Residential Streets

Rating:
Summary: Every municipality should read this book.
Review: I purchased this book after hearing a presentation by the author on his ideas on "humanizing" highways. This authoritative book presents the point of view that residential neighborhood streets should be part of the ambience of the neighborhood, and not just efficient vehicle movers. In the author's view, it is OK for kids to use their neighborhood street as a playground, and the street should be designed with enough traffic calming geometry so that it would be safe to do so. This point of view is entirely opposite to the prevailing attitude in the town I live in, where residential streets, even cul-de-sacs, are required to be wide enough for two cars to pass plus a row of parked cars, and as a consequence, residents routinely ask for police enforcement to dicourage cars from speeding on those streets.

To back up this point of view, the book is a design manual for residential streets, including drainage, intersection design, pavement, sidewalks, bike paths, etc. A municipality wishing to adopt the point of view of the book will find all the specs necessary to incorporate that point of view in its subdivision regulations.

When I saw this book, I passed it around to everyone influential I knew, and got the town planning department to order two more copies for people to borrow and read.