Traffic calming has been successfully used for decades in cities across Europe. For example, a living street (sometimes known as home zones or by the Dutch word woonerf, as the concept originated in the Netherlands) towards the end of the 1960s, initially in Delft, is a street in which the needs of car drivers are secondary to the needs of other road users; traffic calming principles are integrated into their design. From the Netherlands, the concept spread rapidly to Germany, starting in North Rhine-Westphalia in 1976, and had become very widespread by the early 1980s. The ideas and techniques also spread to the UK towards the end of the 1980s, and practice there was advocated by academics such as Tim Pharaoh and Carmen Hass-Klau. The guidelines published by Devon County Council (of which Tim Pharaoh was the principal author) in 1991 were particularly well received.Devon County Council, 1991, "Traffic Calming Guidelines"
