Engineering, Urbanism and the Struggle for Street Design

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.