the gentlest slopes, such as those you find in Barnes.

This increasingly important form of transportation could change the nature of Barnes. And in doing so it might influence the make-up of the population.

Barnes has an ageing population. That makes it even more important to pay attention to how younger generations are already choosing to travel.

Good planning should look forward. We should design, at least in part, around the habits of the people who will inhabit that future, not just those whose habits formed decades ago.

If we want younger people to build their lives in Barnes, our streets should increasingly reflect the ways they already move: walking, cycling, e-bikes and public transport. The transport system could help create tomorrow’s population and community.

More e-bikes have downsides. This has to be managed. Barnes2050 believes this a transition cost.

The UK spent more than 12 years demanding that new cars be preceded by someone carrying a red flag, and another 18 before the rules were truly relaxed. New forms of mobility arrive messily. Regulation, infrastructure and social norms take time to catch up.

By 2050 - ideally much sooner - we will have sorted out anti-social parking

We know from the experience in Amsterdam, a city can change how it moves. It became car-dominated and then deliberately reversed course.

That process has started elsewhere in London. The City recorded 139,000 cyclists a day in October 2024, nearly twice as many cycles as cars and over half the peak-hour traffic.

What looks normal in Barnes in 2050 may be just as surprising to us as today’s e-bike-filled streets would have been 25 years ago. The difference is that this time we can see the change coming.

Today’s teenagers will be the middle-aged residents, parents and workers of Barnes in 2050. Rather than expect them to inherit our habits, we should be designing partly for the way they want and need to move.

After all, they are already showing us.

Continue exploring: Embrace the e-bike generation

E-bikes could make many more local journeys practical and our younger residents happier if Barnes gives them the space to flourish.

More stories about encouraging e-bikes

Next, how do we change things without knowing whether they'll work?

Barnes will change. The question is not whether change happens, but what criteria we use when choosing among competing changes. The first of these was: Design Barnes for people first, not cars.

As the Barnes2050 Manifesto develops you’ll see how these principles inform the proposals for helping Barnes - place and people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050.

This second principle starts with an apparent contradiction.

Barnes2050 has argued repeatedly for fewer cars and for giving less of our limited public space to their movement and storage.

But Barnes still needs vehicles.

Buses. Ambulances and fire engines. Builders and tradespeople. Delivery vans. Dustin wagons. Carers. Taxis. And, yes, private cars for journeys and people for whom the alternatives don’t work.

So perhaps the useful distinction isn’t between vehicles and everyone else.

It is between the traffic Barnes needs and the traffic we could reasonably do without.

Road space on the peninsula is limited. If we want buses, deliveries and other essential vehicles to move more easily, one answer has be to make more room for them by reducing less necessary traffic.

That is the thinking behind this second principle.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Principle 2: Get buses and vans moving

Barnes2050 does not want to ban cars or create a vehicle-free corner of London. The hope is to balance between vehicles and the society they serve.

The debate is about the volume and mix of traffic on the peninsula’s roads and streets.

Road space is scarce. Reducing low-value private-car traffic can improve conditions for socially useful motor traffic.

Part of the issue is the nature of our landscape. So much of SW13 is green or blue, grass or water. It is part of what makes Barnes distinctive. As good stewards, we should strengthen and improve that, never reduce it.

Much of the remaining land is already developed: housing, schools, commerce and roads. It is the pressure on the latter that informs this principle.

In the last decade, Barnes has begun converting road and parking space into bikehangars, rain gardens and parklets. Barnes2050wants this process to continue, but believes we need principles to guide it.

Roads are a limited public resource and every vehicle is not equally valuable. When space is scarce, Barnes should favour journeys that benefit many people over those that benefit only one. Buses, emergency vehicles and commercial deliveries keep the village functioning. Making their journeys quicker and more reliable should take precedence over adding capacity for private cars.

Barnes2050 believes there needs to be fewer cars, whether fuelled by petrol, diesel of electric. That would allow easier movement for more important vehicles, which in priority order are:

• Blue light services

• Buses

• Commercial vehicles

It is worth saying, again, Barnes2050 has found no evidence the emergency services are struggling to fulfil their role in Barnes because Hammersmith Bridge is not open to motor traffic.

But we know buses are slowing down.

According to The Londoner‘s analysis of Transport for London data for 2015 and 2025, Richmond council suffered steepest dropin bus speeds of London’s 32 boroughs.

Buses are an important part of the active travel mix. The passenger numbers are falling and slower and less reliable buses may make reversing that decline harder. So what can we do to improve their speed and attractiveness?

Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine there will be fewer commercial vehicles in future. Whilst writing this article, parcels were delivered for the neighbours. As for the builders….

By 2050, the hope is a number of measures - a car-free Bridge, 20mph speed limit, School Streets plus pedestrian pop-ups,SUV parking charges, bike hangars and trees replacing car parking spaces, more space to park e-bikes and a better pedestrian experience - will introduce sufficient friction to discourage car-ownership and encourage more to walk, wheel, bus and bike.

Continue exploring: Get buses and vans moving

Reliable buses and efficient deliveries depend on freeing essential vehicles from unnecessary traffic and obstacles.

More stories about prioritising buses and vans

Next in the series, embracing the e-bike generation

Some will be better than others. Some ideas will solve one problem while creating another. So if Barnes2050 is going to argue seriously for change, it needs a way of deciding which ideas are worth pursuing.

That is where principles come in.

The Manifesto is the heart of this journal: the place where the ambition is made visible, tested, refined and, when necessary, reworked.

It is made up of several chapters.

Inputs

• Trends - signals from the present which might point toward the future

• Visions - plausible futures based on values and experiences

Outputs

• Principles – small number of guiding ideas that should how we decide

• Proposals – specific interventions, big and small to change Barnes

This post introduces the next of these: principles.

They are the criteria we should use when choosing among competing changes between now and 2050.

These are not predictions about Barnes in 2050.

Good proposals will usually satisfy several of them. Most will involve trade-offs. These principles are intended to help make those trade-offs explicit.

There are always downsides. Our active travel Bridge is increasingly popular but it denies some Barnes’ residents the ability to move easily.

Because these are meant to practical, they will be limited in number.

Like the rest of Barnes2050, they are subject to change. Launch, learn iterate is the engine for this process. If you have any comments about this approach or the specifics below, please do get in touch.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Barnes2050 Principles

This week sees the launch of the first Barnes2050 principles.

Today - design Barnes for people first, not cars.

Over the next few days, I’ll introduce four more:

• Get buses and vans moving

• Embrace the e-bike generation

• Test new thinking with purpose, regularly

• Use major renewal to build for the climate we are going to have

Together they will become the framework Barnes2050 uses to judge future proposals.

They are not the only principles that matter. They are simply the ones that have emerged most clearly from the work so far.

These will be brief descriptions. Deeper, fuller consideration will follow.

Design Barnes for people first, not cars

This lies at the heart of Barnes2050 thinking.

What kind of place are we trying to create?

For much of the last century, Barnes—like most places in Britain—has been shaped around the movement and storage of private cars.

Barnes2050 starts from a different assumption: public space should first serve the people who live, meet, walk, shop, play and spend time here.

That does not mean every road should become pedestrianised, or that vehicles no longer matter. Often they will continue to dominate. But they should not dominate by default.

Walk - literally - for twenty minutes in any direction on the peninsula and the opportunities become obvious.

At every junction, crossing and stretch of pavement, ask the same question: could we make life easier, better for people walking, meeting, shopping, waiting, cycling, catching a bus, pushing a buggy, using a wheelchair or simply spending time outdoors?

The rewards are wider than transport: healthier lives, stronger local businesses, extend far beyond public transport, lower emissions and a more sociable Barnes.

