case study on street design

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Design elements to rejuvenate indian streets: a case of bellasis road, mumbai.

Streets in the last century were primarily designed as a mode of transport for goods and services. This automobile-centric approach of street design stifled the human accessibility aspect, and eventually, cities forgot that every citizen is a pedestrian at some point in a day. But this scenario is changing, and cities globally are leading the movement to reinvest in their streets with a focus on pedestrian environment.

Mumbai is a city of pedestrians, with 51% of the total daily trips being walk trips, according to the April 2016 edition of the Comprehensive Mobility Plan of Greater Mumbai. Taking this into account, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) joined the global movement to improve pedestrian experience in August 2018, and announced the redesigning of Bellasis Road, a stretch between Nagpada and Mumbai Central Junction, in Byculla’s neighbourhood, to make it a ‘model street’. Following a series of consultations with stakeholders including institutions, vendors and the general public, the redesigning of this road is currently underway. The proposed new design complies with the national road safety standards, while safeguarding the vibrancy and local identity of the street.

Existing road condition

Originally built in 1793 , Bellasis Road is an 823-meter-long street, stretching between Nagpada Junction and Mumbai Central Station Junction. The street is an important east-west urban connector, with ground floor retail frontage along the corridor, which generates high pedestrian and vehicle volumes every day. The common issues observed on this road included lack of walkable footpaths, vehicular congestion, bottlenecks, multiple layers of street side parking and poor pedestrian crossing infrastructure.

During a road safety audit conducted on Bellasis Road recently, a pedestrian environment data scan (PEDS) showed that most of the pedestrians use footpath despite its less-than-ideal condition. The haphazard placement of bus stops, utilities, shop extensions, vendors, planters, etc., reduced the walkable space on the footpath. Unorganized parking was another obstacle that every pedestrian had to negotiate. Along with the absence of safe pedestrian crossings, Bellasis Road was indeed every pedestrian’s nightmare.

Proposed Design and Design Elements

The proposed design of Bellasis Road included the following principles:

• Maintaining contiguous vehicular traffic lanes: two lanes on each side
• Creating multi-utility/parking zones all along the street
• Introducing continuous footpaths
• Introducing protected pedestrian crossings
• Introducing ‘placemaking’ to manage the footpaths

Following these principles in the new design, existing median alignment was retained and the effective carriageway of two lanes each side was maintained. The space left between the carriageway and footpath was further analyzed based on the adjoining land-use to determine the quality of pedestrian environment on the road. For example, at the stretch where schools are, it became waiting/pick-and-drop zone while at the mall, it became parking zone and at smaller retail shops it became two-wheeler parking zone.

Towards the street frontage, a clear walking zone was identified to increase walkability and eliminate pedestrian-vehicular conflicts on the street. To facilitate this, shifting of certain above ground utility boxes, bus stops, etc., was recommended.

These proposed changes to the Bellasis Road design are based on three chief design elements: curb extensions, refuge islands and multi-utility zones. Modules for these elements were developed keeping the adjoining land-uses, pedestrian walkability and safety as a priority. How are these elements expected to rejuvenate the street?

1. Curb Extensions (Bulb-Outs)

A curb extension, known as a bulb-out, is a footpath extension at strategic locations to reduce pedestrian crossing distance and control their exposure to the moving vehicles. Curb extensions also increase the pedestrian and driver’s visibility towards each other and act as a traffic calming measure.

On Bellasis Road, at locations where street side parking obstructed the pedestrian crossings, curb extensions have been suggested. The space required for one such extension would be no more than the space taken by one parked car. At corners, curb expansions would allow extra space to introduce good quality place making and creating identity of the street.

Evidence from Latin American cities show that the chance of vehicle collisions and pedestrian crashes decrease by 6% for every one-meter decrease of pedestrian crossing distance . Curb extensions also help to tighten intersection radii and encourage slower turning speeds. Introducing curb extensions result in 2-8 kmph speed reduction for residential collector roads, which are moderate-capacity roads that move traffic from local streets to arterial roads.

2. Pedestrian Refuge Islands

A pedestrian refuge island is a paved portion in the median of the street, where pedestrians can stop and wait while crossing. While refuge islands may be used on both wide and narrow streets, they are generally applied at loca¬tions where speeds and volumes make crossings prohibitive. In the case of Bellasis Road, median refuge islands will be used where pedestrians need safe harbor after crossing one direction of traffic and before starting the other.

Globally, providing raised medians or pedestrian refuge areas have reduced pedestrian crashes by 46% and 39% on marked and unmarked crosswalk locations, respectively.

3. Multi-Utility Zones

Multi-utility zone (MUZ) is the footpath area allocated for various utilities necessary for the functioning of a street, such as vendors, public seating, landscaping, bus bays, parking, utility boxes, streetlights, signage etc. Provision of MUZs ensure that adequate clear walking space is available while accommodating ancillary activities within the footpath area. MUZs are best suited for neighborhood streets with mixed land-use, where multiple activities are present.

Bellasis Road is known for its street side everyday informal activities. An organized space along the street for these activities will help to maintain the character of the street as well as smoothen the pedestrian and vehicular movement.

Strategic design for safer roads

Safe walkable streets are fundamental components for any city. Today, the issues faced by pedestrians in Bellasis Road are common to people in almost every urban street in India. Bellasis Road is an embodiment of a typical Indian street, with its varied land-uses generating a plethora of street activities, jostling shoulder-to shoulder with traffic. When designed strategically, these multiple elements can contribute to a safer environment for vulnerable road users, and help establish vibrant, mixed-use public spaces while ensuring smooth vehicular flow.

The Sustainable Cities program at WRI India’s Ross Center, was the knowledge and implementation partner of MCGM for the intersection redesign project, under Bloomberg Philanthropy’s Initiative for Global Road Safety.

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• Open access
• Published: 08 July 2020

Biophilic streets: a design framework for creating multiple urban benefits

• Agata Cabanek 1 ,
• Maria Elena Zingoni de Baro 1 &
• Peter Newman 1  

Sustainable Earth volume  3 , Article number:  7 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Biophilic urbanism is bringing new perspectives to how natural systems need to be integrated into the fabric of cities. This paper shows how biophilic streets can be the front door to biophilic urbanism by integrating nature into a new street design, benefiting a range of economic, environmental and social functions. A theoretical integrated Biophilic Streets Design Framework, is outlined and evaluated through the analysis of four street revitalisation projects from Vitoria-Gasteiz, Berkeley, Portland and Melbourne. Its practical applications and multiple urban benefits will be of value to street designers globally. The Biophilic Streets Design Framework demonstrated that the four case studies meet the main design categories, which is favourable since multiple additional benefits are likely to be obtained. Future research is needed to monitor and quantify the performance of biophilic streets design to address the increasing effects of climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss in a cost-effective way.

Introduction

Streets have been the focus of public life in cities since they were first built [ 1 , 2 ]; they provide the space and accessibility for close communal activity. The rediscovery of the social and economic value of streets since the work of Jane Jacobs [ 3 ], groups like Project for Public Spaces, and the detailed designs of Jan Gehl [ 4 , 5 ], have enabled them to be seen as much more than spaces for mobility. This research seeks to integrate biophilic element into the design of new streets and the renewal of traditional ones to enhance the environmental component in the mix of benefits associated with streets.

Biophilic urbanism has emerged as a way to bring nature more purposefully into cities, not just between buildings and infrastructure, but into and onto them in ways that increase the connectivity between people and nature and derive benefits from natural services and functions [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Although the application of biophilic urbanism to streets has been present in the literature for some years and has informed the work of biophilic designers, it has not been formally developed into a design framework demonstrating how it can be delivered and what its multiple benefits are. This paper seeks to address the need for a theoretically and practice informed design framework to enable more effective delivery of biophilic urbanism.

Biophilia and related emerging concepts

The emerging concepts of biophilia, biophilic design and biophilic urbanism are primarily concerned with human inclinations to affiliate with nature in urbanised environments such as cities, as suggested by Wilson [ 9 ], Kellert Heerwagen and Mador [ 6 ] and Beatley [ 7 ].

The term biophilia was first used by the German psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in 1973 and defined as ‘love of life’. The American biologist E.O. Wilson advanced studies on this subject, expanding and popularising the concept of biophilia as the innate affinity of human beings with all forms of life and their inherent tendency to focus on lifelike processes in his seminal book, Biophilia (1984) [ 9 ]. Further studies demonstrated that this human inclination to affiliate with nature appears to be critical for human physical and mental health in the modern urbanised world due to humanity’s origins in nature [ 8 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Salingaros [ 12 ] studied this relationship in depth, also studying how humans developed their sensory space. He suggested that there are particular and very specific geometrical properties found in the structure of nature and in the built environment which have a positive and uplifting influence on human physical and mental conditions. These properties applied to design can therefore enhance the quality of life in urban centres. This process, called the ‘biophilic effect’ by Salingaros, relies on an intimate informational connection between humans and nature, and supports the need to introduce natural systems into the design of built environments [ 12 ]. Kellert [ 6 ] defined and described six biophilic design elements and seventy attributes that were later summarised for practical application in architectural and urban design. Kellert and Calabrese considered biophilic design as a means for sustainable development because it could promote care, stewardship, and attachment to place [ 10 ].

