How to design for cars in people-centred places
Amsterdam is well known for its vibrant streets and bike culture. But few people know that it also offers better driving access than car-centric cities like Atlanta—despite having far narrower roads. What can cities learn from this?
North American cities want compact, vibrant places that add more jobs, homes, and visitors without worsening traffic or emissions. But they keep hitting the same trap. Great places attract traffic, leaving cities with two bad options:
Build for drivers, adding wider roads and parking lots, which undermines the vibrancy that people love.
Ignore drivers, and invite political backlash. Cars and trucks play an important economic role, and many residents want or need to continue driving.
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.
Aerial view of an intersection in Tysons, Virginia in 2012, next to an elevated rail line that connects to downtown Washington D.C. (Google Maps)
In 2010, Fairfax County, Virginia, approved a plan that aimed to create compact, pedestrian-friendly development near transit stations. The plan committed $2.9 billion for an elevated train to downtown Washington D.C. 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.
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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