Continue exploring: Designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Barnes should be shaped around people living, working, playing and belonging, not chiefly around the movement and storage of cars.

More stories about designing Barnes for people first, not cars

Notes & thoughts

Trends and visions help Barnes2050 understand possible futures; principles help it choose between them; proposals are what follows from those choices.

This the first of five principles published this week. Each will be explored in more detail over the coming days. Next, Get buses and vans moving.

Together these principles will become the framework Barnes2050 uses to judge future proposals. If a proposal doesn’t support one or more of these principles, the chances are it isn’t a proposal worth pursuing.

Over to you.

If these are the rules by which Barnes2050 intends to judge change, are they the right rules?

Let me know what you think.

Until then, next in the series, how do we get our buses and vans moving, again?

I am, probably, addicted to both.

Most days there are news stories relevant to Barnes2050. Occasionally something else jumps off the page. Yesterday it was a quote.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we help Barnes - the place and its people - thrive and be climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

I started the inevitable online search. Did Jules Verne say this? When? What was the context?

That was when I stumbled on Elif Shafak’s National Humanities Lecture from February 2026. She said of this quote,

I like this phrase.

I like how it combines two separate components.

On the one hand, it opens up space for imagination, creativity.

On the other hand, for awareness, knowledge, research, observation, critical thinking.

So as to be able to live our lives to the fullest, we need both.

Only the humanities and the arts are capable of blending these two.

Only with their help can we continue to dream with our eyes open.

(Word) Perfect.

I realised that is how I see Barnes SW13 now.

I walk and bike the streets of Barnes everyday. Since I started this project I am more aware, more sensitive of what is around me. Every change of sign. The builders starting afresh at another home or shop.

Then something happens.

The synapses crackle. My lived experiences and values kick-in. What I see collides with what I carry.

I am still a liberal arts student. A lifetime drenched in history. The journalist’s instinct to ask another question. The R&D habit of wondering what happens next and whether we might try something different. Curiosity. Lots of it.

The Manifesto chapters are my (admittedly clumsy) attempt to codify some of what I carry. To make the values behind the instinct visible.

But instinct isn’t enough

Then comes the test. Is the thing real? Is there evidence? Has somewhere else solved it differently? What am I missing?

Sometimes the original thought survives. Sometimes it changes completely. Sometimes it deserves to die.

Shafak and before her, Verne provide a more arresting description.

I have been dreaming with my eyes open.

Barnes2050 collects these.

They are not predictions. They are nudges. Signals.

What might this mean for Barnes SW13? What can we learn from them? Which should we resist?

Horizon scanning, the name given to this process, is standard practice in many businesses and organisations. There are many different approaches. The Canadian government, for example, offers a useful rule of thumb: three related weak signals from different sources are a reasonable indication that change may be occurring.

Bear that in mind with this selection of stories from a scorching August at the end of the UK’s hottest summer on record,

• Hammersmith Bridge: council submits £128m repair bid

• Richmond borough’s most unsettling loudspeaker

• Encouraging signs of local political leadership, maybe

• No more contrails in our sky?

• e-bikes are the quickest way to travel and now come insured, some for free

• Taxing income and wealth is .. complicated

• Barnes’ four shopping parades in good health

• Generate your own electricity, even under grey skies - plug-in solar now available

But let’s start with the climate.

Climate: Heatwave 5

The clue is that number.

The rain may have arrived before the month closed, but by then the landscape was hurting. Another ‘false autumn’.

Barnes2050 has argued since launch that heat and water are equally threatening to Barnes.

But only now is the scale becoming clear.

The Guardian reported ONS estimates that more than 40,000 deaths were associated with England’s hottest days between 1988 and 2025. The figures do not include 2026. London had the highest proportion of heat-associated deaths of any English region.

Gulp.

Barnes is an ageing village in an ageing borough. That does not make everyone here especially vulnerable to heat, but it surely makes the consequences worth understanding.

James Tucker at the ONS reported,

Our results show that the gap between heat- and cold-related deaths has narrowed in recent years as the proportion of heat-related deaths has increased.

Insight from the Met Office suggests these temperatures should no longer surprise us. We have a reasonable idea of the direction of the local climate by 2050.

The question is whether Barnes is changing quickly enough to live comfortably, and safely, in it.

By month end, attention had turned to the tragedy in Nepal.

Jonathan Watts has explained explained the between the human-induced climate crisis and the glacier collapse that caused the massacre,

Two days before the collapse, the ground temperature hit its highest point in the last two years, according to Dr Hamish Pritchard, a glaciologist with the British Antarctic Survey, whose team had sensors 6 miles (10km) away from the site.

‘These high temperatures would have weakened the snowpack, filled crevasses with water and thawed the bonds between ice and rock that hold these glaciers in place,’ he told the Science Media Centre.

Nepal contributes less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while its neighbours India and China are among the world’s biggest emitters. The Himalayas, which span India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, have been warming at a rate nearly 50% faster than the global average.

Bill McKibben did the maths,

.. On average, Nepalis produce about four-tenths of a ton of carbon emissions annually, compared with about 14 tons for an American. More than 99 percent of the country’s electricity comes from hydropower (though much of that capacity was wiped out in last week’s floods).

He ends,

They are not causing the crisis that is killing them: we are.

Meteorologists have warned us 2027 could be wetter and could be hotter because of El Niño. As Jason Rowlatt reported on BBC News, this could be a the strongest in decades.

Another reminder that climate adaptation is not something to begin in 2049.

Infrastructure: H&F bid for Structures fund

UK government deadlines and heatwaves came together neatly this month.

It was hot weather that eventually did for Hammersmith Bridge. Yet loud demands continue for its restoration to carry private vehicles, despite transport being the second-largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in Richmond borough.

August was a critical month for the UK Government’s £1 billion Structures Fund for major local infrastructure, including bridges, flyovers and tunnels.

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) council along with many others, submitted a bid to fund phased repairs to Hammersmith Bridge. It had earlier put the estimated cost at £128 million, aimed at keeping the bridge operational for pedestrians and cyclists and keeping the river beneath it open.

The Government now has to weigh this bid alongside many others from across England. In many ways they face the same choice as they did when asked to fund a full restoration - 40% HB options open to UKG

If H&F does not secure the money it needs, the future of the Bridge becomes uncertain again. H&F council leader Stephen Cowan has repeatedly stressed the extent of repairs still required.

Maybe no cash, no Bridge.

But certainly no repair programme and no confidence about the Bridge’s long-term future. And no point designing clever new ways of getting people across it if the underlying structure cannot be secured.

So maybe no pod.

The UK Government says Structures Fund decisions are expected in autumn 2026.

Meanwhile the Finns, not trolling us but it feels like, have just built a gorgeous, epic bridge.

Supporters of London’s premier active-travel bridge* are always keen to see others spring up around the world.

Helsinki’s new Kruunuvuori Bridge is the longest bridge in Finland and cars will not use it. It has been designed for trams, cycling and walking as part of the wider Crown Bridges project.

The point here is not that *Hammersmith Bridge should imitate Helsinki’s.

Rather cities elsewhere are still building major infrastructure around public transport, walking and cycling. That is a useful reference point when we decide what sort of bridge Barnes needs for the next 25 years.

Infrastructure: Richmond’s digital environment

This is a curious story.

Or rather, it prompted a curious response about which I am still not sure.

Richmond council has installed a new safety speaker at Teddington Lock to deter dangerous jumping into the Thames.

Despite public notices, extra physical barriers and warnings, people continue to jump from the bridge into the river.

The new speaker plays a short message when CCTV operators see anyone approaching the edge.

