Better Together

Our streets and transportation systems — especially around Main Street districts — determine how people can get to, connect with, and build up their communities, and they can also create the space for communal life to unfold.

Physical features and intentional community engagement are both at the heart of people-oriented street planning and design. Together, the physical elements of downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts and thoughtful community engagement with residents can impact overall connectivity, culture, health, sense of place, and belonging.

Car-oriented streets can create a sense of disconnectedness through:

• Barriers to community connection
• Eroded sense of physical geography

Communities can reap many benefits from people-oriented streets through:

• Gathering places for democracy and advocacy in action
• Social cohesion and resilience
• Sense of place
• Main Street character
• Effective transit
• Enhanced sense of culture and community
• Public trust built from community engagement

Resources

• Goodyear, Sarah (CityLab) — Kids Who Get Driven Everywhere Don’t Know Where They’re Going
• Harel, Claude-Jean (Great Excursions) — The Economic Social and Environmental Benefits of Heritage Conservation: An Annotated Bibliography
• Hargreaves McIntyre, Morris (The Scottish Executive) — A Literature Review of the Social, Economic and Environmental Impact of Architecture and Design
• Kamp, John and Rojas, James (American Planning Association California Chapter Northern) — Collaborative, Sensory-Based Community Engagement for a More Equitable Bike/​Pedestrian Environment
• Main Street America - Community Engagement for Main Street Transformation
• Miller Mumford,Ellis (University of Pennsylvania) — The Social Effects of Preservation: Social Wellbeing and the Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program in Philadelphia
• Plough, Alonzo, et al. (American Journal of Public Health) — Building Community Disaster Resilience: Perspectives From a Large Urban County Department of Public Health
• Project for Public Spaces
  • Actions for Streets as Places: How Community Makes It Happen
  • Building Community Through Transportation
  • Community Based Street Design
  • New Research Strengthens Link Between Walkable Neighborhoods and Civic Involvement
  • Streets as Places: How Transportation Can Create a Sense of Community
  • Whose Streets, Our Streets”: Democracy Still Lives in Public Spaces
• Rogers, Shannon, et. al (University of New Hampshire) — Examining Walkability and Social Capital as Indicators of Quality of Life at the Municipal and Neighborhood Scales
• The Scenic Route — Promoting Safer Streets and Cultivating Ownership of a Transportation Asset
• Steuteville, Robert (Public Square: A CNU Journal) — Shared Street Connects Culture and Community
• University College London Street Mobility and Network Accessibility — What do we mean by ​“community severance?

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