Small Streets

Small Streets Our current approach to town building prioritizes the movement of automobiles at the expense of neighborhood streets at the human scale.

Small Streets is an organization that supports the preservation and proliferation of small streets in order to improve the quality of life and build the sustainability of our cities and towns. While some may point to a recent urban renaissance in the United States, more often than not politicians, planners and developers focus on childless young professionals and empty-nesters, overlooking the nee

ds of families and the possibility of creating sustainable cities and towns for all. Small streets traditionally served as safe and intimate spaces for families and small businesses, but the historic small streets that remain suffer under constant threat. Current regulation prohibits the development of new small streets, limiting opportunities for working families to live in desirable, walkable neighborhoods.

The Port Covington plan for a new urban district in Baltimore includes at least one small street. Looking forward to lea...
04/15/2016

The Port Covington plan for a new urban district in Baltimore includes at least one small street. Looking forward to learning more.

Sagamore Development tells city design panel the area will be a major anchor of the massive project.

02/13/2016

They are a wonderful leftover from the pre-automobile era, when the smallest of public roads only needed to be wide enough for pedestrians

When you can fit a building in your street and there's still room for cars, your streets are definitely far, far too wid...
10/13/2015

When you can fit a building in your street and there's still room for cars, your streets are definitely far, far too wide! This is a step in the right direction for Salt Lake City.

A few months ago I wrote about a proposal to fix the housing crisis in San Francisco by building skinny apartments in the medians of its streets. Little did I know this idea was already being prototyped in a place that has even bigger streets than San Francisco, due to its unique development history…

On location in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, founded in 1521. This place is fantastic! The only way it could be made better...
10/06/2015

On location in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, founded in 1521. This place is fantastic! The only way it could be made better would be to ditch the cars. Folks from the Rust Belt USA would find this fact interesting: the street is made of slag.

How to make cities more livable in the USA, where streets are very wide? Construct buildings in the roadway to turn that...
05/06/2015

How to make cities more livable in the USA, where streets are very wide? Construct buildings in the roadway to turn that one over-sized street into two people-centered small streets. http://narrowstreetssf.com/

Replacing wide streets with narrow ones opens up tons of new land for desperately needed urban houses.

This self-described stay-at-home mom turned around an entire block of this small street in Baltimore. Way to go, Diana!
11/25/2014

This self-described stay-at-home mom turned around an entire block of this small street in Baltimore. Way to go, Diana!

On Madeira Street last Thursday, tidy trash cans lined the curb in front of clean brick rowhouses with matching exterior lights. Christmas decorations already framed one doorway.

09/03/2014

They used to considered hotbeds of bad behavior. Now, some alleys are centers of communal whimsy.

How do we get all of the participants in development (planners, engineers, architects, developers, investors, lenders, f...
07/22/2014

How do we get all of the participants in development (planners, engineers, architects, developers, investors, lenders, fire departments, construction companies, and marketing people) to work together to create a traditional urban environment?

02/25/2014
When your street is just a surface between buildings, you're "on the street." When your street is a place, you're "in th...
02/25/2014

When your street is just a surface between buildings, you're "on the street." When your street is a place, you're "in the street." This atypical "no parking" sign shows how small streets change how people think about their streets.

I spot a small street! This is an exciting project.
10/02/2013

I spot a small street! This is an exciting project.

Work on a major new town development in Aberdeenshire with a long-term target of 8,000 homes is set to get under way.

In this case, small streets are literally the image of walkability.
08/28/2013

In this case, small streets are literally the image of walkability.

Napoli, Italy. Image via: Angelo DeSantis
What makes a great walking city? Wide sidewalks with lots of street life? Low volumes of traffic? Lively pedestrian plazas? Hop-on, hop-off transit?
A group called Walk21 has developed a standardized way to assess the walkability of cities, based on factors

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