Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive of over 1400 titles.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Chapter 9 discusses the idea that even if planners engineers and citizens change the design of streets cities that may not change how people use streets. The chapter focuses on behavioral economics and how price and incentives can be used to nudge more sustainable behaviors. It also offers new research on how social norms play a role in how we think about travel choices, providing various example of how planners and engineers can think differently about transportation demand management to facilitate non-automotive travel.
Chapter 11 provides a summary of the book including a review of the key lessons learned. It suggests that a spiritual connection can be made with how we frame our streets and that they can be connected to efforts to make us antifragile. The chapter concludes with a call to action and connection to larger environmental issues such as global climate change, spatial segregation and social injustice.
Chapter 8 lays out the challenges of creating more vibrant streets, including the urgent need to connect dialogues on streets to those on housing. This includes dialogue on residential self-selection, gentrification and displacement. It discusses potential housing interventions that can support the transition to safer and more bicycle- and pedestrian-oriented streets.
Since the earliest days of civilization, streets have played an important role in shaping society – but what is a street? Is it a living ecosystem, a public space, a social space, an economic space or a combination of these?
The focus on automotive travel over the past century has changed the role of streets in cities. This has degraded the quality of urban life and contributed to public health issues. This book offers a unique look at streets as locations that can evolve to support the economic, social, cultural and natural aspects of cities.
Using modern urban design examples, it challenges readers to focus not only on the livability and travel benefits of roads, but on how the power of streets can be harnessed. In so doing, it shapes more dynamic spaces for walking, biking and living, and aims to stimulate urban vitality and community regeneration, encouraging policymakers and individuals to make changes in their own communities.
This chapter introduces the theme of ending roads and reimagining streets. It illustrates how streets are not unmovable and unchangeable objects, discussing the approaches of thinker such as Le Corbusier and Jane Jacobs. It provides structure to the manuscript and discusses how each chapter will be framed by a theme followed by case studies on how planners, engineers and citizens can “kill the street.”
This chapter focuses on the basic history of the street and how design has changed over time. The chapter builds a foundation for the more radical street designs offered further along in the book. It provides a review of the form of street since the Industrial Revolution and illustrates the changes in standard street design over the past century and half.
Chapter 7 focuses on how streets can be designed with nature. It frames this first from a macro perspective on how cities can become greener. It then focuses through a lens of international design case studies on how nature can be integrated into streets. These focus on green laneways and alleys, as well as how many cities are embracing a trend toward biophilic streets.
Chapter 6 focuses on how streets can facilitate and create culture. It draws on the case studies of Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo, California, as well as Santiago, Chile. These cases illustrate the power of streets as it relates to cultural aspects of cities including art, food and music. The chapter offers lessons in conceptual design attributes that can reframe how streets can be used to support local culture.
This chapter focuses on the street as economic space and looks at research into the economic dividend benefits of walking and biking improvements in Midwestern cities such as Louisville, Kentucky, and Chicago, Illinois, where practicing planners and policy makers are thinking of streets as tools for economic regeneration. It then transitions to some of the experiments taking place in London to show what planners can do to reshape the economics of a neighborhood by harnessing the power of the street.
Chapter 5 focuses on streets as public spaces that can be social catalysts in communities. It connects the classic ideas of Jane Jacobs to various modern case studies including those in London, England and Delhi, India. It also illustrates how design continue to change and evolve to cultivate social interaction.
