The configurational dimension in street design guidelines.

Paper in proceeding, 2024

Urban and transport planning are integral processes in urban development, synergetic in nature but often conflicting in application. This competition over urban space culminates in the street: the primary materialization of the interface between local design and global planning decisions. Street design guidelines are frequently used in practice to stipulate how streets should be built and transformed, but the dominance of traffic planning and the mismatch between local design and global planning intentions have caused a series of problems in urban areas, such as unsafe walking environments, infrastructure barrier effects, unattractive public spaces. Space Syntax research has highlighted the importance of streets’ configurational properties and the relation between their position within the network structure and their role as public places, transport corridors or carriers of activity. Given the accumulated knowledge and evidence from research, it would seem natural that the configurational dimension of streets would inform the street design guidelines but, based on the literature review and interview with planning professionals presented in the paper, it is found that these guidelines lack system thinking perspective. The paper presents the systematic review of 48 international street design guidelines and identifies gaps in the way street design guidelines address the configurational dimension of streets. It suggests how the configurational measures and street typologies generated within space syntax research can introduce the systemic dimension in current street design guidelines and offer instruments to mediate street design complexities, when it comes to bridging global planning and local design intentions.