Biophilic design attempts to achieve the benefits of contact between people and nature within the modern built environment [ 6 , 10 , 11 ] by integrating nature, internally and externally, into buildings, built infrastructure and across the urban space [ 7 ]. By adopting the strategies of this design principle, creating habitats for people, as biological organisms, that restore or enhance their physical and mental health, fitness and well-being becomes viable [ 10 ]. In addition to anthropocentric goals and benefits, biophilic design is a recognised solution to a spectrum of environmental challenges including urban heat island effect, particulate matter filtration and carbon dioxide sequestration, rehabilitation and restoration of lost habitats and increase of urban biodiversity. It promotes ecologically interrelated design solutions at multiple scales and enables regeneration of natural systems in the urban environment [ 8 , 13 , 14 , 15 ].

Beatley (2011) extended the concept of biophilic design to the urban scale, imagining and encouraging biophilic cities. Biophilic urbanism was presented as an emerging planning and urban design approach that aimed to systematically integrate nature into the urban fabric, igniting the potential to transform barren urban spaces into places that are restorative and conducive to life [ 7 , 13 ]. Biophilic urbanism focuses on ecological systems and human activities delivered by biophilic interventions and projects. The main goal of biophilic urbanism is to improve the connection between urban dwellers and urban nature and nourish the experience of nature on a daily basis as an integral part of urban living [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. In this sense, biophilic design and urbanism deliberately facilitate opportunities for urban residents to experience nature daily [ 7 , 10 ].

The global shift towards biophilic design continues to grow. Although the terminology used varies, there are initiatives in many countries that focus on the role of nature as an essential element of everyday urban life [ 8 ]. Recent studies have shown that experiencing nature on a daily basis supports people’s mental and physical health [ 7 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. Table  1 below outlines the multiple benefits of biophilic design to the environmental, socio-psychological and economic aspects of urban life.

Biophilic theorists Stephen Kellert and Elisabeth Calabrese [ 10 ] have formulated a range of biophilic experiences and attributes (Table  2 ) to facilitate the application of biophilic design theory to practice that delivers buildings and urban spaces that facilitate direct and indirect experiences of nature for urban dwellers in their daily lives. These experiences and attributes serve as principles to inform the balanced design of biophilic urban spaces. Some of these experiences are difficult to encounter in conventional streets; however, they can be incorporated into the renewal of conventional streets and the design of new ones by biophilia-literate designers.

To ensure ongoing exposure to and interaction with nature, both bond and commitment to place are needed. In order to achieve these, a design must be founded on a sound understanding of urban nature and its ecosystems as well as a sense of place. This is likely to lead to more frequent interactions between people and nature, thereby nurturing the bond between them and increasing the likelihood that residents will protect and save urban green spaces [ 20 ]. Some scholars argue that a relationship to place is needed to develop intimacy and responsibility for nature and the living world [ 21 , 22 ]. Streets are an important part of any human settlement and, hence, this approach will be used to create a Biophilic Streets Design Framework presented in this paper.

A brief history of streets

Urban designers, planners and civil engineers have conceived and developed regulatory frameworks for streets to enable efficiency, security and, most of all, the rapid conveyancing of traffic, both public and private. However, the modernist tendency in the twentieth century, which saw the rise of automobile dependence, created rigid regulations that focused on efficiency and traffic control and directly contributed to the detachment of nature from urban ecologies, bioregions and climate dynamics [ 23 ]. By creating barriers in the form of dense networks of freeways and highways, the remaining urban natural areas became fragmented and isolated, along with the social neighbourhoods that they physically divided, thus disrupting their social integrity. Such impacts were built into the design frameworks created by traffic engineers.

Jane Jacobs challenged these approaches that prioritised private mobility over all other street functions and pointed to the diverse social networks characteristic of busy urban streets, which constitute the fabric of a city [ 3 , 24 ]. Those social networks are created when the structure and amenities of a street provide space for interaction and promote walkability. The abundance of social networks provide opportunity for local businesses to thrive; hence, Jacobs was able to construct a theoretical approach to show why streets were essential to a city’s economy [ 25 , 26 ]. This has since developed into a strong plea for dense urbanism and street fabric to be seen as essential components of how cities create wealth and opportunity [ 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].

Urban designers, such as Jan Gehl, criticised modernist planning ideologies and how they dismissed the value of historic streets by allowing cars to invade every available space in cities [ 4 , 31 ]. Through a series of reports on cities around the world, Gehl created a new framework for how streets should be designed to facilitate close interactions between people that enable multiple economic and social benefits and reduce the environmental impact of cars [ 31 , 32 ]. Gehl’s framework for urban planners, landscape architects and architects reinforces walkability, active street frontages and street furniture as integral parts of city policy [ 31 ], to ensure streets are welcoming spaces in the pattern of daily activities. Table  3 below shows Gehl’s 12 quality criteria as a framework for this approach to street design, with an additional column that shows how biophilic design interventions can enrich the pedestrian landscape and experience.

Cities are changing from sprawl and car dependency to transit and more compact urban forms, and so are their streets. The focus of urban streets is changing from ensuring traffic movement efficiency to a more people-centred design that puts pedestrians first, then cyclists and transit, and lastly private motorised vehicles [ 33 , 34 ]. Building on Gehl’s work and collaborations among experts from global cities, the National Association of City Transportation Officers (NACTO) created the Global Street Design Guide [ 35 ], which is intended to be a baseline for urban street design. The Guide aims to better balance the needs of street users (with more emphasis on the needs of pedestrians) and supports the creation of quality spaces based on the consideration of people and place.

Finally, the concept of biophilic design contributes to the creation of urban streets with attractive, healthy, liveable and restorative environments and nature experiences at the door step for both dwellers and other street users within gradually densifying urban precincts through urban infill.

Developing a framework for biophilic streets design

An urban street can be compared to an evolving organism adapting and responding to its environment. Although cities contain a broad range of street typologies, depending on the context, they generally provide space for transportation, commuting, physical activities and social and economic life at different scales [ 36 ]. Traffic engineers and urban designers often fail to plan streets that deliver positive social or health-related outcomes. Reconceiving urban streets as places, rather than just movement spaces, would facilitate the provision of these positive outcomes. Furthermore, as the time people spend in streets compared to the time they spend in parks is eight to ten times more [ 37 ], the design of streets—to support health and well-being— should be considered before parks [ 36 , 38 ].

Streets provide diverse experiences to their users, including the experience of nature. Identifying the most appropriate design strategies to apply to any given street would need to take into account a range of circumstances and requirements particular to that location. This may include the history of the street, the existing social, environmental, architectural and structural conditions, existing infrastructure, policies and regulations, project size, zoning and land use and its potential future as a place.

Based on the experiences of biophilic places (Table 2 ) and their many benefits, a list of the characteristics of a biophilic street were compiled as an analytical framework of six categories. These categories consider design functions, design objectives, design elements and the characteristics of a biophilic street. The six categories—traffic planning, energy management, stormwater management, biodiversity management, street furniture and activities and education—are derived from the intended purposes for which streets are designed, and chosen because of their potential to be improved by the addition of biophilic elements. Elements that have been successfully designed, developed and applied in real-life projects form the base for a biophilic street . The proposed Framework is set out in Table  4 below, followed by an explanation of each category. It is then applied to four examples of a street revitalisation project to illustrate its usefulness.

Mobility planning

A street often serves as a front yard for residents; it must, therefore, provide a safe place to move around, whether by car, bicycle, transit or on foot. However, used only for transportation, a street loses its relevant social and economic functions, such as providing a safe space for interaction, as identified by Jacobs [ 3 , 26 ] and Gehl [ 5 ]. In the wake of the urban renewal movement, many cities are restoring or redesigning their main streets and boulevards to serve as linear parks and other types of hospitable public places promoting social interaction and walking. As a result, the most successful transformations add value to adjacent properties and local businesses [ 39 ]. The Biophilic Streets Framework takes these fundamental characteristics of streets and seeks to show that there are biophilic design principles and strategies that could help streets perform these functions more effectively.

To achieve safety standards on biophilic streets, traffic calming schemes should apply, including techniques designed to lessen the impact of traffic. Trees and bushes are well known to do this by psychologically giving drivers a sense of needing to go slower [ 40 ]. The location of measures and devices (including types of vegetation) determines the effectiveness of traffic calming schemes, and those again depend on the type of streets they are introduced on: a residential road, a road with traffic functions or a transit road having a combination of speeds that enable rapid mobility (between stations) and slow mobility (within station precincts). These are within the purview of traffic engineering and planning, where concepts of place and movement and melding.