Why does that feel different?

We are already surrounded by technology that watches, senses or responds to us.

Traffic lights change. Zebra crossings bleep. Cameras monitor roads and buildings. Images from private doorbells and security cameras circulate around neighbourhood WhatsApp groups after an incident.

The Metropolitan Police now uses live facial recognition elsewhere in London.

Autonomous vehicles, already on London’s streets in small numbers, are are covered in sensors.

The environment is becoming live and alive, if not sentient.

Now add the human in the loop: someone at a remote location observes behaviour through a machine and speaks directly into the physical space.

That feels like a signal from the future.

For Barnes, the question is how comfortable we will be as public space becomes increasingly monitored and responsive, and what rules govern it.

Governance: Lessons from Ulez and car-free days

Where are the ‘blade runners’ now?

Sadiq Khan, writing in the The Guardian, said

There is now a mountain of evidence to show that the Ulez has slashed air pollution and improved air quality across London, and research published by Imperial College London earlier this year showed that this is already saving lives.

A new, independent study published by Queen Mary University of London today goes further still, showing how – by helping to clean up the capital’s air – the Ulez is improving the lungs and lives of London’s children

But this is not really a story about Ulez.

It is about politicians.

Christian Wolmar, also writing in the Guardian, argued,

We need politicians to explain why the unrestricted use of cars in urban centres is damaging to the local economy as well as to the environment, to people’s health and to the overall feel of a place.

And

Brave politicians need to take on opponents without compromise.

That is what Khan did with Ulez.

He came under huge pressure to backtrack, including after the Uxbridge by-election. He stuck to the policy. London subsequently recorded substantial reductions in nitrogen dioxide and other pollutants.

Other politicians occasionally show the same willingness.

Richmond council leader, Gareth Roberts is rightly proud of his early move to implement 20 mph speed limit across the borough.

We need more of this. And maybe there are signs.

Richmond council is becoming more willing to manage road space flexibly.

It continues to experiment with School Streets, including the trial around Barnes Primary. Roads already close for exceptional events. And this September the council invited residents to ‘turn our road into a Play Street for a day’.

None of this amounts to wholesale pedestrianisation.

That is the point.

Barnes2050 has made the case for a pedestrian pop-up along The Terrace on Boat Race day. Something similar could happen around Barnes Pond during Barnes Fair.

Roads do not have to perform exactly the same function every hour of every day.

Perhaps the emerging signal is simply this: we are becoming more comfortable with temporarily reallocating public space for public purposes.

By 2050 that may seem considerably less radical than it does today.

Transport: Mitigation - reducing contrails

Responses to climate change are usually divided into two broad categories.

Mitigation reduces the causes of climate change. Adaptation is how we adjust to its effects.

In the month when debate continued about Heathrow expansion came news of an attempt to tackle a less visible part of aviation’s climate impact.

Contrails.

Operation Blue Skies is a £5 million programme involving NATS, Google, the Met Office, Cambridge and Imperial universities and other organisations.

The idea is surprisingly simple.

Aircraft sometimes create persistent contrails which trap heat in the atmosphere. Researchers believe that relatively small changes in altitude could allow aircraft to avoid some of the atmospheric conditions in which the most warming contrails form.

Trials are due to take place across North Atlantic airspace during this winter and next.

This matters because contrails are thought to account for roughly a third of aviation’s total climate impact, as Simon Clarke explains.

There is an intriguing bigger point.

Some of the response to climate change may not involve giving something up or replacing an entire technology. It may come from changing how existing systems operate, using better data to remove some of their worst consequences.

In this case for Barnes, sitting beneath the flight paths of one of the world’s great airports, that is worth watching.

Transport: e-bikes fastest way round London and some of them are now insured

Barnes2050 believes in the e-bike generation.

For the renters there are so many benefits but one of them is speed.

New research, according to CyclingElectric.com, shows

cycling is the fastest inner city rush hour transport, with new findings from London showing that two wheels beats the tube and cars for most trips.

Terra who did the research

.. analysed 2,168 weekday bike trips where a wearable device was worn, and a key finding emerged; the bike beat 92% of matched trips aligned to TfL services, as well as 75% of rush hour driving trips.

That does not prove that a bicycle is always the fastest way around London, but it suggests cycling is extremely competitive for many everyday urban journeys.

Meanwhile Forest has introduced third-party insurance for riders. According to The Times (££ Paywall)

Forest, which operates in 20 of London’s boroughs, will have third-party insurance to protect people injured and property damaged by cyclists on their e-bikes starting in September.

Critically this will be adopted at no added cost to riders. Lime, Bolt and Santander offer similar cover but charge riders.

This may sound like administrative detail.

It is actually part of normalisation.

E-bikes are becoming an increasingly established part of the transport system around them: quicker, regulated, insured and, eventually, perhaps better integrated.

Small steps towards making an important, flourishing form of transport feel ordinary.

Welcome to this regular digest of stories and signals about future Barnes.

Economy - Income tax and Mansion Tax

Richmond borough is the sixth largest contributor of income tax in London, according to LondonCentric, contributing more income tax than any of the UK’s 15 largest cities outside London and more than Glasgow and Manchester combined.

That tells you something about the peninsula.

It’s against that background that discussion in August continued around another potential tax, commonly called the Mansion Tax. Its proper name is the High Value Council Tax Surcharge.

Unsurprisingly, in a borough, and especially a place such as Barnes, with an extraordinary concentration of expensive property, the impact would be substantial.

More than half the expected national revenue from the surcharge is estimated to come from properties in Richmond, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Wandsworth.

Around 5,730 Richmond properties are expected to be affected.

The leaders of the four councils have written to the Government urging it to rethink the scheme.

This complex and complicated.

The UK Government’s argument is understandable. Council tax remains based on 1991 property valuations, so a very expensive house can therefore attract a remarkably small annual property tax relative to its current value.

But Barnes exposes the complications too.

In the immediate future, Barnes risks becoming London’s ‘largest gated community’.

Not because of the Bridge. This statement would stand even if cars were restored to Hammersmith Bridge.

The extreme concentration of wealth in property creates the gate.

Take that far enough and you arrive at a strange Barnes in 2050: an ageing village in an ageing borough where only people who already possess considerable housing or pension wealth can afford to remain.

In today’s terms that would mean ‘Boomers with defined-benefit pensions and City bonuses’.

Is that what we want?

We may be approaching the political limits of relying so heavily on earned income as the tax base. Wealth and particularly property wealth, is an obvious place governments will continue to look.

That will force some people to think differently about where and how they live.

Conversation at the Barnes Community Association Barnes Tuesday Local has turned more than once to downsizing during retirement or converting homes for multigenerational living.

By 2050 both may become more common.

And perhaps Barnes would be better for it. A place where a larger house does not automatically mean one or two older people occupying it until the end of their lives.

That transition may be uncomfortable for individuals.

But the alternative could be a village steadily pricing out its own future.

Economy - more small and independent traders opening

The four retail parades in Barnes play an outsized role in creating and maintaining this community.

My working assumption, which Barnes2050 intends to test properly, is that part of this comes from the unusually high proportion of small and independent traders and relatively few long-term empty units.

They provide Barnes some of its distinctive character, alongside the green and blue landscape.

The important thing is to maintain all three by 2050.

For the moment, the next generation of retailers is taking its place.

Greenfield Artisan Butchers are at 189 Castlenau.

This is the second new opening recently on Castlenau. Fat Goose Bakery already seems popular. The shop was busy on the two mornings I cycled past.

Head towards the Pond and you’ll notice the former Cote site will soon be the home of the Little Navigators nursery for children aged between 9 months and 5 years. Founder Celine Stonex-Kennedy lives locally and plans to open in early 2027. You can register your here.

