About this project

“I'll not remove a single line or sign, until I know what I'm doing (or someone tells me what I ought to be doing based on sound scientific research)!” Local authority practitioner, ICE email discussion group, 18 January 2005 .

The purpose of the Manual for Streets is to consolidate the necessary components for effective street design into a single integrated source of information and guidance that will facilitate professional communication and understanding.

The manual will recognise the full range of design criteria necessary for the delivery of multi-functional streets and ensure that practitioners have the most up to date information available on the considerations relevant to those criteria, including quantitative thresholds where appropriate.

A number of activities will be key to the project including:

• A review of existing research
• Additional research and case studies
• Contact with stakeholders and practitioners

This site will help ensure that all the relevant views are known to the project team. Please contribute any relevant information using the Contribute form.

The Manual for Streets will deal with underlying values that can be creatively deployed by practitioners in order to pursue the Government's ‘placemaking' agenda of individually distinctive localities while ensuring that streets remain functional.

Manual for Streets is mainly aimed at the following practitioners:

• Planners
• Highway engineers
• Property developers
• Urban designers
• Utilities
• Emergency services

The Manual for Streets will be based around the key elements of good street design. The Manual for Streets will constitute a design framework that consolidates street design parameters from the full range of professional perspectives. It will initially cover the design considerations for residential streets and other lightly trafficked local roads.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's publication ‘Better Streets, Better Places' (ODPM, 2003) found that, while a significant proportion of highway authorities refer to their own standards for highway design, the majority of these are based on national design guidance, specifically Design Bulletin 32 and the Design Manual for Roads and Bridges.

The challenge for Manual for Streets is to effectively:

• Identify standards that differ from established approaches
• Evaluate those standards for potential applicability to MFS
• Assess the robustness of evidence underpinning those standards
• Identify areas where additional research can be conducted to assess the effectiveness of standards against available data, including:
• Driver behavioural responses
• Casualties
• User satisfaction
• Interaction with aesthetic elements

The Manual for Streets will be prepared against a backdrop of sustainable development guidance and initiatives, including the ODPM's Communities Plan ‘Sustainable Communities: Building for the Future' to ensure that it facilitates the long-term sustainability of streets, and contributes to an enhanced sense of place.

John Prescott, MP said of the Communities Plan:

“It will take us towards successful, thriving and inclusive communities, urban and rural, across England . Communities that will stand the test of time and in which people want to live.”