An example of traffic calming structures featuring engineered stormwater gardens are chicanes [ 41 , 42 ]. These structures slow traffic by confining the travel lanes. They also feature depressed interiors capturing stormwater which feed garden beds, shrubs and trees creating biophilic systems. Chicanes can be formed using sculpture, plantings or parking to enhance the appearance and function of a street. They are best used on narrow roads, to prevent cars from swinging out to maintain their speed around the bends; narrow, curving roads encourage motorists to drive more slowly and carefully [ 43 ].

Energy management

Energy management in urban streets serves multiple functions: helping to cool a city where urban heat island effect is leading to ill health; making walkability easier and hence improving urban economics in the area; and helping to cool the buildings next to the street. In multiple studies, urban greenery has shown cooling capabilities [ 44 , 45 , 46 ]. Parks lower the air temperature within their territory, but the impact on the adjacent built environment is limited [ 47 ]. Urban tree canopy provides a cooling effect in street canyons [ 48 , 49 ]; some studies show air temperature under a canopy are reduced by 0.7–1.3 degrees Celsius in the early afternoon [ 50 ]. The cooling capacity of a tree canopy depends on its characteristics, as well as the characteristics of the street such as surface materials, geometry, building height and how densely the street is built up. However, at night time the air temperature under the canopy, where the radiating heat is captured, can be 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than in an open space reference point [46].

Biophilic structures installed directly onto buildings include green walls and roofs. By introducing such structures, the air temperature in street canyons can be reduced as well as the demand for cooling and heating of buildings. A multi-case study by Alexandri and Jones [ 51 ] was conducted in nine cities to assess the thermal effect of green walls and roofs in urban canyons across different microclimates. The authors concluded that the solar radiation absorbed by the roof and facade surface was reduced by applying greenery, and that the heat fluxes vary on different vegetated surfaces and in different microclimates. The outdoor air temperature and energy savings were measured in nine cities. In Hong Kong the analysis of canyon air temperature showed a decrease by a maximum of 3.9 degrees Celsius, while in hot and arid Riyadh the maximum flux was 18.7 degrees Celsius on the green wall surface. Roof surface temperatures are even more significant. In Mumbai the temperature decreased by 26.1 degrees Celsius and in London the maximum decrease was 19.3 degrees when comparing unvegetated and vegetated rooftops.

Stormwater management

Cities feature vast amounts of impervious surfaces producing significant run-off that needs to be managed. Green infrastructure has been found to retain most of the polluted initial run-off through bio-retention and bio-filtration. Through these two processes, rain water can be permanently retained or temporarily detained. Captured stormwater contributes to groundwater recharge and helps sustain the whole water cycle [ 36 ]. Biophilic urbanism not only picks up all these design features, it adds more.

In recent years, biophilic designers have transformed one of the largest impervious areas—roof tops—into intensive and extensive gardens and meadows [ 52 , 53 ], creating efficient stormwater management systems [ 54 ]. Stovin [ 55 ] tested green-roof stormwater retention on a small-scale trial and found that the retention capacity was on average 34, and 57% of peak flow run-off.

In another study led by Kew [ 53 ], rainfall was shown to have little or no impact on the green wall. Most of the rainfall was blocked by the gutters integrated into the system. In order to improve the efficiency of the green roof and wall systems, the run-off from the roof was collected into cisterns and then used to irrigate the green walls with drip irrigation. Green walls do not directly collect significant amounts of precipitation; however, they are often used to control first stormwater flush. The efficiency of a particular system does not only depend on technological advancement, but also on climatic conditions and the vegetation and growing medium as well as whether the green wall is facing the main weather fronts [ 56 ].

Thus, a green roof can be considered an alternative to a conventional stormwater management system and become integrated into the concept of a biophilic street. In an urban setting, a total facade area usually exceeds a roof area; thus, a well-designed green wall could become part of the green-roof stormwater system if that is a desired outcome. With more competition for ground vertical surfaces in urbanised areas, the potential of rooftops and vertical surfaces for stormwater management is significant. The success of green roof and green wall stormwater management can be measured by the increasing number of municipalities, developers, and individuals undertaking this first flush control [ 53 ]. A biophilic street can thus become part of a whole new stormwater management system.

Biodiversity management

Efforts to preserve global biodiversity are frequently centred on saving large remaining natural habitats [ 57 ]. However, several studies on urban greenery provide data on biodiversity in parks, gardens, squares, streets and other places where flora and fauna can be found. Urban parks offer refuge to native biota [ 58 ] and urban streets also have the ability to support biodiversity [ 58 , 59 ] by providing food, shelter and breeding sites and facilitating the movement of wildlife.

Significant percentages of animal and plant species, including endangered species, inhabit urban forests . For example, highly urbanised environments have been found to accommodate 20% of the world’s avian biodiversity [ 60 ]. A study by Threfall [ 59 ] showed a strong connection between understorey vegetation and native bird species in Melbourne, Australia.

Innovative structures like green walls and roofs are popular sustainable design interventions due to their ability to cool the building envelope and create aesthetically pleasing facades. However, the structure of a biophilic street with large variations in the height of different vegetation types on various buildings and in the street itself, should support biodiversity in cities at a landscape scale. The design detail of a biophilic street could be used to enable a range of biodiversity goals, for example, by acting as a corridor to facilitate movement [ 61 ]. At a local scale, vertical greening systems can be used as means to improve the environmental conditions, with even simple flora assemblages providing habitat for invertebrates [ 62 ] as well as nesting, food and shelter resources for urban ornithology [ 62 , 63 ]. The size of impact on biodiversity from such biophilic street structures is yet to be ascertained, though undoubtedly the plant species introduced will influence the richness of animal species. Whether this could support urban ecological restoration has not been researched at a significant scale [ 64 ].

In a study undertaken in Staffordshire, United Kingdom, a number of bird species of conservation concern were reported exploiting and nesting in some newly created green walls and their immediate surroundings [ 65 ]. The researchers concluded that encouraging homeowners and businesses to install green walls could be an effective way of providing habitat and resources for birds in an urban environment. This also highlights an important opportunity for urban open space designers and managers to make a positive impact on biodiversity through relatively small and cost-effective improvements in vegetation quality by creating more biophilic streets.

In a study of bio-retention swales undertaken in Australia, researchers observed that the swales presented greater richness and diversity of species than gardens and lawn-type green spaces. Bio-retention swales are vegetated water sensitive urban design (WSUD) structures built to support more sustainable urban infrastructure [ 66 ]. This system is increasing in popularity and replacing customarily vegetated areas of streetscapes with sustainable natural assets [ 67 ]. It is likely to become a more mainstream design outcome, however, if part of a biophilic street.

Street furniture

The design innovations outlined above comprise building biophilic elements along street spaces and on facades of buildings for a range of reasons. This section focuses on the potential of street furniture, an important element of every street, to fulfil a biophilic function in addition to its usual function.

Urban street furniture is designed and integrated into streets for a range of reasons but rarely for purposes related to biophilic urbanism. This is possible to achieve and likely to work best if its biophilic potential is incorporated into a design from the beginning rather than added after other elements have been considered or are in place. Bus shelters, bicycle stands, street art, play installations and benches have been used in several major cities to support native flora and fauna, facilitate habitation for wildlife and provide various other ecosystem services. So it is possible to add this dimension to a biophilic street.

Maynard Green Street in Seattle, United States, is an example of harnessing urban street furniture to support natural systems. The street was refurbished in 2010 as part of Seattle’s Green Street program, which was established to enhance open space and pedestrian circulation. Combining public art with a water filtration system, the Maynard project incorporates rooftop run-off that enters a cistern before flowing down the custom-designed planters. The planters also function as benches for pedestrians ascending and descending the steep street [ 68 ].

Another example of innovative street furniture is the CityTree designed by a German start-up, Green City Solutions [ 69 , 70 ]. Their key aim was to build a street furniture element able to provide air-purifying solutions in a man-made ecosystem. The structure consists of biologically engineered moss and vascular plant species grown using a green wall system. Rainwater is gathered and recycled through the system while irrigating the plants. The efficiency of this street furniture still needs to be tested and proven in multiple locations. However, the company claims that a single CityTree is capable of combating air pollutants as effectively as 275 urban trees at 5% of the cost and requiring 99% less space. They also claim that a single CityTree has the ability to reduce air pollution by 30% within a 164-ft radius. So far, the CityTree has been tested in several large cities across the globe: Berlin, Paris, Glasgow, Oslo and Brussels [ 69 ].

Bus shelters have been included in greening projects in many cities. Green shelter prototypes have been created to provide more inviting and enjoyable experiences while addressing the needs of transit waiting areas. Trials have highlighted the benefits of integrating biophilic design and sustainable transit to lessen the environmental impact of climate change.

The Living Bus Shelter in Minneapolis, United States, was an initiative between the Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District and Metro Transit. The structure was comprised of vertical pallet gardens containing a variety of edible plants. After the installation, commuters were encouraged to explore the plants by touching, smelling, tasting or even taking them home. The data, which emerged in a survey, showed improved transit user experience. All respondents gave positive answers when asked whether they favoured the incorporation of greenery into the shelter. The aesthetic character of the installation was rated nine out of ten and users generally expressed enthusiasm about the greenery and suggested increasing the volume. In the end, 65% of respondents gave the green light to the local authorities to continue reimagining transit shelters through green installations [ 71 ].