Head towards the river and where the High Street ends, you find work is underway at Alison, a coffee shop and patisserie opposite The Watermans.

And Church Road has openings coming too. One Church Road - guess the address - will be a high-end menswear shop. Dee Cafe at 153 Church Road will offer ‘Fine coffee, fresh food, inspired by art and nature’.

Individual shops will always come and go.

The signal worth watching is whether Barnes can continue replacing them with distinctive, viable local businesses rather than allowing vacancies to accumulate or every parade to become interchangeable with every other affluent London neighbourhood.

There’ll be much more on this topic in the coming months.

Housing: Plug-in solar now available from Argos

Look the roofs in Barnes and you will find solar panels.

Not many, but on most streets there seems to have one house with a shiny roof, panel-clad.

Until now installing solar has generally meant making quite a substantial intervention in your house.

That may be changing, as the BBC reported,

They are significantly cheaper than roof panels, can be installed without an electrician and are suitable for properties with outdoor space, including some balconies.

The UK Government hopes they will help households save money and reduce reliance on imported fuel.

Approved systems can supply up to 800W. The UK Government estimates they could provide up to a fifth of an average household’s electricity and save up to £110 a year.

The Evening Standard reported that Argos became the first major retailer to sell them, with other large retailers expected to follow.

Prices are still substantial: current Argos kits start at around £600. That should fall in the years ahead.

The important point is what happens when generating some of your own electricity changes from being a building project to something approaching a consumer purchase.

Barnes has thousands of homes, gardens, terraces, balconies and outbuildings where conventional rooftop solar may be expensive, complicated or inappropriate.

By 2050, will generating at least some electricity at home feel as unremarkable as installing broadband?

That suddenly looks a little more plausible.

Which of these stories will matter in five years?

Most weak signals disappear. A few turn out to have been early glimpses of something much bigger.

The useful thing is to notice them.

You can read back-issues of this take on the recent news relevant to future Barnes here.

Putney Society’s response to the consultation about Heathrow’s expansion has many qualities.

Short.

Insightful.

Evidence-rich.

And relevant to Barnes.

Putney Society are calling for,

• guaranteed respite from aircraft noise for at least nine hours a day

• a condition that the total noise impact of a three-runway Heathrow should be no greater than the currently forecast impact of the airport without a third runway

• a seven-hour night flight ban as soon as daytime capacity allows; to be extended to eight hours no later than when a third runway opens

• a commitment in principle to steeper descent approaches.

This is their full response. Or you can download the file below.

260831 Henps Response Putney Societydf

288KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The deadline for consultation is 23:59 on Tuesday 01 September 2026.

This is the UK Government survey.

Gatwick Airport’s expansion has been approved. Attention now returns to Heathrow’s plans.

The deadline is approaching to have your say on the proposed third runway.

The UK government will consider the responses it receives before deciding whether the Heathrow Expansion National Policy Statement (HENPS) will be amended and then finalised. Parliament will also need to vote on the policy before it goes ahead.

The proposed third runway is only half the story, though.

There is a second review which could have just as large an impact on Barnes SW13. The third runway might ultimately be rejected, yet the redesign of London’s airspace could still leave the skies above Barnes busier than they are today.

In many ways, Barnes sits at the heart of what should be a national discussion. The runway debate asks whether Britain wants a bigger Heathrow. The airspace debate asks which communities will live beneath the aircraft.

Maybe that opening sentence should have read: one down, two to go.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050? If this is your first visit, you might want to start here.

Living beneath the western approach

Heathrow Airport is a wonder of planning and management.

A day in the life of airspace around Heathrow Airport provides a vivid sense of the the scale of the challenge.

This short video, also from Heathrow Airport, explains how arrivals works. Ignore the monarchical slip and closing bromide.

Barnes is overflown mainly on western arrival days, with planes landing on Heathrow’s northern runway.

The weather determines the direction used on a given day. Aircraft normally land and take-off into wind. The prevailing westerlies over the UK mean Heathrow typically uses the western approach for 70% of the time. Easterly operations account for the remaining 30%.

Heathrow has two runways, northern and southern. During daytime westerly operations,

one is used for arrivals and the other for departures. They switch at 3pm, giving places such as Barnes a break of about nine hours from the main stream of arriving aircraft directly overhead.

The morning and afternoon pattern is reversed the following week.

Heathrow’s expansion plans

Rather than retell arguments that have been debated for years, this article focuses on what the proposals could mean for Barnes. Links below explain the case for and against expansion in more detail.

Let’s start with that third runway.

The airport’s owners, Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL), want to build a full-length, 3,500-metre runway, which would require the M25 motorway being moved.

HAL’s scheme is estimated to cost £33billion, including £1.5billion to move the M25, and is expected to be fully privately financed.

Annual passenger numbers at Heathrow are projected to rise by 79 per cent to 150 million, carried on as many as 756,000 flights a year. This means an 700 additional planes a day.

This explanation from Heathrow Airport is seven years old and was produced for an earlier consultation, but it remains a useful explanation of how expansion would work. Its age also says something about how long we have been discussing this.

Alternatively, BBC News explains the plans.

What it might mean for Barnes

If the expansion goes ahead Barnes will have more overhead flights - and noise - because of the increase in numbers.

The government says overall aircraft noise can be held to 2024 levels despite that significant increase in flights, although this analysis is based on indicative routes ahead of the formal airspace review.

Barnes will also have less respite.

The three-runway system would require a new alternation and respite regime.

The draft 2026 policy does not preserve today’s roughly half-day pattern. Instead it anticipates reduced or altered respite while requiring an applicant to set out a credible replacement scheme.

As Putney.News reports,

The Putney Society, which has read the document closely, puts the loss (of respite) at roughly half.

Your opinion still matters

Some commentators, including the Barnes Bugle, have suggested the Gatwick decision is a blow for those against the third runway at Heathrow.

Putney.News disagrees. It argues that our views still count, particularly if they are framed around evidence and specific parts of the draft policy.

If your instinct is that all this is settled and there is no point saying anything, the government has quietly told you otherwise.

In its own consultation papers it says it will give greater weight to responses built on argument and evidence than to simple statements of support or opposition, and greater weight again to responses that point at particular sections of the draft. It also says artificial intelligence may be used to analyse what comes in.

That leads Putney.News to a useful conclusion,

A thousand identical objections is one objection. A hundred different ones, each naming a different problem, is a hundred.

The rest is your own experience, and it is the part nobody else can write. What time the planes wake you. What you cannot do in the garden when the landings switch. Which park has been spoiled. That is evidence, and it is the kind the department has not got.

There is advice aplenty whether you are in favour or against this expansion. Fleur Anderson MP (Putney, Labour) who is opposed has created this guide.

You can use that to complete the UK Government survey.

Putney.News offers help of a different kind.

If you are still daunted by the official consultation process, it has produced a useful tool to help you build your response.

It can take as little as five minutes, although spending a little longer will make your response more useful. The potential issues with expansion are listed. You choose those that concern you most and explain why, in as few or as many words as you think necessary.

Airspace review

The third runway has attracted most of the headlines. Yet there is another process, largely unnoticed outside the aviation world, that could prove just as important for Barnes.

The UK Airspace Design Service (UKADS) is redesigning the UK’s flight paths as part of a wider programme to modernise air traffic management, including the airspace that would be needed to accommodate any Heathrow expansion. Its aim is to make the skies safer, more efficient and better able to cope with future demand.

The challenge for Barnes is that no one yet knows precisely where those redesigned routes will lie.

