Rural Livability
Transforming Strip Development Corridors
Providing pedestrian multi-modal access to a large retail enhances business development by transforming the area into a destination. Photo credit: Renaissance Planning Group
Adding vegetation and landscaping amenities can improve the pedestrian environment and calm traffic. Photo credit: Renaissance Planning Group
Providing pavers and a crosswalk near a large commercial development can control traffic and improve the pedestrian experience. Photo credit: Renaissance Planning Group
Many once-remote rural towns have become fast-growing “edge” communities because of their proximity to sprawling urban areas. The four-phase suburban growth cycle has shaped thousands of American communities over the past 50 years.
- Highway interchanges or park-and-ride transit stations attracts automobile-dependent housing development in swaths of rural land.
- As retail followed rooftops, shopping centers spring up along major commuter routes, generating thousands of regional and local car and truck trips.
- Congestion and crash rates inevitably rise as rapidly increasing high-speed regional traffic competes for highway space with equally fast-growing stop-and-start local traffic.
- States and localities widen or bypass congested highways, only to find even more traffic attracted to the larger roads and more development mushrooming around new interchanges.
CSS techniques can help communities redistribute traffic, reduce automobile dependence, and create more attractive, cohesive centers by “completing” strip commercial areas with local low-speed street networks that provide safe access to businesses and a richer variety of pedestrian, bicycle and transit choices. These local grids also provide the necessary framework for access management strategies critical to safe, efficient traffic flow along main highways, such as closing unnecessary driveways and establishing evenly spaced, controlled intersections.
