Emergency Response and Traditional Neighborhood Street Design

In recent years, local governments and developers have been trying to build new neighborhoods with traditional-style streets that are narrow, tree-lined and allow on-street parking. These streets — along with shorter, well-connected blocks — are a shift away from the trend since the Second World War to build large subdivisions with hierarchical networks of wide streets, long blocks and disconnected, dead-end cul de sacs.

These narrower, traditional-style streets are considered key features of livable, sustainable, and smart growth neighborhoods that are becoming increasingly popular with local governments, developers and home buyers.

This 12-page fact sheet (PDF, 896 KB) contains case studies illustrating how these issues were handled in three cities. We hope that the lessons learned from these projects will help local governments, emergency responders and developers work together to create safe, livable and walkable neighborhoods with great streets in the future.

Emergency Response and Traditional Neighborhood Street Design (PDF,896 KB)