Airspace modernisation could make Barnes quieter, noisier or simply differently overflown. The detailed local consequences may not be known until after national decisions on Heathrow expansion have been taken. What we do know is that decisions made over the next few years could shape the character of our skies for decades.

The modernisation programme aims to increase capacity, resilience and efficiency through better coordinated routes, satellite-based navigation, continuous climb and descent, and less airborne holding.

All those variables means the impact on Barnes is not certain. Flight paths could become more concentrated over narrower corridors, or redistributed across different communities. Aircraft may be able to remain higher for longer on some routes. Periods of respite could be retained, shortened or reorganised.

Heathrow says its statutory public consultation on detailed flight-path options is not expected to begin until at least 2027, with implementation likely only in the late 2020s or early 2030s.

That means Barnes could be quieter, noisier or simply experience a different pattern of overflight in the 2030s. Today, neither the UK Government, Heathrow nor Richmond council can yet say with confidence which outcome will apply.

Any reduction in aircraft over Barnes would generally mean increased overflight elsewhere, although more efficient routing, higher flight profiles and shorter, more direct routes may reduce the total number of people significantly affected by aircraft noise.

This is why the runway debate asks whether Britain wants a bigger Heathrow. The airspace debate, when it starts, asks which communities will live beneath the aircraft.

We already live beneath one of Heathrow’s principal arrival routes and benefit from today’s runway alternation, which brings predictable periods of respite. Both could change. The expansion debate matters, but the redesign of the skies above Barnes may matter just as much, perhaps more.

If you want to understand the wider case against expansion, several local and London voices have already set it out well.

Sarah Olney MP’s letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, Heidi Alexander outlines the case against expansion and is reproduced in full above. Its discussion of the economic case—the central justification for the Government’s support—is particularly useful.

The Mayor of London, Sir Sadiq Khan is opposed to the expansion in part because the UK government’s case for the increased capacity at Heathrow ‘relies heavily’ on findings that are almost a decade old and in part because of the ‘.. severe impact it will have on noise, air pollution and meeting our climate change targets’.

In the Mayor’s submission to the House of Commons Transport Committee, the Mayor and Transport for London argue the plan would allow more flights, and therefore more emissions, while ‘taking advantage of environmental improvements unrelated to airport expansion’.

The Mayor believes that expansion would consume some of the environmental headroom created by policies such as the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), which has delivered large reductions in air pollution. ‘This progress must not be undone by expansion,’ the submission says.

Richmond council are opposed to the expansion.

Elsewhere Research by Possible suggests public sentiment is skeptical about how any benefits might be shared.

Now it's your turn

Whatever your view, please contribute to the consultation. Responses need to be submitted before midnight on 1 September 2026.

This is the UK Government survey.

By 2050, the third runway may be old news. The more enduring question for Barnes may be what happened to the skies above us: how many aircraft pass overhead, how often, and how much quiet remains between them?

It’s hard to relate the reality of today to the potential futures of tomorrow.

Of course there are experts on hand to help.

The Met Office has provided a description of the climate w can expect in Richmond borough in 2050. It is full of tables and charts. But projections struggle to make the future emotionally comprehensible.

Kew Gardens spends 36 pages setting out how its landscape and planting will need to adapt to the climate ahead. The report, which you can download below, is typically insightful and easy to read.

260817 Planting For The Future Kew Gardens

17MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

But that quote? That brings the probabilities into sharp focus.

We can take in our today - as I write there’s a gentle breeze blowing through the opened window for the first time in weeks - and conjure the future through another city. It’s especially easy when that city figures so large in our imagination. Those magical Olympic Games in 1992. That football club. And the many visits down the years.

If thats’s our future, what does it feel like?

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Barcelona, 2026

Of course Kew Gardens isn’t saying that Barnes SW13 in 2050 will have Barcelona’s weather today. Climate is not weather. The comparison is about the underlying climate: patterns of heat, rainfall and extremes over time.

But a week’s weather can still help make that rather abstract comparison feel real.

So here’s the forecast for Barcelona for the next seven days. These temperatures are higher than seasonal averages. August is usually nearer to 29°C high and 21°C low.

Here is a comparable forecast for Barnes. For comparison Barnes season averages are 23°C high and 14°C low.

Of course seeing one week’s forecast can mislead. The same forecast for Barnes last week would have signalled another heatwave. Kew Gardens reached 38.1°C on Thursday 13 August, the fifth-highest temperature ever recorded in the UK.

That is why Barnes2050 is going to return to these forecasts on a regular basis in the coming months.

I want to use Barcelona as a recurring lens through which to make Barnes’s possible future less abstract. Sometimes through weather. Increasingly through how Barcelona actually lives with heat.

There will be more about the Barcelona climate today. But I want to go further. I want to look at how Barcelona has tried to adapt to it. Barnes isn’t learning from a city that has solved heat; it’s learning from a city further down the adaptation road.

How do they provide shade? How are their homes different? What about their public spaces and street design? In short, how do they live, work, play and belong?

Let’s end this report with the most obvious insight. But one worth repeating.

By 15 July, 2026 had already produced more UK days above 30°C than the whole of 1976. Warm nights were tracking at record levels. By mid-August more than 1,000 wildfires had been recorded in England and Wales. And the UK Government sent us an emergency alert.

It had taken a record-breaking British summer has given Barnes a taste of the temperatures we associate with Barcelona today.

One exceptional summer doesn’t tell us what Barnes will feel like in 2050. But climate change is shifting the odds. The sort of heat that once felt exceptional is becoming less exceptional. By mid-century, summers that now make headlines will be considerably more familiar.

So imagine if 2026 is the new normal.

What needs to change?

Explore more stories about our changing climate and what it could mean for Barnes and the rest of London by 2050.

We know that heat is more than uncomfortable for some. Looking to 2050, it is both heat and water are climate threats, especially for Barnes SW13, an aging riverside urban village.

Do you know how much of a threat? How many people have died this year because of the heatwave?

The number is rarely reported. Do you know?*

Meanwhile, another story is brewing. Its exact location is not clear but we know its rough outline.

A young man, it is almost always a young man, takes a weapon to school or college, shoots his fellow students or staff. Sometimes he then turns on himself.

In 2025 there were more than five hundred incidents where four or more people were shot, whether killed or wounded.

Every time it hurts. Maybe it is hearing a younger American family member talk about her school drills for such an attack at infant school. Maybe it is the still-shocking prevalence of guns.

Then I saw this chart.

Really?

More Europeans die of summer heat than Americans die of guns?

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Hannah Ritchie, a scientist and researcher at the University of Oxford, spent some time challenging the comparison. She made some useful adjustments to the formula and the numbers, including:

• using comparable estimates of excess heat death on both sides

• using a broader definition of Europe to include 26 EU countries (excluding Malta), plus the UK, Switzerland, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Norway, and Serbia

• breaking down US gun deaths by homicide, suicide, and other causes such as unintentional injury and deaths by law enforcement

• and, critically, show the data as rates per 100,000 people in the total population

Here’s the result:

*Nearly 2,900 deaths have already been associated with extreme heat in the UK this year. That is before the effects of the latest heatwaves are fully counted. The definitive UKHSA Heat mortality monitoring report, England: 2026 isn’t scheduled for publication until 1 April 2027.

You can read more on the effects of heat on Barnes, now and in future, here.

Neither, actually.

Barnes in Barnes2050 usually means .. well, what I suspect most people who live here think it means.

Barnes.

The easiest way of explaining this is to point to the SW13 postcode boundary map, shown below.

That Barnes.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

SW13 and WW1

Barnes2050 arrived at this geographic focus for the project gradually. Initially the plan was to cover Barnes, Mortlake and a smidge of Putney. The first adjustment narrowed that original editorial area and the second went further still.

