The David Engwicht Story

In September 1987, David sat in a public meeting listening to plans to ‘upgrade’ Route 20 through his home suburb in Brisbane, Australia. Until that evening David had no interest in traffic or city planning. He left the meeting as a founding member of CART - Citizens Against Route 20. A week later he was elected spokesperson.

Early in the campaign, David argued that CART should not try and push the problem into someone else’s backyard, but instead should search for city-wide and long-term solutions.
Twelve months later, David authored the now influential Traffic Calming: The Solution to Route 20 and a New Vision for Brisbane. This booklet is widely recognized as having triggered the Traffic Calming revolution in many cities in Australia and North America.

This book pushed David into the national and international debate on the future of our cities and their transport. What began to fascinate David was how the design of cities and towns impacts on community life, particularly issues of equity.
In 1992, disappointed with the way cities were implementing the concepts in Traffic Calming, David wrote Reclaiming our Cities and Towns (also published under the title Towards an Eco-City: Calming the Traffic) which went on to become a text in university courses. It was in this book that David proposed the idea of the Walking School Bus — an invention which has since been picked up worldwide.

David then worked as a consultant in the UK, Italy, Canada, USA, New Zealand and Australia. In 1992 David was invited to be a member of the CEAD Committee (Community, Environment, Art & Design) of the Australia Council, the Australian Government arts funding body.

In 1994, David undertook work for Brisbane City Council which was the first study in the world to make a connection between rubbish (trash) reduction and traffic reduction. David went on to codify the 5R’s of Traffic Reduction and is considered a world authority in using resource management techniques to reduce traffic.

In 1995 David began experimenting with ways of enabling residents to solve their own traffic problems. He developed and conducted a number of trials of the Traffic Reduction Kit. While the first trial was a success, subsequent trials failed. However, out of these trials David began to develop the concept of street reclaiming — and in particular the idea of psychological reclaiming.

In 1999 these ideas were published in Street Reclaiming: Creating Livable Streets and Vibrant Communities. It proposed a radical new design process for our streets so they once again become places for community building, places that feed the creative wealth of the city, and places that are the engine-room of a robust local economy.
To explain these new approaches and techniques, David has run ‘instant street reclaiming experiments’ in many cities. Using just the contents of a suitcase and what residents can gather, he works with residents in reclaiming their street over a one or two hour period.

In 1997, David produced the first draft of a yet unpublished book on unlocking creativity. This work on creativity has begun to merge with his traffic and city-design work. Increasingly cities are asking him to work with staff to teach them more creative ways of problem-solving. In Boise Idaho, this creative process resulted in the Neighborhood Pace Car Program.

In 2001 David conceived and implemented Red Sneaker Week in Brisbane, Australia – a program that encourages kids to walk to school.

After observing the political and community-participation process in dozens of cities, David sees his next great challenge as working with cities to overcome the limitations imposed on creative decision-making by adversarial forms of politics and flawed community consultation and participation processes. (See The Third Space Project for more details.)

The greatest contributor to David's thinking and work has been his best friend Ingrid Burkett. It was therefore only natural that in 2001 they joined forces to launch Creative Communities International.

David is the eldest son of an itinerant gospel preacher. After dropping out of high-school, he trained as a telephone technician. He then moved through a range of jobs including freelance youth-worker, furniture craftsman, and marketing manager for a magazine. He was a window cleaner at the time of getting involved in the Route 20 battle. He devoted the next three years of his life to this battle.

David is an artist, street philosopher, communicator, inventor and keen observer of life. He counts his lack of formal education and his marginal experiences as a child as two of his greatest assets.