Green Streets

Street intersections are corners where people, bicycles, motorcycles, automobiles, trucks, and buses come together. The higher the volume of vehicular traffic, the higher the need for designated pedestrian crossings. Intersections sonically and physically communicate where and when people need to crosswalks and where. Raised or painted areas denote traffic calming mid-crossing safe stations. Planted medians offer vegetative and shaded halfway stops. Look at NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide to Intersection Design for several layers of design elements. Find an intersection in your city and propose people-friendly safe crossing areas—label key features.

Children make up almost one-third of the world’s population. Yet the majority of streets are designed with wide lanes of traffic and little room for young humans. For most youth, roads are dangerous. Yet streets are how children navigate neighborhoods, meet friends, go to school, and experience their city. Imagine streets with, and for, children. Roads of all types need to be quieter for caregivers, parents, and grandparents. Roads need materials that absorb and deflect sounds; they need the quiet and cleanliness of electric cars and the filter, shelter, and shade of trees absorbing loud sounds. Providing protected places for children to sit, eat, and play safely alongside streets can be buffered with raised plantings and trees. Boulevards that connect to schools and playgrounds offering different age options are key. Streets for children offer clean places to sit with caregivers, parents, grandparents, and other children. Choose a neighborhood road and list the crossing dangers. Then add 3-5 new safety improvements for fun, social interaction, safety, and nature, on an aerial photograph of a street in your neighborhood.

Now that you are becoming a Green Street advocate, take a look around your neighborhood or city. Are there streets that have bike lanes? Are intersections marked for pedestrian crossings? Are there planted medians? Do the streets in your city have trees? Are there planted bioswales buffering people from the traffic. Take pictures of Green Streets in your city and post them to the Green Street Gallery!

Neighborhood streets often are only made for cars, forcing people to walk their dogs in the street. Marking walking and bike lanes on the road encourage people to walk and bike. An even better solution is to construct a sidewalk with a landscaped green parkway between the sidewalk and the street. Planting trees in the parkway protects people from cars and cools the road. Take a look at some before and after pictures of the firm URB-I for inspiration! Another resource is Project for Public Space Streets for People Case Studies like this one in New York City, helping children get safely to and from neighborhood schools and allowing people of all ages to gather outdoors. Using Google Maps, find a neighborhood street to improve for people of all ages. Using photographs or sketches, draw a before and after view of a street in your neighborhood.

Streets downtown have more people and cars than most residential thoroughfares. Review NEXT.cc STREETS. Prioritize safety and protection of people by adding improvements. Start with clearly marked intersections, add planted buffers, and create a crossing median, bike lanes, a bus lane, and car lanes. Organize the movement of the street to keep people safe. Draw a plan and cross-section of suggested improvements to the thoroughfare

• What are the benefits of having Green Streets?
  • They shift existing streets from moving cars and trucks to welcoming places for people of all ages.
  • They offer alternative travel via bikes and public transit.
  • They offer diverse seating and safe street life.
  • They change urban concrete jungles to locations in the city that offset the heat island effect with treesAnd filter and manage stormwater with planted areas.
  • All of the above
• Green street design affects the traffic efficiency and increases dangerous blindspots from the tall-grown plants.
  • True. The bump-outs on the streets narrows the street for vehicular traffic.
  • False. A well-planned green street should protect the pedestrian with bioswale buffering; also, bike, public transit, and vehicular traffic can be organized to maximize the traffic efficiency.
• Since roads are potentially dangerous for youths, areas populated with children should:
  • Redirect children pedestrians to a designated safer road with less traffic to cross.
  • Stop all the traffic in order to let the children pass for a safe range of time.
  • Redesign safety precautions such as bump-outs alongside the streets, place raised plantings that buffer and noise provides better experiences for the children in the neighborhood.
• \How do green streets improve the quality of the environment?
  • Green streets have trees that are home to the biodiversity of human and nonhuman life and offer shade, moments of privacy, and places to gather and collect.
  • Green streets bring indigenous plants back to the environment to improve habitat for the biodiversity of the landscape.
  • Green Streets manage stormwater as the non-asphalt land does.
  • All of the above.
• In a neighborhood, what benefits can green street designs bring to people of all ages?
  • Walking and bike lanes that encourage people to walk and bike more.
  • A landscaped green parkway between the sidewalk and the street for people to walk their pets.
  • Trees in the parkway protects people from cars and cools the road.
  • All of the above.