Reimagining streets as places for connection and creativity

By Seth LaJeunesse
Senior Research Associate, Assistant Director-Safe Routes to School
University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center

In 1950, U.S. traffic engineers brought us the Highway Capacity Manual. Therein lay a concept known as the “volume to capacity” or “v/c” ratio, which transformed people driving cars on public roads into a hydrology problem: a ratio with the “flow” of car traffic as the numerator and a maximum value of the “sustainable flow” of traffic (can this road take 1,500 cars an hour?) as the denominator. 

Fifteen years on, traffic engineers introduced us — also in the Highway Capacity Manual (HCM) — to something called “Level of Service” or LOS. Whereas v/c ratios pertained to segments of road, LOS pertained to intersections. This novel LOS measure added up the seconds drivers waited at intersections before being able to drive on and used these seconds to guesstimate drivers’ distaste for experiencing delays in exercising their providential right to motor around at inhuman speeds.  

These two metrics have long dominated transportation planning and engineering. And by the looks of things, they have also effectively reduced streets to little more than conduits for cars.  

Today, a consensus is forming around using “multi-modal LOS” (MMLOS) to evaluate street performance. This measure considers the perspectives of all users — pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and drivers — and incorporates safety and accessibility into its assessment of road performance. Though a step in the right direction, this welcome shift still misses the mark.  

By framing the use of streets in terms of “travel modes,” we confine human behavior to rigid, technocratic categories. It’s as though an invisible someone is telling us, “you shall travel through this space via walking, biking, or driving” rather than “you should feel welcome to exercise your human proclivities to explore, create, and connect in this, our public space.”  

Streets have always been more than simply pathways for movement. Historically — and in a limited number of pockets today — streets served as markets, playgrounds, stages, and gathering spots. Before the automobile’s total eclipsing of child autonomy and social life, children played stickball in the middle of the street, neighbors gossiped on front stoops, and street vendors turned sidewalks into convivial marketplaces. The rise of centralized, car-first planning has eroded these activities, prioritizing private speed over public vitality.  

Donald Appleyard’s seminal 1981 study, “Livable Streets”, revealed profound social and public health consequences of traffic on residential streets in San Francisco. He compared three streets — Light Street (carrying 2,000 vehicles per day), Medium Street (8,000 vehicles per day), and Heavy Street (16,000 vehicles per day) — and found that residents on Light Street had three times more local friends and twice as many acquaintances as those on Heavy Street. Not only that, but Light Street residents also considered much more of the sidewalk and street as their “extended living space,” while those on Heavy Street retreated indoors, perceiving their street as a hostile environment.  

Appleyard’s work showed that lower traffic volumes foster stronger social ties and street life, challenging the notion that streets should serve only as traffic sewers.  

But streets could afford all of us so much more! And by afford, I mean that which our environments invite or enable us to do within them, as envisioned by the American psychologist, James Gibson. A bench affords sitting; a wide, open plaza affords gathering; a smooth, flat surface affords walking, running, or rolling.  

Streets, when designed with human inclinations in mind, afford a multitude of activities beyond getting from A to B or negotiating that last mile. This multitude includes, at the very least: 

 – Play: Think Barcelona’s “superblocks,” which restrict through traffic, transforming streets into places children play soccer and neighbors catch up.  

– Socializing: Visualize wide sidewalks, benches, and shade trees inviting unscripted conversations, turning work-a-day commutes into opportunities for connection.  

– Performance and expression: Picture New Orleans’ second-line parades or impromptu breakdancing in Philly’s subway stations serving as stages for cultural expression.  

– Commerce: Imagine sidewalk vendors, food trucks, and pop-up markets activating streets economically, creating lively, walkable corridors.  

– Protest and civic Action: Conjure streets as sites of political expression, inviting everything from civil rights marches to climate strikes.

While multi-modal LOS is an improvement over driver LOS, we must go further. Streets should be judged not just by how they move people, but by how they invite EVERYONE to dwell, connect, and create.  

 And by judged, I mean appraised by a community-representative polity — to borrow a term from the inspiring Charles T. Brown. The people using the streets must be the ones deciding what their streets afford (or not).  

By embracing the full range of street affordances — play, socialization, commerce, protest, celebration — we can design streets that nurture human thriving rather than soulless throughput. At the end of the day, the truly best streets aren’t just for passing through — they are for living in.