How to design a great street

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream when you sign up at the link in the description you also get access to nebula a streaming video service that city beautiful is a part of the shelfs alizée in Paris Regent Street in London stroll in Copenhagen the Ring Strasse and Vienna via del corso in Rome La Rambla and Barcelona passage de Gracia also in Barcelona these are all famous streets for various reasons they may have symbolic value have a storied history or be just really nice places to be but are they from an urban design perspective great streets do they have the qualities that make them pleasant beautiful spaces to inhabit things like shade a sense of enclosure or a vibrant social life in this video we'll discuss some of the characteristics that urban design experts have identified is being critical to the design of great streets so stick around if you're interested in seeing how these traits apply to some of the great European streets or stick around if you're just you know wanting to travel but can't and the idea of seeing some picturesque European scenery sounds appealing either way I got you covered what are the basic ingredients to a great Street well it depends on who is using it a great Street for a car probably looks something like this or maybe a highway like this fast wide and free of obstructions is perfect for a driver this video is gonna focus on streets for people on foot or in a mobility device you would normally see on a sidewalk I have a video on bike streets if you want more information on that but we'll be focusing on pedestrians here the number one thing a pedestrian needs is space the streak and still have lanes for cars but it must also have enough sidewalk space to be a space to socialize people watch window shop and do all of those things comfortably great streets are not just connections from point A to point B but instead a distinct place with room for activities room for pedestrians does not mean wide streets narrow streets can be great it just means that other users have to give up some or all of their space walking around the narrow streets of Rome or any city with ancient or medieval histories are proof of this on the flip side an extremely wide street like the Ringstrasse a' can still be quite comfortable for pedestrians while still allowing for quite a bit of car traffic terrain Strasse was built where the old medieval fortifications once stood new parks museums stately buildings and a grand boulevard took its place in the late 1800s in some places it's configured like a multi-way boulevard that offers pedestrians several places to walk between lanes of car traffic in other spots that sort of merges with adjacent parks in all cases it's evidence that even a wide street can be a great place to walk the next major consideration is climate and comfort pedestrians aren't in protected little boxes like drivers are so this really matters is the street shady when it's hot does it feel like a wind tunnel does it offer protection from the rain one of the most famous examples of streets sheltered from the elements is in Bologna the Central City has over 45 kilometres of porticoed streets the streets essentially have sidewalks covered by the upper storeys of adjacent buildings but the sidewalks are still public cars drive through the narrow space between the porticoes the porticoes do a good job of keeping out the rain and snow as well as the hot Sun and summer they're still wide enough to offer the comfort described before bolonia is one of my favorite cities thanks to these unique and beautiful streets of course it's possible to make weather sensitive streets without constructing massive networks of porticoes trees will do the trick I love street trees so much that I've already done an entire video dedicated to this topic I'll just reiterate that they can keep pedestrians cool and dry and they also improve local air quality and look beautiful doing it many of the great streets mentioned in this video have tree canopies to keep people comfortable I'm going to call out one street that could do a little better the trees along the shelfs Alizee are trimmed into a boxy form that looks interesting it creates a distinct parallel line structure but it does a poor job of creating a canopy I'd love to see Paris loosen up a bit and let the trees grow as they'd like I think pedestrians would appreciate it over in Spain could you imagine la rambla shown here without its trees look at that beautiful dappled sunlight when you think about streets it's easy to get caught up in thinking about just the ground level when I was talking about the need for pedestrian space that's a ground level concern but truly great streets have walls a sense of enclosure you we have to go as far as Bologna level enclosure but a good Street makes you feel somewhat contained nobody wants to walk in the opposite scenario where you're out in some suburban arterial with all of the buildings too low and too far apart to create enclosure even the most pleasing country roads are tree-lined to offer that enclosure there are two dimensions two enclosure vertical and horizontal vertical is how tall a building needs to be relative to the width of the street there is no single best ratio here but most of the great streets have a ratio of 1 to 1 to about 1 to 4 if you start getting a ratio of 1 to 5 the buildings are too short and too far away to create any enclosure there are some extreme examples of enclosure like the Via del Corso in Rome you get places with 20 metre tall buildings in 11 metre wide streets for a ratio of 1 to 0.5 this is pretty close to the upper limit of how enclosed a street can feel while still feeling comfortable and not claustrophobic horizontal enclosure depends on the type of Street the streets in this video probably need more horizontal enclosure than say a street of single-family homes for urban streets if you can see through to the rear yard or alley or the next street over the horizontal spacing is probably too loose now that we have the building massing squared away what about the other qualities of the building's themselves the buildings form the walls of the urban room we call a street and we don't want boring white walls there are several important criteria to consider and the first is transparency are there windows at street level or blank walls which would you rather walk down having windows at street level usually means storefronts and other semi public spaces on the inside that expand the reach of the street realm this is why many great streets are also great shopping streets with elaborate shop windows related to this is facade articulation windows are great but if you only have windows like glass office buildings you can run into the same problem as blank walls facade articulation gives the eye something interesting to look at remember when you're on foot you can notice little details that you never notice in a car so they really matter to the quality of this street this is why you see signage like this on a car oriented street and signage like this on a pedestrian oriented one little details like multiple cornice lines windows with divided lights embellish doors can create interesting textures and shadow lines that create a visual feast for our eyes speaking of doors entrance frequencies another important consideration are their doors spaced every 10 meters or every 100 meters the closer the doors are spaced the livelier the street in general more doors equals better Street our final attribute at least for this video is complementarity did the buildings along the street go together they don't all need to be built in the same era but they should all work together to form a cohesive streetscape back when I was in architecture school we called these good neighbor buildings you don't have to have a street that looks like Regent Street in London which takes this to an extreme and with a nice Bend creates a pleasing effect and you can have a few iconic buildings like a Gaudi on the passage de Gracia but in general building should feel consistent in complementary now there are many other factors to consider and maybe I'll put that in a part two video they include things like how a street begins and ends having many small buildings instead of a few large ones parking overall length and so on but I hope this gave you a general overview of the design characteristics needed to create a great Street when a street is a few of these characteristics really dialed in the effect is pleasing for somebody walking down it hey thank you so much for sticking around to the end and this is the point where I usually talk about a sponsor and this one is great it's nebula and curiosity stream now nebula has a ton of great original content and I really want to recommend Tom Scott's money it's sort of a game theory game show and I was totally riveted and so was my wife we've been watched the entire thing nebula also has exclusive 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Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 371,690

Keywords: city planning, town planning, urban planning, urban design

Id: xov7Ao_fPwQ

Length: 9min 37sec (577 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/cgyguy81]

One thing that wasn't mentioned in the video, but I think is a quality of a "Great Street" is the presence of pedestrian islands that allow (and encourage) pedestrians to safely "jaywalk". It's quite annoying to walk to the corner of a city block just to cross, when where you want to go is exactly on the other side of the street.

Below is a video showing what I mean by "pedestrian islands":

https://youtu.be/h2cV0gzBzds

[u/[deleted]]

This, this, and more this. I can’t believe how desolate the very fabric of America is.