Rethinking the Street Space: Toolkits and Street Design Manuals

The primary goals of the new street design manuals are often quite similar. Common goals include:

"Livability and Placemaking. Making streets places to linger and places to cherish.

Access and Mobility: Improving the public right-of-way for all users.

Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety: Supporting design improvements such as raised crosswalks, bulbouts, bike lanes, and roundabouts that improve safety for pedestrians and bike riders.

Flexibility: Giving designers choice, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Context: Designing streets based on their place within a hierarchy of streets and their relationship to surrounding land uses, densities, and commercial activities.

Balance: Maintaining several functions in the street that include safety, roadway infrastructure, environmental sensitivity, and others.

Healthy Environment: Minimizing negative environmental effects and creating places that encourage walking and exercise.

Visual Excellence: Improving the overall aesthetic with an emphasis on high quality, lasting design and materials.

Common Strategies:

Many of the design strategies included in the manuals are similar from one city to the next. Common strategies used in the manuals include:

Minimization of the roadway to accommodate travel flow, transferring excess vehicle space to the pedestrian.

Preferential facilities for bus and bike riders in the form of bus lanes, bus shelters, bike lanes, paths, racks, and lockers.

Pedestrian amenities for placemaking such as street furniture and human-scale street lighting.

New public spaces with benches, fountains, and vendors. Both San Francisco and New York propose new public plazas in areas previously dedicated to the vehicle as pilot projects.

Pedestrian safety features such as curb extensions or "bulb-outs" at corners or mid-block to widen the sidewalk and make crossing easier, visible crosswalks, raised crosswalks, and raised intersections.

Environmentally-inspired landscaping like permeable paving, bio-swales, stormwater recapture in tree pits and planters, and climate sensitive plant palates."