ULI promotes new urbanist street standards

In a clear break with the “bigger is better” philosophy of street design, the Urban Land Institute (ULI) has released a revamped third edition of its guide to residential street design. Residential Streets attempts to demonstrate that streets in new urbanist communities can be consistent with the standard practices of highway and traffic engineers. For the largest association of real estate developers to endorse standards for more walkable and safer streets is a significant move. The book carries added weight considering it was produced in collaboration with other heavy hitters: the National Association of Homebuilders, the American Society of Civil Engineers, and the Institute of Transportation of Engineers. Primary author Walter Kulash, a leading new urbanist traffic engineer with the firm Glatting Jackson in Orlando, writes that Residential Streets “is based on the premise that the design of a residential street should be appropriate to its functions.” These include not only its role in the transportation system but also its role as part of the living environment of a neighborhood. “Blanket guidelines are inappropriate,” he writes. The book does make specific recommendations for narrowing the width of residential streets and features detailed diagrams on intersection design and curb radii, as well as discussing the street as a drainage system. But much of the book also deals with more general principles and design considerations reflecting the influence of new urbanist standards. These include the notions that street planning should relate to overall community planning; that design standards should be flexible enough to allow street alignments to follow natural contours or respond to design objectives such as creating intimate urban spaces; that streets function as gathering places and centers of community activity; and that “excessive widths or an undue concern with geometry more appropriate for highways encourages greater vehicle speeds.” On the controversial issue of emergency access, Residential Streets advocates improving accessibility with an interconnected street system and encourages fire departments to adapt their vehicle design to the street widths rather than the other way around. Kulash’s recommendations for street widths are in line with current standards among new urbanist designers. Local streets with parking restricted to one side work well at a pavement width of 18 feet, while streets with parking on both sides should be 22 to 26 feet wide. The recommended width for residential collector streets is 32 to 36 feet. no change in classification While the guide promotes narrower standards for residential streets, it does not attempt a break with the current functional classification of streets into freeways, arterial roads, residential collectors, and local streets. Many new urbanists planners call for a broadening of these standards to include more street types and designating their primary function in terms of the balance between vehicle or pedestrian use. For neighborhood planners and developers involved in negotiations on street standards, Residential Streets provides some valuable morsels of information. One current calculation provides some hard numbers on the cost of excessive street widths, for instance. Information from a project in Northern California shows that 100 feet of a 24 foot wide street costs $9,465, while the same length at 36 feet would cost $13,545. The difference is even more pronounced when the cost of land is brought into the equation. In this case lots sold for $300,000 per acre, resulting in a total cost of $26,000 for the 24 foot street and $38,700 for the 36 foot street. The book also provides a list of some of the cities across the country that have successfully adopted narrow street standards. While narrow streets alone will have limited impact on the character of new development, this book may well contribute to increasing the pressure on transportation engineers and public agencies around the nation. Contact: www.uli. org.