Other cities, such as San Francisco and Philadelphia in the United States, Sheffield in the United Kingdom, and Eindhoven in Germany, introduced similar programs of greening their transit shelters. The local authorities intended to provide an attractive green space in the unconventional location of concrete dominated urban space. Vegetated roof installations on a bus shelter in Philadelphia aimed to raise awareness about urban stormwater management [ 72 ]. In Eindhoven, bus shelter design aspired to perfect integration with the existing city fabric. The green bus stop design was selected through a competition organised by the council [ 73 ]. Vegetation installed on public transport shelters is considered to be in a prime position to filter contamination and particulate matter from transport vehicles [ 35 ]. These initial attempts to green bus shelters successfully captured the imaginations of city inhabitants while promoting sustainable and feasible innovations.

Activity and education

Gehl Architects identify three types of activities that occur in urban environments: necessary, optional and social activities. Optional activities depend on the quality of a place; the more attractive a place is, the more often pedestrians choose to stroll, play, sit and eat there. The design features of biophilic streets should encourage these optional activities, facilitate community and reinforce the identity of a neighbourhood. The best executed biophilic streets will therefore be full of nature, bringing more people outside and into shared activities. An intense mixture of uses also makes streets safer [ 5 ].

When streets function well on an everyday level of biophilic experience, they provide opportunities for activities like teaching, learning and entertainment. Wider streets, like boulevards, provide opportunities for entertainment such as play equipment, art installations, water fountains, games and other foci for social interactions. A good example is found in Montreal, Canada, where a lifeless median of Promenade des Artistes has been transformed into an active space as part of a biophilic street regeneration. Twenty-one multi-coloured, musical swings were installed in order to foster play and social interaction between pedestrians of all ages and backgrounds [ 74 ].

Environmental agencies and local councils encourage communities to engage in the renewal and enhancement of urban nature. In 2015, The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in South Australia launched the Rain Garden 500 program [ 75 ], through which local councils and community groups can apply for funding to build rain gardens. The program helps to improve the quality of stormwater run-off. Another purpose is to educate communities and school children about the impact residents may have on the quality of urban waterways. Information plaques were installed to spread knowledge about the importance of water harvesting projects. Thus, design elements that enable activities and education in a biophilic street are part of the Framework presented in this paper.

The five characteristics of a street that lend themselves to the application of biophilic design elements, as outlined above and in Table 4 , will now be discussed in relation to four examples of a street revitalisation project to determine how effectively the proposed Biophilic Streets Design Framework can contribute to creating more biophilic cities with multiple urban benefits.

Potential issues and trade-offs

Potential benefits of the biophilic streets have been presented; however, it is also necessary to address potential issues and trade-offs associated with the proposed concept. Some issues may include a high initial cost of construction, high cost of maintenance and limited on-street parking due to the expansion of green infrastructure within street medians. A higher concentration of plants (native or edible) or rain gardens may produce higher amounts of organic litter, which may become a nuisance to some pedestrians. However, the changing seasons and patina of time—the two biophilic experiences—are achieved, enriching and improving the overall biophilic experience.

Green infrastructure within street medians may generate higher maintenance costs. For example, the maintenance of green walls and roofs extend the area of greenery expected in conventional streets, which may result in additional costs.

The maintenance costs could be shared between the local authority and the residents (private and commercial) of a biophilic street. A successful maintenance sharing program can be found in Portland, Oregon. The Green Street Stewards were volunteers who were responsible for occasional removal of sediments, collection of organic matter and rubbish from the planters and watering [ 76 ]. By facilitating the stewardship program, the city helped to create bonds between the residents and the local urban nature, at the same time reducing the cost of maintaining the streets.

Research into costs and benefits of selected street elements, such as trees, can be found in the scientific literature [ 77 , 78 ]; however, a biophilic street—as a green infrastructure project—would require a holistic economic analysis to prove the feasibility of a proposed design scheme.

Analysis of the selected streets

Four illustrative examples of a street revitalisation project were selected for analysis through the lens of the proposed Biophilic Streets Framework: a former urban highway in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; the streets renewal project in Downtown Berkeley and SW Montgomery Green Street in Portland, United States; and the Green your Lane project in Melbourne, Australia. The selected streets serve as examples of a diverse approach to street design using multiple tools and strategies to achieve high performing biophilic public spaces. They represent different types of biophilic streets in terms of their hierarchy and their functions. Their biophilic street features are summarised in Table  5 using each of the Framework’s six design characteristics.

Gasteiz Hiribidea in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the Basque Country, has been committed to the principles of sustainable urban development for many years. In 2013, Vitoria-Gasteiz joined the league of biophilic cities with a showcase of successful projects and interventions fulfilling the biophilic urbanism agenda [ 7 , 8 ]. The urban greenery of Vitoria-Gasteiz features 50,000 plants composed of 381 species of trees and shrubs, including tree-lined streets and avenues connecting urban biodiversity [ 79 ]. One of the main roads, Gasteiz Hiribidea, underwent a major revitalisation and became an example of good practice for other cities to follow. In the past, the street was an eight-lane highway, but after a major redesign, it now features a naturalised stream and an abundance of greenery including trees, a grassed tram line, two cycle tracks and broad sidewalks. The naturalised stream, which was once channelled under the streets, now runs along the pavement. It features native aquatic and riparian vegetation bordered by a reinforced embankment. The stream provides habitat to small animals for feeding, breeding and shelter, enhancing local urban biodiversity (Fig. 1 ). Together with the large green envelope of the Palace of Europe, the stream creates a biodiversity hotspot in the city centre providing habitat to over 70 species of butterflies [ 7 ]. Flowering perennials and annuals create a vertical botanical garden which also serves as an educational centre bringing local nature closer to city dwellers. The street, which once had no room for nature, now abounds with it and its natural processes are available to observe and interact with it on a daily basis. This revitalisation project reinforces the cultural value of the place while also promoting environmental awareness by building a relationship between citizens and nature.

Living stream opposite the Palace of Europe in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Source: Agata Cabanek

So far, the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz has developed a plan for improving bio-capacity, biodiversity and urban landscape. The most important project is the creation of an external and internal green belt and the activation of the potential of urban green spaces connected by a network of green and biophilic streets, avenues, wooded garden walks and urban trails. The connection between innovative biophilic structures and traditional greenery secures the effectiveness of the urban green network to perform ecological functions and increase biodiversity in the city. The biophilic street in Vitoria-Gasteiz is emerging as a major part of the city’s biophilic urbanism.

Downtown Berkeley, United States

The aim of the streets renewal project in Downtown Berkeley was to provide the usual functions of a street, but to add ecological features in an innovative way on a limited budget. In 2012, the City of Berkeley issued The Street & Open Space Improvement Plan (SOSIP) to present a shared vision for the future of Downtown Berkeley’s public realm (Fig. 2 ) [ 80 ]. The revitalisation project included Shattuck Avenue and Park Blocks, Shattuck Square, University Avenue, Centre Street Plaza, Greenway, Hearst Street and Ohlone Greenway. A number of sustainability goals were established featuring biophilic attributes and experiences. The main objectives of the major projects were walkability, place-making, public life, sustainability, health and comfort. To achieve these a community engagement process was undertaken [ 6 ].

SOSIP masterplan and section of street design integrating greeneries and multiple functions

The strategies employed in the Downtown project were to create a more vibrant, attractive and memorable destination. The information gathered during community consultations informed the focus of the project: public life and the provision of space for a myriad of activities—social, cultural and business—engaging all residents and visitors. The leading aspiration was to establish public green open spaces for residents of different ages and abilities. To meet the objectives, the city established the design criteria, which required all the design features to be used consistently along the nominated streets reflecting traditional character compatible with Downtown historic assets. As a result, all place-making amenities, including public art, were expected to provide a sense of place and evoke local heritage values as well as exhibiting biophilic features.

The biophilic elements included temporary planted installations, such as parklets in parking spaces, to improve and promote pedestrian-oriented activities rather than car use. Parklets help to raise awareness of local nature if their ecological design underpins the concept. Their presence may also lead to the reconsideration of the public realm; parklets could become permanent features evoking a biophilic sense of place.

To achieve the walkable city standards, the city council considered improvements supporting car-free living. One of the solutions was to provide more accessible transit options. To make streets more inviting and attractive, the traffic lane widths were reduced, the sidewalks were widened and bicycle lanes were introduced. The biophilic element was to provide extra space for landscaping buffers between pedestrians and traffic.

Bio-retention swales and rain gardens with riparian landscaping were used in some streets to treat rainwater run-off, thereby improving watershed conditions. The program also included daylighting of Strawberry Creek between Shattuck Square and BART Plaza. Daylighting the creek provided another opportunity to educate the residents about the ecological and biophilic values of natural waterbodies in the urban environment.

