How many different kinds of streets does your community have? Do you have a highway? Do you have a boulevard? Do you have avenues, lanes and alleys? Find an example of each street type in your town. With a friend, and watching carefully for moving cars, measure the width of the street from the face of the building across the sidewalk, across parking lanes, across traffic lanes, to the face of the building on the other side. You can also zoom in on Google Earth and use the measuring tool. Once you have determined the street width, take a piece of paper and draw a scaled plan and elevation of your street type. You can use photos of the buildings on either side to capture the ‘space’ of the street. Draw the different street widths to scale to compare them. Be sure to label the different zones such as sidewalk, planted strips (with trees), streetlights, parking, etc. Make a Street Journal. Be sure to walk down each of the street types and see what feels differently about them. Be a street engineer. When you visit other places, also look at the quality of the life on the street.

We walk to get to a destination, but sometimes we also just walk to explore and experience. A good street encourages us to walk and explore; a good street encourages us to meet with other people and to see and learn new things. Pick a street in your city that you find interesting. Take a ten-minute walk along that street. Every fifteen seconds take a picture of what you are looking at. Take your pictures home and make a sketch from each of your pictures. Recreate your walk in a linear timeline. What you are drawing and looking at it is called the pedestrian experience. The more there is to look at and learn from, the richer the pedestrian experience. Walking ten minutes on a street where everything is the same can be monotonous.

Variety is exciting!

Pick a street in your community that you think could be improved. What would you like to add? Does your community need rapid transit? Does it need bike lanes? Does it need pedestrian protection and planting separation. Take a picture of an existing street. Then trace over it and draw or collage what you would like to see there. Post your before and after streets.

Be a street designer!

What will our streets look like in the future? How many parallel forms of transportation and mobility will exist on a street? What will the landscape of the street look like? Will we have street rooms? Imagine a street of the future and draw or collage it.