Today, on behalf of our 2,400 members working in communities across America, CNU is pleased to endorse NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide—an outstanding tool consistent with our goals of building safer, more pedestrian-friendly streets. After a full technical review by CNU staff and our member-led Project for Transportation Reform, we believe the Guide to be a crucial resource for better street design and an excellent complement to our own Designing Walkable Urban Thoroughfares manual.
NACTO’s Urban Street Design Guide offers a concrete vision for improving the safety and livability of our streets for all people who walk, bike, drive, wheelchair roll, or use transit. Our organizations agree that urban streets demand a unique approach unmet by conventional design guidelines. The Urban Street Design Guide will prove a valuable tool in planning great streets, especially as we work toward a common vision with our partners at all levels of government.
Engaging with traffic engineers and state departments of transportation is an essential step in building great cities, towns, and neighborhoods. Street design is just as important a tool for placemaking and livability as compact, mixed-use development patterns, and great streets provide a number of public and economic benefits in their own right.
As the leading national organization promoting walkable, mixed-use neighborhood development, healthier communities, and sustainable urbanism, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has worked for more than twenty years to place pedestrians back at the center of the public realm. In our work, CNU has a long tradition of close collaboration with partner agencies and organizations, including HUD, the U.S. EPA, the FHWA, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, and, of course, NACTO.
We're proud to endorse the NACTO Urban Street Design Guide for use by our members, public agencies, community planners, and transportation engineers as an integral and effective resource for street design and placemaking.
Learn more about the Urban Street Design Guide at NACTO.org