Holistic Benefits of Well-Designed Streetscaping
By Shuangwen Yang, Design Education Fellow
8 min read This blog explores the benefits of streetscapes and important tools to utilize as a part of streetscape designs. Read on to see examples from Nashville and all over the world for well-designed streetscapes.
Streetscaping is a concept that recognizes streets as public spaces where people can engage in different activities. The natural and built aspects of streetscapes largely influence the interactions between people and vehicles. A well-designed streetscape addresses things beyond health and safety; it enhances cultural identity of a community and drives economic developments in both tangible and intangible ways.
seasonal interest and combat urban heat island effect
Iconic cherry blossoms as street trees in Bonn, Germany.
Whether it’s cherry blossoms in the spring or vibrant colors from red maples in the fall, the right choices of street trees can greatly enhance the aesthetic quality and complement the architectural characters of a street. As a growing element, street trees can well reflect the passing of time. Historical neighborhoods tend to have mature and tall canopy trees that shadow over the pavers and houses made with stones and bricks, providing a unique scenery and a sense of serenity.
Mature tree canopies shading a historical neighborhood in Savannah, GA.
There are certainly challenges that come with providing more tree coverage in the urban conditions due to a lack of maintenance, budget, and resources. Sometimes, we tend to overlook the long-term benefits of investing in tree canopies.
Cities can be hard to live in during the Summertime because of urban heat island effect. Dark roads and asphalt parking lots can adsorb and retain a lot of heat. This can be mitigated by providing tree canopies. Not only do they soften the hardscapes, but the shade they provide limits the amount of heat that reaches the ground, which reduces the amount of heat absorbed by the ground and released back to the atmosphere during nighttime. Areas with dense tree canopies tend to be a lot cooler than the areas without them.
infiltrate rainwater and reduce stormwater runoff
Rain water gets captured in urban bio retention ponds and infiltrated into the soil through underdrains
Another great opportunity that streetscapes offer is through stormwater management. Dedicated planting area creates pockets of urban bioretention. Like traditional bioretention ponds, urban bioretention is designed to fit into concrete-sided containers within urban landscapes or city Right of Ways. They are intended for small, fragmented drainage areas such as shopping or pedestrian plazas with highly concentrated urban development. Captured runoff is treated by filtration through engineered soil medium. Then it’s either infiltrated into the subsoil or exfiltrated through an underdrain. Through this process, some major benefits that urban bios have include increasing groundwater recharge, reducing total runoff volume, reducing runoff temperature and pollutant loading.
Site aesthetics can be greatly enhanced by utilizing different plant species that are adaptable to bioretention ponds. A combination of trees, shrubs, grasses, and river rocks are often used to soften the street edges. A well designed urban bioretention can also better separate the sidewalks from the streets than street trees alone, which creates a wider buffer and a more comfortable pedestrian zone.
Urban bio retention creates design opportunities that allows seat walls to be implemented as a part of pedestrian spaces.
slow down traffic and improve pedestrian safety
An example of vegetated curb extension as a part of chicane designs.
An important benefit that streetscapes can help achieve is traffic calming, which includes methods used to break up long uninterrupted streets that tend to encourage speed. It is a way to alter driver behavior and improve safety for non-motorized street users.
A chicane is a series of alternating curb extensions or islands that narrow the roadway and force the vehicles to follow a S-shaped curving path, which can effectively reduce vehicular speed. This method is best applied on wide, low-volume local streets where speeding issues are common.
When it comes to chicane designs, less permanent ways involve roadway markings, delineators and rubber speed bumps placed around the curves, which are commonly seen in tactical urbanism solution projects. For a community in need of traffic calming improvements, it’s a great way to start a conversation and obtain feedback using low budget and temporary demonstration. The before and after effect of implementing chicanes could be measured, analyzed, and potentially drive some future decisions and investments on traffic calming within a community.
Chicane implementation can slow down vehicular traffic by creating curvy paths that require drivers to pay more attention while driving.
More permanent ways are curb extensions that alternate from one side of the street to the other. This measure can also have an impact on street drainage or utility placement. The extended areas create space for planting and even small public spaces along the street that can make our streets greener and encourage more social interactions among community members.
One thing to keep in mind for chicane design is to best avoid roads with major bus routes or truck routes. Access clearance for emergency vehicles such as ambulances or fire trucks must be considered as well.
Streetscapes inspire placemaking in our communities
Placemaking is a collective community vision to reimagine and reinvent public spaces. It is intended to inspire and strengthen the connections between community members and the places they share. Streetscape can play a part in creating and maintaining the physical, cultural, and social identities that define places. A few methods can be incorporated:
Road DietOne of the most important and essential goals through placemaking is to enhance public health, safety, and welfare. Road diet can help create buffers between pedestrian and vehicular spaces. Driving lanes reduced can be replaced with protected bike lanes or more planting.
