How to design for cars in people-centred places
Many North American cities want to build compact, vibrant places that add more jobs, homes, and visitors. But they often run into the same trap: Great places attract traffic, leaving cities with a difficult choice:
Build for drivers, by adding wider roads and parking lots, and undermine the vibrancy that makes people-centred places succeed, or
Ignore drivers, by reducing car access and parking, and risk backlash from drivers.
Happy Cities and Mobycon are releasing a design guide that offers a better third option—three tested strategies to meet the needs of drivers and build places people love.
In 2010, Fairfax County approved a plan that aimed to create compact, pedestrian-friendly development near transit stations in places like Tysons. The plan committed $2.9 billion for an elevated train to downtown Washington D.C., shown above. But it also set aside $1 billion for roads, which included widening roads directly next to the new transit stations. The intersection at one station grew from eight lanes to 11. Transit ridership has fallen short of targets. (Google Maps)
When governments lack clarity on how best to meet the needs of cars in compact areas, they are prone to make investments that undermine each other.
Across North America, cities make major investments in transit and walkability, but undermine these investments with highway-style roads.
Wide roads, slip lanes, and large parking lots—these are standard road design practices across most North American cities. They make sense for places where people need to drive to get around, like industrial parks. But in people-centred places, like a downtown or next to a new transit station, they stifle growth, rather than support it. In these places, wide, fast roads deaden street life, dissuade investment, and sap communities of vitality.
Cities need distinct design strategies to manage car traffic in people-centred places.
This gap isn’t the fault of individual planners or municipalities. It’s built into the systems that shape road design, and by consequence, cities.
Like Fairfax County, many local governments want to create great, walkable places. But their efforts are stifled because they don’t have the design tools to accommodate cars in people-centred places.
We believe there’s another way.
Introducing: A new street design guide for cars in people-centred areas.
Happy Cities and Mobycon are releasing a guide that will offer a new set of design practices to meet the needs of cars—while creating safe, comfortable, inviting streets for pedestrians, bikes, and other active road users.
The guide integrates the Happy Cities approach to community planning and building design with Mobycon’s Dutch-rooted, human-centred mobility expertise.
It will provide practical guidance on:
How to tell whether you’re designing a car-centred or a people-centred place
What people-centred areas need and what drivers need
Three tested strategies to meet the needs of cars in people-centred places, without undermining them
Practical moves to bring people-centred design at scale
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