Living walls and roofs installed on the buildings bordering the streets provided green infrastructure services and served as aesthetic features enhancing the image of Downtown as an eco-destination. Accessible educational and recreational features in the form of interpretive plates, boards and interactive play equipment were included to educate people about natural systems and their ecological and economic values.

The local government initiated the Downtown revitalisation project which aimed at creating an Art and Theatre District. The funds to finance the public art projects came from many sources – certificates of participation, bond funds, capital, and federal transportation funds. Additionally, the town representatives were also able to secure private funds by consulting the local property and business owners. The money raised to be invested in public art was partially used to revitalise the local streets. Another important source of funding came from the earthquake retrofit bond launched in 1996, which added $4 million for enhancing the streetscapes. As a result, the revitalisation of the Downtown project delivered many biophilic elements to the streets and created attractive, walkable restorative public spaces [ 81 ].

SW Montgomery street in Portland, United States

In 2004, Portland City Council approved the Green Street Policy Goals program through which they committed to promote and incorporate the use of green street facilities in public and private development. One of the first streets to undergo green transformation was SW Montgomery Street. The changes demonstrated an emerging new urban street design approach. This multi-sectional revitalisation project incorporated strategically designed green infrastructure and public transportation. SW Montgomery Street is considered to be Portland’s boldest and most innovative green street project and has received national and international recognition [ 82 ]. The main planning strategy was to activate the neighbourhood, build community culture, enhance the pedestrian experience and showcase the sustainability agenda in the downtown area of the city. The concept applied, which included substantial biophilic street elements, was to become a new place-making model for other downtown streetscape projects in Portland. Street design goals included creating a pedestrian-oriented streetscape that incorporated a variety of green infrastructure solutions such as stormwater planters and swales (Fig.  3 ), green walls and roofs, and kerbless street design to offer a variety of sensory experiences throughout the seasons.

SW Montgomery Street. Shared space with stormwater swales. Source: Nevue Ngan Associates

The biophilic street concept exemplified by SW Montgomery Street, emphasised pedestrian and bicycle travel over vehicular access. Bicycle and pedestrian safety became a priority, and in order to achieve it travel lanes were narrowed, some blocks were closed to through traffic and speed limits were lowered. The biophilic features could then be added to a kerb-less street with merged sidewalks that incorporated planting and swales to absorb stormwater [ 83 ].

Stormwater planters and swales also became educational amenities for the local communities. Since SW Montgomery Green Street runs through the Portland State University campus, students are encouraged to take part in monitoring the performance of the green infrastructure. To facilitate the involvement of local citizens, public education about the corridor was incorporated into the design in the form of interpretive signage.

The project also proposed the installation of green walls and roofs on new development buildings. Stormwater from new building facades was directed into the stormwater planters to demonstrate innovative ways of stormwater management.

This project demonstrates how a busy urban street can be re-designed to improve ecological conditions, foster environmental learning, support community identity and neighbourhood engagement and maintain healthy business districts. The street delivers spaces for public interaction and serves as a transportation corridor whilst achieving much more because of its biophilic elements [ 84 ].

Green lanes in Melbourne, Australia

The rejuvenation and revival programs of lanes and alleys have emerged in many cities such as Austin, Chicago, Montreal, San Francisco, Sydney and Melbourne. Although the programs differ in objectives, there is an increasing use of biophilic elements that enable multiple extra objectives through ecosystem services, aesthetics and social life. The example chosen to illustrate this is from Melbourne.

In 2015, City of Melbourne established the Green Your Laneway program to encourage the transformation of Coromandel Place, Guildford Lane, Katherine Place and Meyers Place (Fig.  4 ) as replicable exemplars [ 85 , 86 ]. As a part of the program, an interactive map was developed to mark the preselected laneways with strong potential for green transformation based on their local micro-climatic conditions and physical qualities. The program involved strong community engagement to ensure later community ownership of the transformed lanes.

Meyers Place in Melbourne. Source: https://participate.melbourne.vic.gov.au/greenlaneways

Four lane typologies were selected: vertical gardens, forest lanes, park lanes and farm lanes. In this program, greening mainly meant planting tough ornamentals and establishing vegetable gardens to be cultivated by local residents. Elements such as window boxes, planter boxes with climbers, hanging baskets and miniature rain gardens were proposed (Fig.  5 ). The more spatially-demanding biophilic design elements involving water were not considered in the narrow laneways due to site constraints.

Design concept for Guilford Lane in Melbourne . Source: Source: Agata Cabanek

The planting strategies were designed to improve biodiversity, provide habitat for wildlife, filter pollution from the air and divert some stormwater run-off despite the small size of the gardens due to the restricted space. Other environmental benefits, such as a reduction of carbon emissions and mitigation of urban heat island effect through ‘green insulation’, are also expected.

A range of social and economic benefits were projected by the council. The vision for the revitalisation of the lanes was to transform them from waste areas to useable public spaces. The lanes were rejuvenated to provide pleasant walkways and encourage people to spend time outdoors and engage in social activities. The Biophilic Streets Design Framework was almost completely implemented in terms of biophilic design elements, showing how much can be achieved in urban regeneration if these are central considerations in street rejuvenation or retrofit.

Several economic benefits are expected due to the activation of the lanes: increase in property values, increase in useable green outdoor spaces, extended life-span of permeable surfaces and savings on heating and cooling [ 87 ].

All four analysed examples of a street revitalisation project show multiple urban benefits which are summarised in Fig.  6 . The many additional outcomes that surpass the usual functions of streets are evident. Cities would derive substantial value from considering biophilic enhancements in their streets as part of their future plans.

The multiple urban benefits of a Biophilic Street

Conclusions

The Design Framework for Biophilic Streets, developed through this research, suggests that much more can be achieved within a city if streets are given biophilic design elements absent in traditional streets. Much can be achieved by adding the biophilic elements of green walls, green roofs and green balconies to building envelopes. Considerable benefit is also possible by adding elements to existing urban streets and road reserves: tree pits, street trees, linear gardens, pocket parks, bioswales, rain gardens, daylighting streams, and biophilic elements integrated with street furniture. The value of all of these biophilic features can be enhanced by incorporating educational and activity functions that can be seen and experienced in the street.

The four analysed street examples demonstrate how biophilic streets can be built in different climates, types of cities, urban structures, and levels of development. In the four analysed projects, the streets illustrated most of the biophilic elements in the Framework, though spatial limitations in high density urban fabrics do limit most of the water-oriented biophilic design elements. However, the majority of the examples were in medium density areas and were able to demonstrate that biophilic design elements can be incorporated into streets and create significant value outcomes in a multiplicity of economic, social and environmental ways. The value in humanising streets has been well established and it should now be possible to add the design dimensions of biophilic streets, as set out in the Biophilic Streets Design Framework. This is likely to enable a broader perspective on the value of streets in cities.

The Biophilic Streets Design Framework could be used by policy-makers and designers to move from the theoretical and imaginative biophilic urbanism discourse to real-life projects and urban interventions. When applied in conjunction with other design strategies and policies, for example, water-sensitive, biodiversity-sensitive, regenerative, resilient or ecological urban design, the Framework could help to improve urban infrastructure so it delivers restorative and health-promoting outcomes across any city.

Biophilic urbanism is becoming a major policy area for delivering tangible benefits to cities and their populations. This paper has suggested that by transforming urban streets into biophilic streets it is possible to add an extra dimension to biophilic urbanism. The biophilic street concept integrates the ideas advocated by Jane Jacobs and Jan Gehl who have demonstrated that people-oriented streets contribute to a community’s economic and social enhancement by integrating environmental approaches into the functional design of streets.

Future research is needed to monitor and quantify the performance of biophilic streets in addressing the adverse effects of climate change, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss; as well as how it can be cost-effective.

Availability of data and materials

The dataset used and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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This research funded by the CRC for Low Carbon Living Ltd. supported by the Cooperative Research Centres program, an Australian Government initiative.

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Cabanek, A., Zingoni de Baro, M.E. & Newman, P. Biophilic streets: a design framework for creating multiple urban benefits. Sustain Earth 3 , 7 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00027-0

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Received : 09 October 2019

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s42055-020-00027-0

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Case Studies (Street Design)

San francisco, ca, usa - octavia boulevard, a multiway boulevard.

In 2005, the City of San Francisco opened Octavia Boulevard, replacing a portion of elevated freeway. The multiway boulevard is designed to permit high volumes of through traffic while providing slower-moving local bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle access to the neighborhood. Octavia Boulevard has central travel lanes to capture the freeway traffic, bordered by tree-lined medians with walking paths and slow-speed, one-way access roads with sidewalks and on-street parking. The four-block boulevard is capped by a park, Hayes Green, where the center lanes turn onto a one-way arterial and the access roads continue to provide local bicycle, pedestrian, and vehicle access. The designers strived to keep the roadway as narrow as possible to preserve space on one side to replace housing that had been removed when the elevated freeway was built. The project was designed by a team consisting of a transportation planner from Department of Parking and Traffic, two engineers from the Department of Public Works, three project managers from the Central Freeway Project office. Designs were brought through a Citizens Advisory Committee. The final project serves not just to move people, but also as a place to gather, and a way to heal the neighborhood that had been disrupted by the elevated freeway for three decades.

