Paving the way: how we achieve clean safe and attractive streets

Paving the way sets out an agenda for improving the most neglected element in the built environment – the street. Clean, safe and attractive streets in which people, not cars, are paramount help to bind communities together and contribute to wider social objectives such as reducing traffic accidents and crime levels. This study for CABE and ODPM by Alan Baxter & Associates, highlights significant barriers in the institutional, management and policy framework which inhibit the creation of streets for multiple uses. The challenge for government, urban designers, highway engineers and local authorities is to change ingrained attitudes and cultures that fail to treat streets as quality places in themselves.