Street

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For alternate uses of the word "street," see Street (disambiguation).

A street in Ynysybwl, Wales, typical of a small town

A street is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable surface such as cobblestone or brick. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, or otherwise prepared to accommodate non-pedestrian traffic.

A street is superficially similar to a road, but they are not the same. Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and center-city streets too crowded for road vehicles to pass, none of which are usually considered roads. Conversely, highways and motorways are examples of roads but not streets.

1 Role in the built environment
2 As distinct from other spaces
- 2.1 Nomenclature
3 See also
4 External links

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Role in the built environment

The street is a relentlessly public environment, one of the few shared between all sorts of people. As a component of the built environment as ancient as human habitation, the street sustains a range of activities vital to civilization. Its roles are as numerous and diverse as its ever-changing cast of characters.

Streets can be loosely categorized as main streets and side streets. Main streets are usually broad with a relatively high level of activity. Commerce and public interaction are more visible on main streets, and vehicles may use them for longer-distance travel. Side streets are quieter, often residential in use and character, and may be used for vehicular parking.

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Circulation

Circulation, or less broadly transportation, is perhaps a street's most visible use, and certainly among the most important. The unrestricted movement of people and goods within a city is essential to its commerce and vitality, and streets provide the physical space for this activity.

In the interest of order and efficency, an effort may be made to segregate different types of traffic. This is usually done by carving a road through the middle for motorists, reserving sidewalks on either side for pedestrians; other arrangements allow for streetcars, trolleys, and even wastewater and rainfall runoff ditches (common in Japan and India). In the mid-20th century, as the automobile threatened to overwhelm city streets with pollution and ghastly accidents, many urban theorists came to see this segregation as not only helpful but necessary in order to maintain mobility. Le Corbusier, for one, perceived an ever-stricter segregation of traffic as an essential affirmation of social order--a desirable, and ultimately inevitable, expression of modernity. To this end, proposals were advanced to build "vertical streets" where road vehicles, pedestrians, and trains would each occupy their own levels. Such an arrangement, it was said, would allow for even denser development in the future. These plans were never implemented on a large scale, a fact which today's urban theorists regard as fortunate for vitality and diversity.

Transportation is often misunderstood to be the defining characteristic, or even the sole purpose, of a street. This has never been the case, and even in the automobile age, is still demonstrably false. A street may be temporarily blocked to all through traffic in order to secure the space for other uses, such as a street fair, a flea market, or children at play. Many streets are bracketed by bollards or Jersey barriers so as to prevent passage unless on foot. These measures are often taken in a city's busiest areas, the "destination" districts, when the volume of activity outgrows the capacity of private passenger vehicles to support it. A feature universal to all streets is a human-scale design that gives its users the space and security to feel engaged in their surroundings, whatever through traffic may pass.

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Vehicular traffic

Despite this, the operator of a motor vehicle may (incompletely) regard a street as merely a thoroughfare for vehicular travel or parking. As far as concerns the driver, a street can be one-way or two-way: vehicles on one-way streets may travel in only one direction, while on two-way streets may travel both ways. One way streets typically have signs reading "ONE WAY" and an arrow showing the direction of allowed travel. Two-way streets are wide enough for at least two lanes of traffic.

Which lane is for which direction of traffic depends on what country the street is located in. On broader two-way streets, there is often a center line marked down the middle of the street separating those lanes on which vehicular traffic goes in one direction from other lanes in which traffic goes in the opposite direction. Occasionally, there may be a median strip separating lanes of opposing traffic. If there is more than one lane going in one direction on a main street, these lanes may be separated by intermittent lane lines marked on the street pavement. Side streets often do not have center lines or lane lines.

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Parking for vehicles

Many streets, especially side streets in residential areas, have an extra lane's width on either or both sides for a parallel parking vehicles. Most minor side streets allowing free parallel parking do not have pavement markings designating the parking lane. A somewhat recent trend has been to start marking off parking lanes on more important streets. Some streets are too busy or not wide enough for to allow parking on the side. Sometimes parking on the sides of streets is allowed only at certain times. Signs off to the side of the street often state regulations about parking. On the side of some streets, particularly in business areas, there may be parking meters into which coins must be paid to allow parking in the adjacent space for a limited time. There may be parking lane markings on the pavement effectively designating which meter a parking space corresponds to. Occasionally, a street may have enough width on the side that there is angle parking.

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Pedestrian traffic and vehicular amenities

Where vehicular traffic is allowed on a street, traffic and parking regulatory signs are often placed near the sides. Bordering the driving/parking sides of many urban streets, there are curbs. Usually, there are strips of land beyond the driving/parking parts of the streets owned by the government entity owning the streets. Sidewalks are often located on these public land strips beyond the curbs on one or usually both sides of the street. There may be an unpaved strip of land between the vehicle-driveable part of the street and the sidewalk on either side of the street, which can be called the tree lawn. Grass and trees are often grown there for landscaping the sides of the street. Alternatively, there may be openings in wider sidewalks in which trees grow. Streets are often lighted at night with streetlights, which are typically located far overhead on tall poles. Beyond these public strips of land are bordered the front of lots commonly owned by private parties.

