Sir – Don Manley (Letters, November 11) asks what is going on, concerning Beechcroft Road having become a DIY Street. In the same issue of your newspaper, you tell the remarkable story of how Christopher Gowers’ recovery from a terrible shock was helped by his ability to walk the streets and public spaces of the city. I suggest that what’s going on in Beechcroft Road, as elsewhere, is the realisation that our streets are there for us all to use and enjoy. Public highways they are of course, but that is not all.

To view them that way is to take a narrow perspective on their daily functions. They are public spaces first and foremost — the first experience on setting foot outside one’s own front door.

To its credit the county council has helped Beechcroft Road’s residents make their street more of a place. But the county has also laid the ground for more of this across the city, by setting a 20mph speed limit in most of its residential streets.

If only our police would recognise that 20mph is not about slowing traffic for its own sake, but about making our streets available to everybody, they would massively increase the benefits that streets deliver to the whole community.

The therapeutic benefits of decent streets and public spaces are confirmed by Mr Gowers’ experience.

Recognising that streets can be more than highways, is what the county council appears to have done in Beechcroft Road.

If that’s what is meant by ‘reclaiming streets’, then let us have a lot more of it.

Paul Cullen, Oxford