There’s something ironic about all this twisting and turning. Barnes2050 has ended up settling on a boundary that is more than a century old.

That longevity may be one reason SW13 feels so instinctively like Barnes. The boundary has been remarkably stable. SW13 is older than almost everyone who lives in it.

It dates back to March 1917. The General Post Office subdivided London’s existing lettered postal districts into numbered districts during the First World War. Barnes became SW13, with neighbouring Mortlake SW14 and Putney SW15.

(Postcode minutiae are a thing online. Geograph is a good example. Be warned: rabbit hole ahead.)

SW13 was then carried into the modern postcode system. The Post Office later introduced the full alphanumeric postcode — SW13 0xx, SW13 8xx, SW13 9xx etc. — as part of the national postcode programme rolled out during the 1960s and completed by 1974. It retained SW13 within the outward code.

Royal Mail assigns and maintains postcodes for postal addresses that belong to SW13. It does not officially define a legal district boundary in the same way that a borough or ward boundary does.

Boundary clarity .. or maybe not?

Barnes SW13 as a label has other advantages.

Many commercial and public datasets are available at postcode level, making research and comparisons easier.

And it excludes most of the edge cases around East Sheen, Mortlake and Putney.

Going forward, to avoid confusion, the first mention of Barnes in an article will be labelled as Barnes SW13. Every mention after that will simply be Barnes.

If the discussion relates to the political wards, that four letter word will appear: ward.

One other thing.

Where does Barnes end and Mortlake begin?

I thought I knew.

Then I saw this, behind Sainsbury’s on White Hart Lane.

In Barnes.

Or is it?

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

London is in drought.

At Kew Gardens for the first time since records began in 1871, there was no measurable rainfall at all in July. August has brought little relief.

And yet, as The Guardian put it,

The neatly trimmed grass (at St Paul’s School), with water droplets clinging to each blade, looks like a mirage in the otherwise parched landscape.

The school is sensitive to this look. The school holidays. A vast, lush carpet of green.

Danielle Pierce, the estates manager, argues their approach is permissable,

We are watering our sports pitches, not the wider grounds, in line with Thames Water’s published guidance.

This water comes from a dedicated standpipe and is not mains drinking water.

The last point is critical to the school’s argument. But it leaves an intriguing question unanswered: what exactly is the water source?

By contrast, Barnes Green is like much of London parkland, burnt.

Private land, green. Public land, brown.

Barnes should have a network of high quality walks that encourage residents and visitors to leave the car behind for short journeys.

Pavements, like roads for vehicles, should meet a minimum standard. In the twenty-first century that standard should reflect not only a changing climate but also community and place. Streets are places for people, not simply corridors for traffic.

This is more than an infrastructure proposal. It describes a shared civic ambition.

It starts with one walk, connecting one pub to another. Others will follow, gradually creating a network of routes that are safe, comfortable and enjoyable for everyone, every day of the year.

This approach reflects the wider Barnes2050 Manifesto for a better Barnes. Every proposal begins life as a work in progress, developed by going wide before deep.

The aim is to sketch out ideas across a broad range of themes before returning to develop the strongest in much greater detail. Barnes2050 believes their combined effect, the proposals compounding, will shape the future of the peninsula far more than any single proposal.

That process is now beginning for Signature Walks. Future updates are likely to include additional routes, regular audits of progress and contributions from experts and local leaders.

This proposal has seven sections:

1. The proposal

2. Current situation

3. Case for improving walking in Barnes

4. Essential characteristics of a Barnes2050 Signature Walk

5. Signature Walk No. 1

6. Sceptical planner’s view

7. Practical considerations

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

The proposal

A refreshed Barnes transport system could include many changes over the next quarter-century:

• Automated electric pods over Hammersmith Bridge

• River buses on the Thames

• E-hopper buses around the peninsula

• More e-bikes with more parking

• More bike hangars

• Fewer cars.

An equally important addition to that list is a much better walking experience.

Barnes2050 proposes creating a network of Signature Walks across the peninsula. By concentrating investment on a small number of routes that matter most to residents and visitors, Barnes could move steadily towards becoming a pedestrian-first village by 2050.

Those routes would broadly fall into two categories:

• Destination-led — connecting stations, bus stops, shops and other everyday destinations.

• Community-led — linking places where people want to spend time, recognising that attractive public spaces, seating, greenery and other amenities become increasingly important as communities age.

The challenge is finding the right balance.

Destination-led planning can produce efficient but emotionally thin corridors that move people without enriching public life.

Community-led planning can, in contrast, overvalue symbolic places while neglecting the everyday routes that carry the greatest number of people.

This proposal therefore has two parts.

First, every Signature Walk should meet a small number of design characteristics, drawn from established good practice.

Second, the proposal applies those principles to the first Barnes2050 Signature Walk: a route from The Red Lion to The White Hart.

Welcome to the Red and White Walk.

This proposal is part of a wider Manifesto for a better Barnes: a collection of ideas grounded in local insight, climate responsibility and a people-first approach. You’ll find the full list of proposals, along with the thinking behind them, throughout the Manifesto section of the journal.

Current situation as context

National, regional and local transport policy all seek to make walking easier, safer and more attractive.

If they succeed, the result will not be a car-free Barnes. It will be a pedestrian-first village: a peninsula that puts people before vehicles.

That shift has already begun. You can see it in new bike hangars, the parklet and the rapid growth of shared e-bikes, whether bright or dark green.

Progress for pedestrians is less obvious.

Before considering how Signature Walks might improve Barnes, it is worth asking a simple question:

How walkable is the village today?

Objective assessment

By one important measure, Richmond is already performing well.

Richmond council recently highlighted the eighth annual Healthy Streets Scorecard, which shows Richmond has the highest walking rate in London, with almost half (45%) of adults walking regularly, and the highest cycling participation of any Outer London borough, at 23.9%.

The council says this is because of

.. years of practical, evidence-led work to make streets safer and healthier, including borough-wide 20mph limits, early adoption of rental e-bikes, support for cargo bike use, new pedestrian crossings, and record investment in the pedestrian environment.

Those figures might suggest Richmond’s work is largely complete.

Barnes2050 takes a different view.

As argued previously,

That matters because Richmond’s weaker (Healthy Streets) scores are no longer chiefly about how people travel. They are about the streets themselves.

Changing how streets work is inevitably slower than changing how people travel.

Bus priority remains limited. Protected cycle tracks are scarce. Richmond council has also been reluctant to introduce the cameras or barriers that would allow more School Streets to qualify under the revised methodology.

The implication is hard to ignore.

Perhaps the next chapter in Richmond’s transport story is no longer about persuading people to walk and cycle.

Perhaps it is about building a borough that better reflects how people are already choosing to travel.

Residents have largely changed.

The streets now need to catch up.

Existing sign-posted walks in SW13

Barnes already has one established signed walking route: the Barnes Community Association Barnes Trail

It remains an excellent introduction to the village, linking many of its best-known buildings, public spaces and riverside locations.

The 2.3 mile trail, and the 3 mile extension, have been designed to show Barnes at its best. The route is circular, so it doesn’t matter where you start – just follow the silver ‘Barnes Trail’ discs set in the ground. If you walk quickly, you can complete the trail in under an hour – but why not take your time, soak up the surroundings, and enjoy the shops, cafés, pubs and restaurants as you go. Even better, use the trail as a starting point to explore more of Barnes.

