How to design for cars in people-centred places

Many North American cities want compact, vibrant places that add more jobs, homes, and visitors without worsening traffic or emissions. But they keep hitting the same trap. Great places attract traffic, leaving cities with two bad options:

• Build for drivers. Adding wider roads and parking lots, which undermines the vibrancy that people love.
• Ignore drivers. Risking backlash, as cars and trucks play an important economic role, and many residents want or need to continue driving.

Happy Cities and Mobycon have released a design guide that offers a better third option: four tested strategies to meet the needs of drivers and build places people love.

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When governments lack clarity on how best to meet the needs of cars in compact areas, they are prone to make investments that undermine each other.

Across North America, cities make major investments in transit and walkability, but undermine these investments with highway-style roads. Wide roads, slip lanes, and large parking lots; these are standard road design practices across most North American cities. They make sense for places where people need to drive to get around, like industrial parks. But in people-centred places, like a downtown or next to a new transit station, they stifle growth, rather than support it.

Cities need distinct design strategies to manage car traffic in people-centred places.

Many local governments want to create great, walkable places. But their efforts are stifled because they don’t have the design tools to accommodate cars in people-centred places.

We believe there’s another way.

Introducing: A new street design guide for cars in people-centred areas.

Happy Cities and Mobycon have released a design guide to offer a new set of practices to meet the needs of cars—while creating safe, comfortable, inviting streets for pedestrians, bikes, and other active road users.

The guide integrates the Happy Cities approach to community planning and building design with Mobycon’s Dutch-rooted, human-centred mobility expertise.

It offers practical guidance on:

• How to identify car-centred areas versus people-centred places in your community
• The distinct needs of people-centred places, and what can improve driver satisfaction in these areas
• Four tested strategies to meet the needs of cars in people-centred places, without undermining street life
• Practical moves to apply people-centred design at scale

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