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Urban Street Design Guide Index

Urban Street Design Guide
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Streets

Streets

Streets are the lifeblood of our communities and the foundation of our urban economies. They make up more than 80 percent of all public space in cities and have the potential to foster business activity, serve as a front yard for residents, and provide a safe place for people to get around, whether on foot, bicycle, car, or transit. The vitality of urban life demands a design approach sensitive to the multi-faceted role streets play in our cities.

Adapted from the Urban Street Design Guide, published by Island Press.

Subsections:

Street Design Principles

The Urban Street Design Guide crystallizes a new approach to street design that meets the demands of today and the challenges of tomorrow. Based on the principle that streets are public spaces for people as well as

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Phases of Transformation

Interim design changes for streets can be carried out using low-cost materials. These interim design strategies realize the benefits of a full reconstruction in the short term, and can help build support for projects or test their consequences. While not

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Street Design in Context

Context is a crucial, yet often overlooked, parameter in designing streets. Street design should both respond to and influence the desired character of the public realm. Rooted in city goals and policies, designers can work to enhance their surroundings by

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Downtown 1-Way Street

Downtown 1-Way Street

In the mid-20th century, many 2-way downtown streets were converted to 1-way to streamline traffic operations, reduce conflicts, and create direct access points to newly built urban freeways. Today, many of these streets operate significantly below capacity and create swaths

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Downtown 2-Way Street

Downtown 2-Way Street

Busy downtown streets that operate 2-way are often the most difficult streets for cities to reconfigure and retrofit. Many of these streets suffer from double parking and loading conflicts, have heavy turn volumes, and offer insufficient accommodations for bicyclists and

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Downtown Thoroughfare

Downtown Thoroughfare

Major streets that connect neighborhood centers or run through the downtown can be daunting for pedestrians to cross, depressing property values and the quality of the public realm as a result.While many of these streets have significant traffic volumes at

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Neighborhood Main Street

Neighborhood Main Street

Neighborhood main streets are a nexus of neighborhood life, with high pedestrian volumes, frequent parking turnover, key transit routes, and bicyclists all vying for limited space.

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Neighborhood Street

Neighborhood Street

Local streets in residential neighborhoods are often underutilized as spaces for play and leisure. These streets should provide safe and inviting places to walk with direct access to local stores and schools. Design for local streets can combine stormwater management

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Yield Street

Yield Street

2-way yield streets are appropriate in residential environments where drivers are expected to travel at low speeds. Many yield streets have significant off-street parking provisions and on-street parking utilization of 40–60% or less. Create a “checkered” parking scheme to improve

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Boulevard

Boulevard

Boulevards separate very large streets into parallel urban realms, buffering the commercial or residential street edge from the high speed throughway by means of multi-way operations and frontage roads. Many boulevards were built at the turn of the 20th century,

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Residential Boulevard

Residential Boulevard

Broad historic boulevards and parkways often function as high-speed thoroughfares, even though their adjacent land uses may be primarily residential in nature. In many cases, these streets have excess width, underutilized on-street parking, and too many travel lanes. Retrofit residential

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Transit Corridor

Transit Corridor

Transit corridors, including light rail (LRT), streetcar, and bus rapid transit (BRT), promote economic development around high-quality transit service while fostering a pedestrian scale in which walking and biking actively complement public transit. As major generators of pedestrian traffic, heavy

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Green Alley

Green Alley

The majority of residential alleys have low traffic and infrequent repaving cycles, resulting in back roads with potholes and puddling that are uninviting or unattractive. Green alleys use sustainable materials, pervious pavements, and effective drainage to create an inviting public

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Residential Shared Street

Residential Shared Street

Low-volume residential streets, especially in older cities, often have narrow or crumbling sidewalks. Many of these streets operate de facto as shared spaces, in which children play and people walk, sharing the roadway with drivers. Depending on the street’s volume

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Commercial Alley

Commercial Alley

Commercial alleys, though often thought of as dirty or unsafe, can be designed to play an integral role in a downtown street network and improve the pedestrian realm in and around commercial areas. The design of commercial alleys should strive

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Commercial Shared Street

Commercial Shared Street

Many narrow or crowded downtown streets operate informally as shared streets during rush hour or at lunchtime, but are not regulated as such. A commercial shared street environment should be considered in places where pedestrian activity is high and vehicle

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References

References for Streets: 69 found.