The NACTO Urban Street Design Guide shows how streets of every size can be reimagined and reoriented to prioritize safe driving and transit, biking, walking, and public activity.  Unlike older, more conservative engineering manuals, this design guide emphasizes the core principle that urban streets are public places and have a larger role to play in communities than solely being conduits for traffic. 

The well-illustrated guide offers blueprints of street design from multiple perspectives, from the bird’s eye view to granular details. Case studies from around the country clearly show how to implement best practices, as well as provide guidance for customizing design applications to a city’s unique needs.  Urban Street Design Guide outlines five goals and tenets of world-class street design:

•    Streets are public spaces. Streets play a much larger role in the public life of cities and communities than just thoroughfares for traffic.
•    Great streets are great for business. Well-designed streets generate higher revenues for businesses and higher values for homeowners.
•    Design for safety. Traffic engineers can and should design streets where people walking, parking, shopping, bicycling, working, and driving can cross paths safely.
•    Streets can be changed. Transportation engineers can work flexibly within the building envelope of a street. Many city streets were created in a different era and need to be reconfigured to meet new needs.
•    Act now! Implement projects quickly using temporary materials to help inform public decision making.

Elaborating on these fundamental principles, the guide offers substantive direction for cities seeking to improve street design to create more inclusive, multi-modal urban environments.  It is an exceptional resource for redesigning streets to serve the needs of 21st century cities, whose residents and visitors demand a variety of transportation options, safer streets, and vibrant community life.

The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) is a membership network that provides support and resources for city transportation officials in cities of all sizes. Member Cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC. The current NACTO president is Janette Sadik-Kahn, Department of Transportation commissioner of New York City.

"As for the guide itself, it's a comprehensive resource that covers everything from facilities on arterials to neighborhood streets and design elements ranging from crosswalks, parklets, street closures and public plazas."

"...remarkably thoughtful, thorough, and useful contribution to the holistic reimagining and remaking of urban space."

"a highly-functional, well illustrated manual to transforming ugly, underperforming streets into popular boulevards....NACTO has managed to hit a sweet spot, presenting street design in a form that an engaged layperson could understand but with enough meat that a transportation engineer wouldn't feel insulted. This is a book that you might very well use as a reference on a regular basis."

"The National Association of City Transportation Officials has produced Urban Street Design Guide, a book as visual, legible and appealing as the improved streets the group hopes to foster."

"...the NACTO guidelines give us a language to discuss transportation policy choices in human terms, on the level of values."

"NACTO's Urban Bikeway Design Guide has already empowered cities around the country to embrace protected bike lanes and other innovative designs that the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has shied away from in its engineering bible, known as the 'green book.'"

"...takes a deep dive into street design elements, intersection design and designing for safety."

"Cities are our future, economically and environmentally, and the design of our streets is essential to urban vitality. This design guide gives planners and engineers around the United States solid urban standards they can rely on, and we as policy makers can count on for sustainable, safe, inviting and therefore business- and people-friendly streets for current users and future generations."

"The Urban Street Design Guide is an easy-to-use playbook for building safe and sustainable streets. The guide captures state-of-the-art practices to meet the huge demand for urban streets that reflect and promote the inherent social, economic, and sustainability advantages of cities."

"It has been forty years since Americans first walked on the moon. Now indeed, focus has come to walking on US streets. This book is a much needed, very readable, and well-illustrated design guideline for all types of people-friendly streets. Well done."