The future design of streets

Street life is at the heart of our society. Streets are the foundation of our daily life: providing a spatial platform where people can move and organise many economic and cultural activities. Streets, as elementary urban components, are the basis of our living environment and therefore important spaces to take care of, now and tomorrow.

Recently, in addition to conventional street design projects, a new wave of attention and interest led to many hands-on initiatives: interventions with paint and tape showed us that it is not so difficult to change streets. With new actors and more agile manners of intervening, suddenly the impossible became possible. That brings us to the question if our actual practices of street designing are still appropriate?

Rather than searching for one standard solution that fits everywhere, it is more about a variety of approaches and models that recognise site specific characteristics, local conditions, and the cultural context. More often it is also about transforming and adapting existing streets to spaces for social activities and green structures, in which new approaches include multiple angles.

In relation to that, mobility is one of the main topics, aside social and economic activities, sport and play, water systems, green ecology, climate adaptation, and private plots and buildings.

This publication gives an overview and reflection on the Future Design of Streets, based on all activities of the ´the Future Design of Streets platform´ between 2020 and 2023 (conference, webinars, exhibitions, workshops).

Bilingual edition: English and Portuguese.