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Barcelona, Spain - Superblocks

In 2016, the Poblenou neighborhood in Barcelona, Spain created a people-centered, pedestrian-friendly, nine-block “superblock” within an otherwise auto-oriented street network. Within the superblock, local streets are designed as shared streets, with very low speeds (10 km/hr or approximately 6 mph), and are only open to local traffic. With reduced vehicle traffic, city reclaimed 90% of the road space for landscaping, bike lanes, seating, art, and play areas to support public life. Residents say the superblock is quieter, neighbors are meeting each other, and the pace of life is slower. Walking and biking have increased since the superblock was created. Local businesses, initially skeptical of reducing auto access, have found that increased foot traffic has led to increased economic activity. Barcelona is continuing to add superblocks in other neighborhoods.

Oakland, CA, USA - Telegraph Avenue: Complete Streets Transformation

Telegraph Avenue in Oakland is a major transportation and retail corridor connecting North Oakland to downtown. It has high frequency bus service, is a missing link in the local bike network. It is also one of Oaklands High Injury Corridors, with a concentration of severe and fatal traffic crashes. The city, with community input, has modified the roadway to improve safety and enhance public life. Beginning in 2016, the city leveraged repaving projects to reduce travel lanes and install a temporary protected bike lane, pedestrian crossing improvements, and bus boarding islands. The city also reduced the posted speeds from 30 mph to 25 mph After evaluating performance, the city made incremental improvements to the design and has now secured funding to make the final designs permanent. The city continues to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatments for reducing vehicle speeds, increasing pedestrian and bicycle travel, and reducing conflicts between people traveling on and across Telegraph Avenue.

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• Street Design and Neighbourhood Design

Bhagyasshree Ramakrishna

STREET DESIGN Ashram road, running parallel to the riverfront project, is being developed as the destination street for developing Ahmedabad. The increase in FSI, in the commercial and institutional stretch requires mixed uses of various recreational activities. The idea was to transform the image of the street to a more pedestrian-active zone.  NEIGHBOURHOOD DESIGN The progress of our cities are manifest in its rapid and continuous expansion of cities; pushing the boundaries of its peripheral greenbelt areas. These vast stretches of urban form is resulting into continuous and monotonous cities. The crucial need to break the homogeneity, addressing the nature of transforming metro cities, and invite diverse heterogeneity. This project thus aims to generate urban forms that are homogeneous-concentration of a set of activities that help develop a distinct identity- addressing the needs of the site, yet allows transformation for flexible urban change, in terms of its, building typologies, building heights, street characteristic, street views and street hierarchy.

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Designing an inclusive street market for the historic Gandhi Bazaar through a participatory design process

Gandhi Bazaar is a street full of life, engaging a variety of people, and home to numerous restaurants, shops, banks and office. Gandhi Bazaar Main Road is about 700m long. Gandhi Bazaar street market functions throughout the year and provides a setting for numerous lives and livelihoods. Located in the planned residential neighbourhood of Basavanagudi (established in 1898) in the southern part of Bengaluru, Gandhi Bazaar is lined with retail shops, restaurants, banks, offices and other commercial uses. Informal vending of fruits, flowers and vegetables along this street started about 80-100 years ago. Over time it has matured into a full-fledged street market, supporting both formal and informal retail. The Street Market is now congested and poorly managed. The street is clogged with vehicular traffic and the narrow footpaths congested with vendors and pedestrians. The solid waste management is not supported with appropriate design and planning. The informal, historic and diverse use / culture of the street needs a new understanding and sensitive design that will be inclusive and participatory.

Aim: The spatial infrastructure plan for Gandhi Bazaar Main Road and the Gandhi Bazaar street market is prepared with the aim to enhance it as a vibrant and inclusive Socio-cultural space, while making it economically efficient, safe, accessible, clean, green and comfortable for all users. The design framework will be inclusive, flexible and anticipatory of future changes and the diverse needs of various actors in the market street, and be financially viable. It will ensure compliance with all applicable local, state and national laws having spatial implications. Short-term and long-term solutions will be proposed for its implementation and it will serve as a prototype that will demonstrate how other markets can create similar frameworkssuited to their unique context.

Objectives - a)To develop a spatial infrastructure design that provides an approach and a framework for improving the physical, social and health conditions of Gandhi Bazaar Street Market and Main Road, through a participatory planning process b)To prepare detailed project reports and terms of reference to implement the plan

The scope of the spatial planning project is to plan and design the spatial infrastructure for Gandhi Bazaar Street Market and Gandhi Bazaar Main Road with an emphasis on the fruit and vegetable market. This includes the following activities: • Preparation of a public participatory process in coordination with DULT and the Management consultants to engage with the necessary stakeholders; • Preparation of three design scenarios through a public participatory process including consultations with the necessary government agencies as well as other stakeholders; and • Develop a preferred design scenario with the approval of all government agencies and stakeholders; • Prepare a Detailed Project Report (DPR) and Terms of Reference (ToR) along with identification of sub-projects in order of priority to plan for finances to implement them. The proposals recommending an operations and management strategy for implementing the Street Vendors Act, and the spatial plan proposals arenot within the scope of this project. This has been undertaken as a separate consultancy with ESG commissioned by GIZ.

The Urban Design Strategy Gandhi Bazaar Street Market is a local and city level destination for a variety of activities and goods. The rich cultural heritage, variety in building uses & institutions, parks, play grounds, schools, colleges, hospitals, and other commercial buildings, greenery (street trees and large parks) contribute to a rich and diverse character of place. Strategies at a larger scale were developed to conserve the cultural landscape and heritage; 1. Encourage walking and gathering for social interaction and enhancing business opportunities 2. Minimise vehicular traffic to create pollution free and safe environment for people. 3. Link to activity generators, major landmarks and public amenities and institutions. 4. Connect existing retail and vending activity areas. 5. Make access safe and conventient by providing alternate modes of transport including bicycles and electric vehicles. 6. Provide access to two-wheeler and car parking at walkable distances from shopping and work areas.

Street section of the preferred scenario

The following urban design guidelines will help implement the urban design strategies and vision. These guidelines relate to both the spatial design and management strategies for street markets. The design principles are indicated in BOLD. 1. Promote DIVERSITY of functions and uses and maintain street VITALITY to attract various user groups to the street market. 2. Sustain INFORMALITY of street activities to enhance diversity and richness in public life. 3. Nurture a SENSE OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY to recognize the historicity of the place and its heritage values 4. Strengthen the ROBUSTNESS and ADAPTABILITY of the place to ensure long term sustenance and economic viability. 5. Enhance IMAGEABILITY of the street market to give it a distinct character and image 6. Promote INCLUSIVENESS and GENDER SENSITIVITY to make it an active public commons 7. Ensure ACCESSIBILITY to all parts of the street to encourage different users to experience the market. 8. Ensure SAFETY and SECURITY of all users.

The Recommended Street Design is based on the studies undertaken, the input of the public obtained through the public participatory process and interactions with government agencies, the consultant team recommended the design shown above with the following key strategies: 1. Link the two parks (Ramakrishna Ashram Circle Park and Tagore Park), which today are mere traffic islands, to the Bazaar street and its activities. 2. Enhance the pedestrian environment and create a safe, clean, green and active pedestrian walkway from the Flower market building to Karanji Anjaneya Circle. 3. Activate the edges of the buildings and shops to encourage street activity and enhance the shopping experience. 4. Introduce outdoor spaces for social interaction, seating, and cultural events at places such as eateries, restaurants and where people gather on the street. 5. Restrict traffic and vehicular functions such as parking for autos and vehicles to intersections and selected areas to maintain a pollution free walking environment. 6. Facilitate accessibility to shops, restaurants, offices and other services by providing two and four wheeler parking within walking distance.

Preferred scenario - Gandhi Bazaar Circle

Preferred scenario - Towards Ram Krishna Ashram Circle

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Complete Street Design Improves Livability and Connectivity

With continued economic and residential growth, Leawood, Kansas, needed to improve its roads. Pursuing a complete street design transformed a minor arterial road into a bright, open environment that supports multimodal transportation.

The southern region of the Kansas City metro area has seen consistent growth since the early 2000s. Increasing traffic caused by new residential and commercial developments put additional pressures on road capacity and maintenance. The City of Leawood, Kansas, wanted to invest in an arterial road to improve the flow of traffic and support multimodal transportation for the growing residential base. An existing two-lane road did not support increasing travel demand and residents would need a road that enhanced access to single-family residential neighborhoods, commercial developments, schools and city facilities. To meet its goals, the city turned to Burns & McDonnell for assistance.