Practically all public streets are given a name or at least a number to identify them and any addresses located along the streets. Alleys typically do not have names. The length of a lot of land along a street is referred to as the frontage of the lot.

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Public assembly

Streets are also a forum for public assembly. Such assembly need not be as dramatic as marching, parading, or erecting barricades as Parisians are wont to do. The street is a place for expression, protest, and revolution. It is also a neutral zone where business associates can meet for coffee as easily as friends can meet for drinks.

Interaction

Streets assume the role of a town square for its regulars. Jane Jacobs, an economist and prominent urbanist, wrote extensively on the ways that interaction among the people who live and work on a particular street--"eyes on the street"--can reduce crime, encourage the exchange of ideas, and generally make the world a better place.

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Identity

Much as a string in a jar can precipitate a beautiful, delicate crystal, a street can serve as the catalyst for neighborhood culture and solidarity. New Orleans’ Bourbon Street is famous not only for its active nightlife but also for its role as the center of the city’s French Quarter. Similarly, the Bowery in New York City was once known as the center of the nation's underground punk scene. Other streets have marked divisions between neighborhoods of a city. For example, Yonge Street divides Toronto into east and west sides, and East Capitol Street divides Washington, D.C. into north and south.

Streets also tend to aggregate similar establishments.

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As distinct from other spaces

A road, like a street, is often paved and used for travel. However, a street is characterized by the degree and quality of street life it facilitates, whereas a road serves primarily as a through passage for road vehicles or (less frequently) pedestrians. Street performers, beggars, patrons of sidewalk cafés, peoplewatchers, and a diversity of other characters are habitual users of a street; the same people would not typically be found on a road.

In rural and suburban environments where street life is rare, the terms "street" and "road" are frequently considered interchangeable. Still, even here, what is called a "street" is usually a smaller thoroughfare, such as a road within a housing development feeding directly into individual driveways.

If a road connects places, then a street connects people. One may "hit the road" to see the wonders of the world—Jack Kerouac famously chronicled one such journey—but the latest bling will "hit the streets" before it ever appears on a road. It is "on the street" where one hears an interesting rumor, where one bumps into an old acquaintance, where one acquires smarts. Nobody has ever seen a "road" vendor or a "road" performer, and you'll never find yourself on a long "street" to nowhere. The street, not the road, is home to the homeless, and even Kerouac's hero finally returned to find his friends on a New York street.

A town square is a little more like a street, but a town square is rarely paved with asphalt and may not make any concessions for through traffic at all.

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Nomenclature

Main article: Street name

There is a haphazard relationship, at best, between a thoroughfare's function and its name. For example, London's Abbey Road serves all the vital functions of a street, despite its name, and locals are more apt to refer to the "street" outside than the "road". A desolate road in rural Montana, on the other hand, may bear a sign proclaiming it "Davidson Street", but this does not make it a "street".

In the United Kingdom many towns will refer to their main thoroughfare as the High Street, and many of the ways leading off it will be named "Road" despite the urban setting. Thus the town's so-called "Roads" will actually be more streetlike than a road.

In some other English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand and Australia, cities are often divided by a main "Road," with "Streets" leading from this "Road", or are divided by thoroughfares known as "Streets" or "Roads" with no apparent differentiation between the two. In Auckland, for example, the main shopping precinct is around Queen Street and Karangahape Road, and the main urban thoroughfare connecting the south of the city to the city centre is Dominion Road.

Streets have existed for as long as humans have lived in permanent settlements (see civilization). However, modern civilization in much of the New World developed around transportation provided by motor vehicles. In some parts of the English-speaking world, such as North America, many think of the street as a thoroughfare for vehicular traffic first and foremost. In this view, pedestrian traffic is incidental to the street's purpose; a street consists of a thoroughfare running through the middle (in essence, a road), and may or may not have sidewalks along the sides.

In an even narrower sense, some may think of a street as only the vehicle-driven and parking part of the thoroughfare. Thus, sidewalks and tree lawns would not be thought of as part of the street. A mother may tell her toddlers "Don't go out into the street, so you don't get hit by a car."

Among urban residents of the English-speaking world, the word appears to carry its original connotations (i.e. the facilitation of vehicular traffic as an incidental benefit). For instance, a New York Times writer lets casually slip the observation that automobile-laden Houston Street is "a street that can hardly be called 'street' anymore, transformed years ago into an eight-lane raceway that alternately resembles a Nascar event and a parking lot." [1] Published in the paper's Metro section, the article evidently presumes an audience with an innate grasp of the full urban role of the street. To the readers of the Metro section, vehicular traffic does not reinforce, but rather detracts from, the essential "street-ness" of a street.

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