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Better Streets, Better Cities: a guide to street design in urban India

This guide was prepared by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) in collaboration with the Ahmedabad-based Environmental Planning Collaborative. The guide to street design in urban India illustrates ways that good design can help create safer streets and more livable public spaces and urges planners to explore approaches that prioritise the needs of pedestrians and cyclists.

The guide begins with a discussion of 16 street elements, such as footpaths, cycle tracks, medians, and spaces for street vending, covering the importance of each element as well as implementation challenges and design criteria. While existing NMT infrastructure in Indian cities is implemented with good intent, design shortcomings resulting from a failure to account for the practical needs of pedestrians and cyclists often mean that these facilities remain unused. The guide indicates how these pitfalls can be avoided.

Next is a library of design templates for various rights-of-way, followed by sample intersections. The final section describes the process of street design—from data collection, surveys, and analysis to the preparation of final plans—using a real-world example of an urban intersection to explain methodological issues.

Conceptualisation of Better Streets, Better Cities began in mid-2009. The guide can serve as a reference manual for municipal governments, practitioners, design consultants, and academic institutions. While the guide was developed considering Indian conditions, applicability in other countries can be explored.

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