Streets - Scale and Proportion

Buildings form street corridors.

A street corridor has a scale that is made by the proportion of its width (measured from building façade to building façade) relative to its height (the roofs of buildings along both sides).  This street proportion helps frame an occupant’s perception of the intensity of the place when they occupy it – they feel it.  This proportion is a result of the ingredients of a street corridor being sized, composed, and designed according to the needs and desires of a community. Great streets are safe for pedestrians and micro-mobile persons because they communicate to drivers what the environment is and, therefore, how fast they should be driving.

The street corridor is formed by the buildings along it. Like a hallway – or corridor – in a house, the placement, height, opacity or transparency, and architecture of its “walls” completes the flavor of the visitor’s experience. Urban buildings are part of the collection of ingredients which creates the scale and emotion of a street corridor, whether that scale is a dense downtown…

…a less intense neighborhood business district

… a village center

… an urban residential neighborhood…

… or a traditional, walkable residential neighborhood…

… or even a relaxed, residential retreat neighborhood.

A purposefully designed street corridor gives a sense of the degree of activity that can happen within it.  Generally, a street corridor with a more vertical proportion gives a more intense urban feel whereas a street corridor with a more horizontal proportion gives a more relaxed feel. A street corridor that has tall buildings on both sides, a relatively narrow roadway, narrow hardscaped collector strips, minimal sidewalks, and little or no private space, will give the feeling of higher intensity. More intense downtown street corridors are taller than they are wide.   

A street corridor that has shorter buildings on either side, relative to the rest of the ingredients, will be a less intense neighborhood business district.

A street corridor that has short (1 or 2 story tall buildings) with an intimately scaled roadway, collector strips, and sidewalks, will make a quaint village center.

A street corridor with medium height buildings, a narrow roadway, collector strips and sidewalks, but with intimate front yards, can have an urban residential neighborhood scale.

A street corridor with shorter buildings, a medium width roadway, good-sized collector strips and sidewalks, and substantial front yards can be a traditional, walkable residential neighborhood…

Medians which create boulevard streets can vary the proportion of a street corridor, giving another quality to the experience.