Multi-modal Transportation

The Urban Street Design Guidelines (USDG) are intended to create "complete" streets--streets that provide capacity and mobility for motorists, while also being safer and more comfortable for pedestrians, cyclists, and neighborhood residents. The USDG include information about why this new approach to planning and designing streets is necessary, how the guidelines should be applied, and how specific design features should be used for different types of streets.

Built in 1959, San Francisco's Central Freeway, a 1.2-mile, double-deck structure, divided area neighborhoods. The Central Freeway Replacement Project began in March 2003 with the demolition of the existing Central Freeway structure. The Department of Public Works designed and constructed the new Octavia Boulevard, which carries traffic that once traveled on the elevated double-decked freeway structure. The new boulevard reopened in September 2005. Today, the boulevard's central lanes allow commuters to access streets leading to and from the city's western neighborhoods, while the outer edge of the boulevard has a single lane in each direction for local traffic.

Project Region, the process to create a 30-year transportation plan for the 10-county region of southwestern Pennsylvania, is a document created by some 3,000 people. The APA award winner culminated its planning process with a web-based regional town meeting that allowed around 600 attendees at 11 different simultaneous meetings throughout the area to interact. Led by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission, the cooperative effort resulted in "Our Region's Plan," — a vision that covers 7,112 square miles and is home to 2.6 million people.

Extensive walking and bicycle paths are part of green community planning; permeably paved streets lined with bioswales returning 97 percent of runoff to the watershed are part of award-winning innovation in green community planning. But the streets were just one of the creative features that won UniverCity its APA National Planning Excellence Award. The project of Simon Fraser University's SFU Community Trust is home to a community of exclusively multi-family buildings, including a buildingwith solar-boosted hot water and 20 300-foot-deep, liquid-filled geo-exchange wells that draw heat from the earth.

City planners, students, and community organizers partnered on the project, using input from 600 residents. The plan addresses infrastructure, safety, education, and funding, with implementation actions assigned to both the city and community groups. The plan is a guide for City staff, community members, and organizations to move the city towards a more walkable and bikeable vision.

Design for Health (DFH) is a collaborative project between the University of Minnesota, Cornell University, and the University of Colorado that serves to bridge the gap between the emerging research base on community design and healthy living and the everyday realities of local government planning. The Design for Health program integrates human health issues into planning and environmental design using innovative, practice-oriented tools.