PARK(ing) Day Nashville to illustrate how street parking spots can be repurposed into tiny parklets.
The amount of street parking may also be reduced along with road diet. By taking away dedicated street parking spaces, it allows room for other public uses such as pop-up parks.
PARK(ing) Day is a global event that occurs each year to advocate for safer, greener, and more equitable pedestrian spaces by temporarily converting street parking spaces into tiny public parks and social spaces. Whether it’s passive recreation with lawn and bench seating or active recreation with participatory games and activities, they welcome passers-by to experience and enjoy these creative spaces and spread the idea of advocating for more public spaces through less parking.
Sidewalk CafésAccording to the National Restaurants Association, around 110,000 restaurants have closed across the country since the COVID pandemic. In Nashville, just like many other cities, curbside dining became the lifeline for the restaurant industry. In 2020, A “sidewalk cafe” program was launched by metro to provide relief to the restaurants affected by COVID and maintain social distancing. It was meant to be a temporary program limited to downtown businesses only. Sidewalk cafe provided an opportunity for restaurants to serve more guests and cut down wait times.
Café Roze was one of the restaurants in Nashville that continued the implementation of “sidewalk café” after the COVID shutdown.
Bill BL2020-403 was passed to permanently extend provision for county wide sidewalk cafes in 2022. In addition to permit fees, the city requires a minimum 4-foot sidewalk clearance at all times to provide ADA accessibility.
While there are some concerns of sidewalk cafes such as debris and noise control, people generally acknowledge that outdoor dining can have tremendous long-term benefits if there are more regulations. Additionally, to look into even more permanent measures to keep outdoor dining alive, sidewalk widening could be a strategy as it can greatly promote more economic opportunities for retail and dining, and it provides more room for different functions and uses of the sidewalks.
On the bright side, curbside dining not only saved hundreds and thousands of jobs but more successfully made our streets vibrant and full of life again. It created a new dining culture and a unique streetscape scenery. This trend changed our relationship dynamics and experiences with sidewalks, which many were solely meant for carrying us from one place to another.
Multimodal Streets
An example of vehicular oriented street design.
Multimodal streets are streets that offer people options for safe, attractive, and convenient travel by foot, bike, public transit and even motor vehicles. They create more accessibility by claiming more street spaces for alternative travel methods including scooters, bikes, buses, and rideshare, which not only greatly increases the street capacity, but also saves our daily commuting time. There are many other benefits with multimodal street implementations such as less carbon emission and more retail opportunities.
There is not a design template to create a successful multimodal street as each street accommodates different functions and uses. NashvilleNext’s Access Nashville 2024 Volume V plan identifies key challenges and proposed design guidelines that focus on major and collector streets within the city. Additionally, Nashville Department of Transportation runs a variety of programs that help strengthen the multimodal infrastructure. Major strategies include Vision Zero that helps eliminate traffic fatalities and injuries, WalknBike Nashville that creates better networks for sidewalk and bikeway connections, and Imagine East Bank Vision Plan that prioritizes transit safety for non-motorized travels while making East Bank more equitable and affordable. All programs remain up-to-date to reflect the changing conditions in the city.
An example of a multimodal street design.
Wayfinding signage and art are inseparable from streetscape designs
An example of downtime Nashville signage style.
Wayfinding signage generally needs to be placed at strategic locations that can effectively catch people’s attention and compliment the streetscapes. A consistent design template including font, color, size, and style can help enhance the identity of a place. Multi-lingual signages may also be provided to accommodate the demographic needs of a district.
Nashville Witness walls located next to Nashville Metropolitan Courthouse as a part of the streetscape design to document the Civil Rights Movement in the city.
A variety of signages serve different purposes. Gateway signages are located at the entrance of a district. Elements like markers, sculptures, landscape features or arriving plazas are typically used to announce the entry of an area. Orientation signs are signs that provide neighborhood information and resources and highlight different destinations. They are typically located at key points with high pedestrian traffic. Directional signs are common on most streets, as they help pedestrians and vehicles to navigate through the city. These signages are particularly needed on streets with a great volume of tourists such as in downtown areas and commercial streets. Interpretive signages can help convey historical, cultural, and architectural information. This type of signage may not comply with the modern design template; however, its uniqueness tends to highlight a city’s past and present on its own.
From murals to sculptures, street art can further showcase the character of a community through the messages they deliver. Art also helps reveal the passing of time and commemorate historical events, which provides tremendous learning opportunities and social interactions.
Streetscapes improve the OVERALL quality of our life
Streetscapes are such valuable assets to our cities that are more than a glance of fresh greenery. They make our streets a lot more efficient while providing tremendous environmental benefits and economic opportunities. They help us develop and maintain healthy lifestyles and social interactions with each other and no doubt improve the quality of our life over time.