Engineering, Urbanism and the Struggle for Street Design

Abstract

The making and upkeep of streets is a central task of urban design. In a critical review of the relation between urban design and highway engineering, the paper distinguishes two paradigms: on one side, the hierarchical model, pervasive and institutionally entrenched through design standards and traffic management; on the other, an alternative non-hierarchical paradigm which has developed piecemeal and experimentally on the back of policies for social exclusion, city centre regeneration, liveable neighbourhoods and neo-traditional urbanism. The paper discusses the tension between the two frameworks and highlights the health, safety and environmental arguments for reinventing the mixed-use urban street.

Acknowledgements

Though the views in this paper are the author's, he gratefully acknowledges information and insights provided by Alan Baxter, George Dark, Colin Davis, Richard Eastham, Lyn Fenton, Stephen Hall, David Hutchinson, Robert Huxford, Rachel Read, Marion Roberts, David Taylor and Robert Thorne. The research was supported by a fellowship from the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.