Before 2014, 143rd Street had two lanes and an open-ditch section. The street was lined with utilities overhead and below ground across the entire length. The city wanted to pursue a complete street design to promote walking and bicycling along the corridor in addition to providing a safer roadway.

NEW TRAFFIC LANES BUILT

FOOT-WIDE TRAIL BUILT

PUBLIC MEETINGS

Using federal funding administered through the Kansas Department of Transportation’s Local Public Agency program, the City of Leawood pursued upgrades and complete street development along 143 rd Street in two phases. The first phase was a 1-mile stretch between Nall Avenue and Windsor Street. Our team provided the conceptual, preliminary and final designs for the street improvements, which incorporated curbing, on-street bike lanes, enclosed storm sewers, culvert design, landscaping, a multipurpose trail, a traffic signal and a continuous light-emitting diode (LED) street light system.

The second phase of project focused on extending those improvements another 0.75 mile to Kenneth Road and the city limits. The second phase started in 2016, during which time Burns & McDonnell provided design services for curbing, enclosed storm sewers, culverts, landscaping, and bicycle and pedestrian facilities.

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One of the project's major challenges was coordination with local utilities. During the first phase of this project, the team coordinated a utility relocation with dedicated corridors while avoiding a major petroleum transmission line running the length of the project. Overhead power and telecommunication facilities along the existing roadway were buried into dedicated utility corridors. During both phases of the project, the team shared grading plans and spot elevations with a local electrical utility to establish foundation elevations for transformers and sectionalizers. The designs for both phases eliminated the need for costly relocation of the petroleum transmission line. Utilities that previously had secured their own private easements were identified early, because relocation costs for the operators was borne by the project and accounted for in the budget.

The team coordinated planning and design for this project with a local school district and impacted homeowners associations. To minimize disruption to nearby elementary and middle schools, the project team conducted traffic studies to evaluate access and circulation at each school during morning drop-off and afternoon pick-up sessions. Designs for the roadway improvement included a new fully actuated traffic signal at the intersection located right next to both schools.

During the second phase of the project, the team had to address a traverse grade differential from south to north, and a 7% longitudinal profile grade running west to east. The profile grade needed to accommodate the petroleum transmission line. Specifically, the team incorporated the pipeline’s location into the design model, so its presence and location were evaluated in relation to a retaining wall, driveway profiles and general grading.

Stakeholder engagement was essential during the second phase of this project. The road serves multiple residential and commercial developments and the project affected traffic flow during construction. Our team led engagement activities, including the development of informational materials and a project website, while administering dedicated social media accounts. These efforts provided regular updates to businesses and residents regarding project progress, benefits and opportunities for input.

The first phase of the project was completed in 2016 and the second phase was completed in October 2020. The improvements made along 143 rd Street enhance a minor arterial road for the cities of Leawood and Overland Park, Kansas. The addition of on-street bike lanes and a 10-foot multiuse trail enhances mobility for the citizens of Leawood. This infrastructure project transformed a two-lane roadway with limited lighting and overhead utilities into a bright and open environment with overhead LED lighting, four travel lanes and buried private utilities. In addition to the bike lanes and trail, this improved street now has ADA-compliant traffic signals and an improved drainage system. These features not only improve the aesthetics of the road, but also promote biking, walking and multimodal transportation options.

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Figure 1: Integrating bike lanes into the street design enhances neighborhood aesthetics, promotes healthy leisure activities and provides new transportation options.

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Street Design Elements

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• Intersections
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• About the Guide

The elements that make up city streets, from sidewalks to travel lanes to transit stops, all vie for space within a limited right-of-way. Transportation planners and engineers can use this toolbox to optimize the benefits the community receives from its streets.

Adapted from the Urban Street Design Guide, published by Island Press.

Subsections:

Curb Extensions

Vertical Speed Control Elements

Speed Table

Speed Cushion

Transit Streets

Dedicated Curbside/Offset Bus Lanes

Dedicated Median Bus Lanes

Contra-flow bus lanes.

Stormwater Management

Flow-Through Planters

Pervious Strips

Pervious Pavement

References for street design elements : 126 found..

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Case Study: Design Embraced Portfolio – 2024

A look behind the code and collaboration of the new portfolio for Anthony Goodwin at Design Embraced.

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How it started

Anthony got in touch with me through Norman. He had a concept ready for his new portfolio and needed someone to bring it to life. After he showed me this video of the home slider, I was on board immediately.

My first thoughts

After agreeing to the collaboration, without actually having a clue how to do it, I thought it would be straightforward to start with the home slider and deal with the bending of the planes, since this effect would be used multiple times. Adding the necessary control points to bend the plane properly was easier said than done. But, if I could do that, the rest of the page wouldn’t be so hard anymore (a couple of page transitions, some hover effects, etc.). At least that’s what I thought.

In this article

I will try to give you some insights into the work I did with and for Anthony Goodwin, including some of my favorite features and animations. I can’t delve too deeply because it would make the article quite long, and I don’t think it would be very interesting, since most of it is just basic frontend stuff with a very unique motion concept and design that powers the whole experience.

The tech stack

Before starting, I wanted to define the tools and libraries to use for the website. It’s basically planes in 3D space with some vertex manipulation, requiring WebGL. Since we’re not importing any objects and all the geometry is limited to planes, we don’t really need ThreeJS or some other fancy (big) library. We can just write it from scratch, which saves bytes and potentially performance. Here’s the tooling I ended up with:

• Custom Static Site Generator with Deno
• Tailwindcss for CSS
• esbuild for building JS
• Cloudflare Pages for free Hosting
• Custom Tween library for animations
• Custom WebGL library for rendering via WebGL
• Custom Router for all the navigation and preloading
• Custom Scroller for the smoothness

The site doesn’t have a CMS, and the content is editable through JSON. The focus was definitely on the animation and the general feel of the page. Initially I planned on using PayloadCMS (self-hosted). Check it out if you don’t know it already. It’s one of the best open source CMS I came across in the recent years.

“Why not just use NextJS, ThreeJS and GSAP? It’s easy!”

That’s a valid question. It probably would’ve been faster, but part of the process for me is learning new things. I wasn’t really familiar with WebGL, GSAP, or the magic in NextJS (or Astro, for that matter). So, I decided to take the longer route to build this project. It was more about understanding the fundamentals and the inner workings of each tool than just getting the project out the door. Also, I wanted to improve my own “library” further. It’s been a challenging yet rewarding process.

Another point worth mentioning is that while these libraries are incredibly useful, but they are also quite large because they need to cover a wide range of edge cases. Even with “tree-shaking” to remove unused code, I would have used only about 10%, making it overkill for this project. So I wanted to go with something more lightweight.

Bending and curling planes

I’m bad at math. That’s just how it is. So I need visualizations to make all the functions tangible otherwise I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything. Using the Desmos Calculator , I was able to create a graph that allowed me to control the plane’s behavior the way I needed. It took me some time though. Here’s the result, which you can play around with.

• s = The size of the plane (or the length in this case)
• r1 = The radius of the curl
• k1 = The position of the curl
• u = Determines the direction

There’re probably easier and simpler ways to solve this. After I got the formula down I tried to apply it to the planes vertex shader. Here’s the result isolated:

And here is the vertex shader code for the curl:

Page Transitions

We aimed for seamless transitions between pages to minimize delay and maintain a slick, easy navigation feel. By preloading all the pages upfront, we traded initial load performance for a better user experience and brand identity. For page transitions, I added animation functionality to the router that works with the tween package.

I wanted it to feel less like page navigation and more like one screen changing states. Optimizing all animations to be interruptible was the hardest part. This also required that every combination needed an animation, so I ended up with all these different animations to cover all cases:

To get it right with all the scrolling and the states was the hardest part of the portfolio to be honest. Maybe there are better ways to deal with this, but yeah creating multiple “sub-animations” as components made it pretty manageable in the end. Here’s how the transition from “case to about” looks:

Without showing too much code here, a quick description what’s behind these functions:

• viewEnter simply returns a timeline that triggers all the animations on the incoming page. Such as the text slide animation.
• viewLeave also returns a timeline and triggers the “out” animation on all of these elements so that for example the text slide up and out of view again.
• sliderLeave this hides the slider by curling the center image and moving it to the top, while also locking it and fading out all the other items.
• enableTheme activates the colors found in the page its navigating to when the transition starts

Using animation util functions like sliderLeave and viewEnter allowed me to abstract some of the generic logic occurring on most pages, which made it easier to debug. You can test the page transitions. They’re not perfect, but it definitely feels more fluid than just having a fade-in fade-out transition. Here’s an example of me testing the interruptible transitions by quick navigation.

Moving from case-to-case

We also decided to try a seamless page transition for browsing the cases, running an animation and quickly hiding the old page.

To achieve this transition I’m tracking the scroll position from the start of the image this.observable.y - this.viewport.height * .5 to the end this.observable.y which is at the end of the screen. So when progress >= 1 and the transition hasn’t been triggered already, we navigate to the next project really quickly.