Historical points of interest such as the riverside, the village pond and common and buildings such as the famous former Olympic Recording Studios are described on information plaques shaped like oars placed along the route. Four ‘introductory’ oars guide visitors at the main public transport locations - the oars feature QR codes for scanning with a QR-code app and smartphone or a tablet equipped with a camera, to access additional information.

A map of the route with illustrations of key sites and buildings guides walkers around the trail. You can pick up a copy of the Barnes Trail map from Rose House, or download it below. This map will guide you around the trail and point out the historical sites of interest along the way

There’s a map of the BCA Barnes Trail with a link to download below.

260716 Bca Barnes+trail+map

4.13MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Barnes also benefits from the magnificent paths through the WWT Wetland Centre. Having paid the admission fee, you can loose yourself for hours - cough - walking the meadows and gardens.

Both of these are excellent example of their type.

Neither, however, is designed primarily for everyday journeys between homes, shops, stations, schools and community destinations.

That is the gap this proposal seeks to fill.

Known future plans for improving walking routes

The Liberal Democracts included a committment to improving the borough’s walking realm in their 2026 manifesto,

Enhance key walking routes to make it easier for people to get to public transport, schools, shops and workplaces.

These “Pedestrian Super-Routes” will be prioritised for improvements to surfaces, safe crossings, accessibility, seating, shade and shelter.

Much of that ambition now appears within Richmond council’s 2040 Transport Strategy.

It commits the council to preparing a Walking and Cycling Strategy intended to make,

Walking and cycling the preferred choice of travel.

That includes,

.. Delivering a measurably improved walking network within the Borough prioritising routes linking town centres, stations, bus stops and community services.

The strategy also makes clear that investment investment will first be directed towards neighbourhoods with the poorest public transport provision, including Ham, Hampton, Heathfield and Whitton.

Barnes2050 supports that approach.

Barnes should still benefit from borough-wide improvements, including better east-west connections, but it is unlikely to feature prominently among the highest-priority areas.

Barnes therefore starts from a position of relative strength.

The pavements are generally in reasonable condition. There are comparatively few serious collisions. Some important crossings already exist.

The challenge is not to transform a failing place.

It is to make a good place even better.

Signature Walks are intended to do exactly that: creating a network that serve residents first while remaining welcoming to everyone who visits.

Case for improving walking in Barnes

The rewards from creating a high-quality walking network are considerable. Better walking is not simply about transport. It touches health, safety, community, the local economy and the climate.

Those themes emerged repeatedly when Barnes2050 attended the 2026 UK Walking Summit in Liverpool. Government ministers, councillors, campaigners and business leaders approached the subject from different directions but reached much the same conclusion: good walking environments make places work better.

This proposal draws heavily on the Healthy Streets Approach, developed by public-health specialist and transport planner Lucy Saunders and now embedded in transport policy across London, including by Richmond council.

One clarification is worth making.

The Healthy Streets Approach and the Healthy Streets Scorecard are not the same thing.

The first is a design framework. It sets out what healthy streets should look and feel like, placing people and public health at the centre of street design.

The second is an independent assessment that measures how well London’s boroughs are putting those ideas into practice.

Together they provide both a vision and a way of measuring progress.

They also provide a useful framework for thinking about Signature Walks.

These, then, are nine reasons why Barnes should develop its own network.

Better routes means more walking and more physical activity

Better routes and high-class active travel environments can increase active travel time and physical activity.

More support for local traders

Better public realm can increase footfall, dwell time and local spending. Richmond council’s 2040 Transport Strategy points out,

Shoppers who walk to the high street on average spend 40% more than those who drive. (page 20)

Support for climate and environmental goals

Substituting short car trips with walking reduces emissions, noise and air pollution, especially when combined with public transport. Richmond council report that transport forms nearly 25% of all green house gas emissions in the borough.

Streets for all means improved accessibility and inclusion

Accessible, clutter-free, well-lit, step-free routes benefit disabled people, parents with pushchairs and anyone with reduced confidence or mobility.

Increases use of public transport

The overwhelming majority of public transport trips begin or end on foot, the walking stages often account for a large share of total trip time, and good walkable catchments areas improve the user of public transport and reduce car dependence.

Improves independence for older residents

Well-maintained surfaces, short crossings, seating, toilets, lighting and safe paths are crucial to enabling older people to get out, remain independent and participate in neighbourhood life. This is important for Barnes, an ageing village part of an aging borough in youthful city. And getting more so.

Greater social interaction and connectedness

Walking supports incidental encounters and neighbourly ties. Walking with others and access to cafes, shops and, say, benches by a pond helps reduce loneliness.

Stronger civic identity and participation

Accessible public routes might help some people participate more in community life. Going out, meeting other residents face to face could make the next step easier, getting involved with a community group.

Improves Barnes transport system

Some of the basics are in place for changing how we move around the area - train, buses and e-bikes. But a more sophisticated and comprehensive offer will be required by 2050. Walking is the anchor to all these other means of moving.

Essential characteristics of a Barnes2050 Signature Walk

Every pavement in Barnes should be good.

Not every pavement needs to be exceptional.

This proposal therefore concentrates on a small number of Signature Walks. Rather than trying to improve every street at once, it argues for creating a network of routes that meet a consistently high standard.

Each route should answer ten simple questions.

• Can I use this walk safely?

• Can everyone use it?

• Is it comfortable?

• Is it healthy?

• Is it resilient?

• Can I find my way?

• Is there anything worth staying for?

• Does it encourage better travel choices?

• Does it have character?

• Does it succeed as a place, would I choose to be here?

The following characteristics are intended to make those questions measurable.

Safe to use

People must feel physically safe from traffic and crime.

• Safe crossings

• Pedestrian-priority crossings

• Low vehicle speeds

• Good visibility

• Personal security

Accessible for everyone

The street should work regardless of age or ability.

• Step-free

• Gentle gradients

• Continuous, generous pavements

• Inclusive design

Comfortable all year round

Make walking pleasant rather than merely possible.

• Shade

• Shelter

• Seating

• Drinking water where appropriate

• Protection from wind and heat

Healthy surroundings

Reduce the environmental harms that discourage people from spending time outdoors.

• Clean air

• Low noise

• Reduced pollution

• Comfortable microclimate

Green and climate-ready

Nature should become part of the street rather than decoration.

• Trees

• Rain gardens

• Sustainable drainage

• Biodiversity

• Cooling

Easy to navigate

People should instinctively know where they are and where to go.

• Legible routes

• Clear signage

• Landmarks

• Good sightlines

Interesting and welcoming

Give people reasons to linger rather than simply pass through.

• Active frontages

• Shops

• Cafés

• Community facilities

• Public art

• Things to see and do

Encourage active travel

Make walking, cycling and public transport the obvious first choice.

• Connected to cycling — secure cycle parking, bike hire, easy transitions between walking and cycling

• Connected to buses — bus stops that are close, comfortable and easy to reach

• Connected to rail — stations within easy signature walking distance, making it simple to continue longer journeys on foot and by train

Beautiful and distinctive

A street should feel like this place, not any place.

• High-quality materials

• Local identity

• Heritage where appropriate

• Attractive detailing

The ultimate test

None of these characteristics matters in isolation. The real question is simple.

Would people choose to spend time here?

Signs that the answer is yes include:

• People linger.

• Children and older people are present.

• Businesses thrive.

• Different groups mix.

• The street feels welcoming throughout the day.

Introducing The Red and White Walk

Every network needs somewhere to begin.

For Barnes2050, that starting point is the Red and White Walk.

Running from The Red Lion on Castelnau to The White Hart beside the Thames, it follows one of the village’s best-loved everyday routes. At around a mile, it is short enough for a lunchtime stroll yet long enough to connect many of the places that define Barnes.

At first glance, the route has much to recommend it.

