A major shift in the way we design neighborhoods is taking place across the United States. People are working together to identify better ways to design new neighborhoods or retrofit existing ones to be more interactive, walkable, enjoyable and livable. After years of neglect, street design is reemerging as a major element of neighborhood and town planning.

The reasons should be self-evident: People want to live on streets that have low traffic volume, slow speeds and minimal noise. People also want to live in neighborhoods with parks, schools and other activities nearby for their children, while many 'baby boomers' - anticipating the changing mobility of their older years - are asking for sidewalks, trails, greenways and open space. And yet the streets and neighborhoods we've been building during the past 50 years in many communities have created just the opposite conditions: Wide, fast, noisy streets and subdivisions that require us to drive to most destinations. The days of walking to the corner store have been replaced by driving a 2,000 pound vehicle to pick up a one-pound loaf of bread. Even when stores are relatively close to homes, we've separated uses to such an extent that it's often impossible to get to them without a motor vehicle.

The problem often starts with the extreme separation of uses imposed by modern zoning codes. The typical layout of a conventional community (as shown on the right side of the diagram below) locates residential, commercial and civic buildings in distinct pods that are often only connected through larger arterial roadways. The result is that a child who lives in the residential subdivision on the lower right part of the diagram who wants to go play in the park will have to be driven by an adult. The same is true of most other trips an individual or family wants to take. The result: Most trips require using a motor vehicle and adding to already congested arterial roadways.

This is in contrast to the traditional neighborhood seen on the left side of the diagram in which not only are houses, schools, shops and offices located in close proximity to one another, but the street design creates a fully connected network with multiple routes to destinations. The child going to the park doesn't need to deal with any 8- or 10-lane arterial roadways and can comfortably walk or ride a bike.

The contrasting approach to street design is also visible once we go into these two types of neighborhoods. Because the streets in the conventional neighborhood are longer and serve more people they will tend to be wider and allow for faster speeds. The emphasis on motor vehicle travel has encouraged traffic engineers to design streets with minimal obstacles for errant drivers, so trees are often set back far from the roadway and on-street parking is discouraged. The result is wide streets and long blocks that encourage speeding and discourage walking and bicycling. A study of 20,000 accidents over a 20 year period in Longmont, Colorado by Swift & Associates in 1998 found a direct correlation between street width and accident rates. The safest streets were narrow 24-foot wide streets. As streets got wider the number of accidents per mile per year increased. We can conclude that as streets get wider drivers speed up and are more prone to crash.

The traditional neighborhood street, on the other hand, is narrower and is lined with trees that not only help slow down the cars but also create comfortable conditions for walkers and cyclists. Today many residents and local officials are recognizing that these traditional streets help create more livable neighborhoods. As a result, efforts are underway to retrofit existing streets or design new ones that mirror these characteristics. The movement to retrofit streets has resulted in efforts to implement what are known as 'traffic calming' measures. Traffic calming consists of a set of mostly physical treatments or changes to roadways that help manage the flow of traffic while requiring motorists to behave in a civil manner around shopping districts, schools and neighborhoods. Traffic speed, noise and volume are often reduced and a more even distribution of traffic is achieved through these measures. The LGC has published a guide to traffic calming that describes these techniques in detail and provides valuable information on the collaborative process often necessary to get them implemented.

At the same time, there is a growing movement that advocates the design of neotraditional or new urbanist neighborhoods that emulate the best features of older mixed-use traditional communities. In 1999, the LGC published a groundbreaking document on Street Design Guidelines for Healthy Neighborhoods that discussed in detail how these streets and neighborhoods can be designed.

LGC Projects

In 1998 the Local Government Commission (LGC) started working in partnership with the California Department of Health Services and its Physical Activity and Health Initiative to improve the conditions for walking and bicycling in our communities. Through this project, the LGC provides expert technical assistance to cities throughout the state. We have also published guidebooks on street design and traffic calming and have prepared fact sheets on a variety of topics related to walkable communities.

Resources

The Local Government Commission has developed several guidebooks that discuss how to design or retrofit streets and neighborhoods to make them more supportive of walking and bicycling.

• Street Design Guidelines for Healthy Neighborhoods was written by Dan Burden, director of Walkable Communities, with assistance from a team that included two traffic engineers, an urban designer and a citizen planner. It discusses how to build low-volume, slow speed traditional residential streets.
• Streets and Sidewalks, People and Cars: A Citizens' Guide to Traffic Calming, by Dan Burden, provides detailed information for local government officials and residents on how to retrofit streets to slow the traffic.
• Emergency Response, Traffic Calming and Traditional Neighborhood Streets, by Dan Burden with Paul Zykofsky, is designed to address concerns raised by fire departments and other emergency responders to innovative street retrofit and design efforts. It also helps explain to traffic engineers, local officials and residents what the emergency responders' concerns are all about.
• Walkable Streets and the Fire Department is a 30-minute videotape which discusses how to create more livable neighborhoods while allowing for prompt emergency response. It includes interviews with fire chiefs from Chico and Mountain View, California and Portland, Oregon discussing what works and what doesn't.

Our series of 4-page illustrated fact sheets with a Focus on Livable Communities provide a brief, easy-to-read overview on the following key topics related to walkable communities:

• The Economic Benefits of Walkable Communities
• Why People Don't Walk and What City Planners Can Do About It
• Land Use Planning for Safe, Crime-Free Neighborhoods
• Designing Safe Streets and Neighborhoods
• New Transportation Thinking for a New Transportation Age
• US DOT Supports Walking and Bicycling

Single copies of these fact sheets are available free from the LGC and can also be downloaded in PDF format from our web page. Bulk copies for wider distribution are also available at a nominal fee.

An additional fact sheet, The "Transportation Tools to Improve Children's Health and Mobility", highlights engineering solutions for more walkable communities.

Web LInks

• Narrow Streets Database (http://www.sonic.net/abcaia/narrow.htm)
• Federal Highway Administration, Context-Sensitive Design (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/csd/index.htm)
• Federal Highway Administration, Traffic Calming (http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/tcalm/)
• Institute of Transportation Engineers (http://www.ite.org/)
• Municipal Research and Service Center, Traffic Calming Bibliography (http://www.mrsc.org/planning/trafcalm.htm)
• Traffic Reduction / Street Reclaiming Made Easy (http://www.lesstraffic.com/)
• Conservation Law Foundation, Transportation Advocacy (http://www.clf.org/transportation/)
• Victoria Transportation Policy Institute (http://www.vtpi.org/)
• Walkable Communities, Inc. (http://www.walkable.org)

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