My nemesis: Old GPU shader bug

I encountered a headache-inducing bug with the GPU in an older iMac, related to the use of an or-operator in a condition inside the shader. I had to adjust the shader code to work around this issue.

So this didn’t work:

And had to be transformed to:

If someone has more information on this, please let me know, since I couldn’t really find anything useful online, just some old stackoverflow threads with similar issues but not if this is intended behavior or really a bug

The mobile page

We opted for a non-WebGL version for mobile to keep it lightweight and simplify development. Using WebGL on mobile would require a loader and it’s better in my opinion to make the mobile experience as fast as possible without much delay if possible. The mobile version replicates the home slider with CSS and JS, and page transitions are just simple fade-out and fade-in animations.

Making it accessible to keyboard-only usage

Ensuring accessibility for heavy-animation websites is challenging. Even harder when there’s a fixed budget and the main focus is the brand identity itself. For this portfolio, we’ve added keyboard navigation so users can tab through all links, the slider, and the cases. In order to mimic the default scrolling behaviour in browsers we added a “keyboard” behavior to the scroller :

Working with Anthony on his new portfolio taught me a lot. I mean, he really opened my eyes to a lot. The whole process was a combination of challenges, fun, learning, long nights and getting mad at some random GPU error. Collaborating with a creative powerhouse like him was something else. He’s an absolute beast, and if you haven’t checked out his portfolio by now (which I doubt), go and check out his work! The best part was pretty much bouncing ideas around and experimentation. Still fascinated with how fast Anthony is able to translate ideas in his head to After Effects. It saved us both a lot of back and forth!

From a tech perspective, many devs will get it when I say I’d do things differently in hindsight. But, finishing the project and seeing people engage with it has been rewarding. Can’t wait for what’s next!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on Twitter or LinkedIn or reach out via mail !

P.S.: We won SOTD on 18th March on Awwwards, very happy about that! 🎉

Tagged with: case-study

Davide Perozzi

Freelance Developer

How to Animate SVG Shapes on Scroll

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Industrial Design Case Study: Thrive Improves Irwin's Drill Bits

"Solving two problems at once in a single, hybrid product," writes Atlanta-based industrial design consultancy Thrive , "means challenging the status quo at every point—from performance expectations to manufacturing to marketing." Here we'll look at how this philosophy was applied in their case study for Irwin's Speedbor drill bits.

MAKING A BIT THAT'S MORE THAN THE SUM OF ITS BITE

Legacy tool company Irwin was looking to enter the wood-boring accessory market with a competitive edge. The problem? The category consisted of two types of bits: flat and auger, and neither offered a strong point of entry. That's when THRIVE stepped in to add a new product profile to the mix.

BRING NEW THINKING TO OLD MARKETS

The wood-boring category was primed for a shake-up. Flat drill bit sales were declining and auger bits were too specialized a category for a newcomer to break into it easily. We began looking for a sweet spot between the two product types that would introduce fresh expectations and set Irwin apart.

GET INTO THE HEAD (AND HANDS) OF THE USER

Conventional wisdom suggested that faster drill time was better, so Irwin's competitors were in a constant race for drill bit superiority based solely on speed. We questioned that wisdom, querying contractors of all types to see what really made a difference on the job. We discovered that faster wasn't the issue—effort was. With hundreds of holes to drill each day, arm fatigue was a huge problem.

CHANGE THE CONVERSATION AROUND QUALITY

Despite our findings, the feeling internally and in the market was pretty set: faster always equaled better. To shift this mindset, we developed a testing protocol to compare competitors' claims. It turned out that "faster" only meant 50 seconds a day or .5 seconds a hole gained. The current gains were doing little to help work sites win.

TAP THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Returning to current options, we found that both types of traditional bits had their issues. Flat bits were cheaper, but were slower because they required more effort to push through wood. Auger bits were easier to use, but generally more expensive. We combined the two to capture the best of both and came up with the Speedbor bit: screw tip and auger head with the body of a flat tip. The result: a faster bit that also immensely reduced effort and hand fatigue.

REINVENT THE MANUFACTURING PROCESS

Since our design was more complex than previous product types, typical modes of manufacturing proved expensive. We traveled the world searching for a cost-effective process and found it in South America. There we pioneered the process, then adapted it for mass manufacture in Asia to keep costs competitive with traditional drill bits.

CHANGE THE MARKET FOREVER

In the past, wood-boring bits had been a quiet, unremarkable staple on hardware store shelves for decades. Focus groups that used the Speedbor bit, however, were so effusive that it caught the attention of both of the U.S.'s largest home improvement retailers. Each incorporated the product into their house line of tools. Thus, through research and ingenuity, we created a distinct, hybrid product that improved speed, ease-of-use, manufacturing practices and the standard for excellence in an otherwise staid market.

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• Q 2 Comment

"We traveled the world searching for a cost-effective process and found it in South America. There we pioneered the process, then adapted it for mass manufacture in Asia to keep costs competitive with traditional drill bits."  Sigh... A bunch of funny language to excuse finding the process in SA and taking it to China.  Why am I not surprised?

There are knock-offs on Amazon (surprise again, they are Chinese manufacture).  I wonder if there was any patent protection. I am not sure whether it would matter. 

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• Case Study: Swanston St.; Melbourne, Australia
• Example 1: 32 m
• Example 2: 38 m

Case Study: Boulevard de Magenta; Paris, France

• Example 1: 52 m
• Example 2: 62 m
• Example 3: 76 m
• Case Study: Av. 9 de Julio; Buenos Aires, Argentina
• Example: 34 m
• Case Study: A8erna; Zaanstad, The Netherlands
• Example: 47 m
• Case Study: Cheonggyecheon; Seoul, Korea
• Example: 40 m
• Case Study: 21st Street; Paso Robles, USA
• Types of Temporary Closures
• Example: 21 m
• Case Study: Raahgiri Day; Gurgaon, India
• Example: 20 m
• Case Study: Jellicoe St.; Auckland, New Zealand
• Example: 30 m
• Case Study: Queens Quay; Toronto, Canada
• Case Study: Historic Peninsula; Istanbul, Turkey
• Existing Conditions
• Case Study 1: Calle 107; Medellin, Colombia
• Case Study 2: Khayelitsha; Cape Town, South Africa
• Case Study 3: Streets of Korogocho; Nairobi, Kenya
• Intersection Design Strategies
• Intersection Analysis
• Intersection Redesign
• Mini Roundabout
• Small Raised Intersection
• Neighborhood Gateway Intersection
• Intersection of Two-Way and One-Way Streets
• Major Intersection: Reclaiming the Corners
• Major Intersection: Squaring the Circle
• Major Intersection: Cycle Protection
• Complex Intersection: Adding Public Plazas
• Complex Intersection: Improving Traffic Circles
• Complex Intersection: Increasing Permeability
• Acknowledgements
• Conversion Chart
• Metric Charts
• Summary Chart of Typologies Illustrated
• User Section Geometries
• Assumptions for Intersection Dimensions
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• Avenues and Boulevards
• Large Streets with Transit

Location : 9th and 10th arrondissements, Paris, France Population : 2.2 million Metro : 12.1 million Length : 1.95 km Right-of-Way : 30 m Context : Mixed-Use (Commercial/Residential/Office) Cost : 24 million EUR (27 million USD) Funding : Municipality of Paris, Region Ile-de-France, Central Government Max. Speed : 50 km/h

The transformation of the boulevard is part of the Espaces Civilisés, a program started in the early 2000s. The program was launched to reduce the high traffic that dominated many of the wider boulevards and avenues of Paris.

The Boulevard de Magenta was one of the first to be transformed following the introduction of the civic space guidelines.

Nicknamed by local residents the Magenta Expressway, it had endured traffic volumes of up to 1,400 vehicles per hour in each direction, frequent speeding, and many fatalities at intersections. Noise and pollution levels were among the highest in the city.

Under the program, €24 million were invested in widening sidewalks, planting trees, and building protected cycle tracks. Granite dividers were installed to protect a new dedicated bus lane.

To accommodate deliveries, 30-minute truck parking spaces were located on the curbside of the dedicated bus lane.

No curbside parking was provided along the boulevard. Intersections were made safer with secured crosswalks, widened pedestrian refuge islands, and extended crossing phases.

New pavement, landscaping, and street furniture were added to sidewalks and plazas. Businesses signed charters of quality to establish uniform signage and public stewardship practices.

• Reduce traffic fatalities, congestion, and pollution.
• Create a more attractive and pedestrian-oriented environment.
• Create a space that supports businesses.

Involvement

Municipality of Paris, Region Ile-de-France, Central Government, citizen associations, and business owners.

Key Elements

Sidewalk widened (from 4 m to 8 m) and lane narrowed.

Crossing distance shortened from 20 m to 12.8 m

Separated cycle track

Dedicated bus-only lane

New trees planted along the sidewalk extension

Project Timeline

Adapted by Global Street Design Guide published by Island Press.

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