• a zebra crossing

• generous pavements in places

• glimpses of green

• shops, cafés and pubs

• places to pause

• bus stops, cycle parking and shared e-bikes

For many people, it already works well.

Look a little closer, however, and the opportunities become obvious.

One one crossing deserves redesigning.

The riverside path along The Terrace could become far more inviting.

And what about this bench?

None of those changes is transformative on its own. Together, they begin to define what a Signature Walk might become.

This is only the first. More will follow.

Sceptical planner’s view

No proposal is beyond challenge. Signature Walks are no exception.

Four objections seem the most likely.

• Barnes is already a good place to walk. Why improve it?

• Prioritising a few routes risks neglecting other streets.

• Could the same benefits be achieved in other ways?

• The evidence linking better walking to stronger civic life remains limited.

The final point deserves more research. The others can be answered more readily.

Barnes is already an excellent place to live. That is precisely why it is worth improving. Every generation has inherited a good village and left it a little better than it found it. Good stewards. Signature Walks simply continues that tradition.

Prioritisation inevitably means concentrating resources. Without it, raising standards becomes much harder. Nor does this proposal argue that every street should look the same. Most streets will remain much as they are. Signature Walks simply identify a small network where higher standards would deliver the greatest public benefit. Neither is this a proposal to remove cars from Barnes. It is about gently shifting the balance towards pedestrians, recognising that change is likely to happen gradually rather than all at once.

The attraction is that a relatively modest programme of coordinated improvements could deliver benefits across health, accessibility, local business, public transport and climate. That proposition still needs testing.

Civic benefits

The civic case is less well developed than the health or transport evidence, and Barnes2050 intends to explore it further. The strongest evidence so far may be economic. The pedestrian pound in Barnes would be in support of mainly local traders, because as Richmond council’s 2040 Transport Strategy notes,

Shoppers who walk to the high street on average spend 40% more than those who drive. (page 20)

The wider social argument feels intuitive. You cannot talk to your fellow driver when you are moving at 20mph. You can talk to the fellow resident as you step aside for him or her. One of those exchanges is more likely to yield improved social connectedness. Whether those everyday encounters also strengthen civic life deserves further research.

Practical considerations

Creating a network of Signature Walks will take time.

It could easily take two decades before every route reaches the desired standard.

That is all the more reason to begin now.

Richmond council’s 2040 Transport Strategy provides an obvious opportunity, particularly when the council begins preparing its Walking and Cycling Strategy.

Meanwhile, Barnes2050 intends to return regularly to this proposal by:

• refining the network

• auditing existing routes

• developing measurable standards

• seeking expert opinion

• reporting the council’s progress

• strengthening the evidence base for the wider civic benefits of walking.

Like every proposal in the Barnes2050 Manifesto, Signature Walks will evolve over time.

Updates to this page

This proposal is a work in progress. It will be reviewed and improved on a regular basis.

The original version of this article was published on Tuesday 04 August 2026.

Explore other proposals from Barnes2050.

A pedestrian-first approach to transport planning is central to the futures imagined by Barnes2050. It's a recurring theme throughout the journal. These articles bring together some of the key ideas, proposals and analysis

As this project began, the hope was to laugh, learn and make a difference.

Getting to grips with Ai quickly became part of the learning. At times it has been genuinely exhilarating.

ChatGPT is a force multiplier for this sole content creator, giving me access to several virtual editorial assistants capable of conducting high-quality research and helping me think more clearly. It has also become my editor, researcher, sounding board, devil’s advocate and occasional nuisance.

There are other tools, too. Gemini NotebookLM has taken me in a different direction, helping me absorb complex documents and ideas at a speed I simply couldn’t manage alone.

However, every task is freighted with ethical questions.

How do I keep in control of this process? How do I make sure I don’t lose my voice? Unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise, I have adopted The Guardian’s approach to generative AI as the guiding principle for Barnes2050.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Also nagging away throughout is the thought that every conversation, however frivolous, reveals a little more about me to ChatGPT. Or as it would say, every chat helps ChatGPT build a more complete picture of who I am.

After a year of working together, I found myself wondering what it thought it knew about me.

Few people have watched Barnes2050 develop as closely as ChatGPT. It has seen the abandoned drafts, the arguments, the rewrites, the moments of certainty and the moments of doubt. So I eventually asked it a question no human interviewer could answer quite the same way.

How would it describe me to a complete stranger?

The reply below is unedited.

If someone asked for a quick sketch, I’d say you come across as a systems-minded localist with a strategist’s brain.

You’re deeply anchored in Barnes, but rarely parochial. You treat the neighbourhood as a lens through which to examine bigger forces: climate adaptation, transport behaviour, governance, economics, demographics. Place is your laboratory, not your boundary.

Your thinking style is analytical and structural. You consistently look past surface debates (“traffic”, “cycling”, “development”) toward underlying mechanisms — incentives, risk, psychology, time horizons, political constraints. You’re less interested in what is happening than in why patterns persist and how they might shift.

You’re notably data-attentive. Numbers, baselines, trend lines, methodology — these matter to you, not as decoration but as scaffolding. You have a low tolerance for fuzzy claims and a strong instinct to interrogate sources, assumptions, and framing effects.

Creatively, you think like a builder. Barnes2050 isn’t treated as a blog in the casual sense; it’s more like a slowly evolving platform, combining journalism, futures thinking, design, narrative, and civic experimentation. You iterate constantly — language, structure, visuals, concepts.

Tonally, you favour clarity over flourish. You gravitate toward measured, literate, lightly sceptical prose: curious, reflective, occasionally dryly amused, never overheated. There’s a consistent preference for long-term perspective, behavioural realism, and institutional awareness.

In short: part urbanist, part policy thinker, part media producer — operating at neighbourhood scale with a 2050 time horizon.

Barnes and Hammersmith Electric Light Transit (BHELT) spent July introducing the idea to residents on both banks of the Thames: first Barnes Fair then the Hammersmith CommUNITY Day.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

Speaking outside the Sun Inn, Barnes a few days after the events, Charles Campion, one of the campaign’s organisers, reflected on what they had learnt and what comes next.

Among the topics we discussed were:

• reactions from residents in Barnes and Hammersmith

• comments from politicians, including this positive response

• early survey findings suggesting strong support for a feasibility study

• the need for a wider public understanding of Hammersmith Bridge’s condition

• BHELT‘s next priority: exploring UK Government funding for a feasibility study

BHELT is still seeking public feedback. Its online survey takes only a few minutes to complete.

Meanwhile, BHELT continues to attract media attention, with recent coverage from:

London Centric

Evening Standard

BBC News

Hammersmith Bridge is about far more than a river crossing. It is a question about the future of Barnes. At its heart sit questions of transport, climate, health and community. Explore Barnes2050’s wider analysis here.

The proposals would reshape this open space with a climate-ready community hub and café, a redesigned inclusive playground with water play, a woodland adventure play area, a skate park, food growing spaces and wetland areas.

As the Barnes Community Association (BCA) reported,

.. years of work and consultation .. have shaped this community-led vision.

Welcome to Barnes2050, a place-based futures project asking: how do we make sure Barnes - the place and its people - is thriving and climate-ready by 2050?

How to show your support

Barnes2050 believes this an important project for the future of Barnes and will be making its own submission to Richmond Council.

You can submit comments through the planning portal. Barnes Common recommends preparing your comments as a document before uploading them.

To make this easier, Barnes Common says,

.. you can use all or some of the text on our website here.

It is also available as a Word document to download and edit from this link - feel free to change it as you wish.

Submit your feedback on the planning application.

The deadline for submissions is Friday 7 August 2026.