Can U.S. Cities Build Narrow European Streets?

U.S. streets are often wide and meant primarily for cars. Many European cities have charming, narrow streets that give pedestrians priority. Can U.S. cities find ways to add these narrow streets into our existing networks? And what would they gain if they did?

Resources on this topic:

Produced by Dave Amos and the fine folks at Nebula Studios.
Written by Dave Amos and Hannah Woolsey
Select images and video from Getty Images.
Black Lives Matter.
Trans rights.

[CityBeautiful]

I'm grading final exams while this video is launching. Share your favorite narrow streets in the comments to distract me!

[barryrobbins]

Salt Lake City and Rome may not have been _built_ in a day, but Salt Lake City looks like it could have been _designed_ in a day.

[kailahmann]

Europeans: "Rome is a hellscape of way to many cars!"
Americans: "See this paradise of urban planning, where you can live without a car!"

[rockym]

A new neighborhood in Arizona, Culdesac Tempe, is basically doing this right now! They took a large city block and crisscrossed it with small pedestrian streets, one emergency access road, and no resident parking!

[morganscharman]

What’s even crazier than our huge block sizes in Salt Lake is that some of them are either half or entirely surface parking lots 🙃

[Kodeb]

I just love the irony that Americans are so aggressive towards dense urbanism that we turn an old narrow street into a tourist attraction.

[ScooterinAB]

I was in Kyoto once and was following a map. I saw that i needed to turn, walk half a block, then turn again. However, I didn't realize the scale meant that that "half-block corner" was actually just a ramen shop, and the second turn was just a few feet away. It was so mindblowing, coming from Canada and growing up around arterials with a half dozen lanes across.

[treycherie]

In Baltimore, we call these “alley houses”. It’s a shame how many have been demolished and had their alley streets closed

[peachapplebanana]

I absolutely love those parts of Philly. They’re quiet and friendly, but so close to everything. If I was going to move into the city I would try to get one of those houses for sure

[theorangebuilding]

I just moved to Philly and have been floored by the perfect walkability that is center city and South Philly streets. Their commitment to mixed use development makes each neighborhood immanently liveable. The only drawback is that the small footprint inhibited the development of large parks.

[GojiMet]

Narrower streets with limited or no traffic are much more peaceful and stress-free than both big, noisy, wide streets and stroads with AND even without car traffic. You feel like you can walk anywhere, but with wider streets there is always a sense of just sticking to the sidewalks. Even when they close streets and avenues in NYC, there is a psychological need to walk just on the sides instead of venturing unto the road.

[jaeden]

If Philly continues to build retail + public transit, it’ll be the most “urban+walkable” city in the US to me

[TomPhoolery]

I’m a resident of Philadelphia and can confirm that this kind of interconnected side-street network is more common than you’d think, it just depends on where you are and when it was built. The Fishtown and Northern Liberties areas also include a lot of interconnected side streets beyond the overall grid, though they were built much later. Fishtown, the neighborhood I live in, happens to be located where the grids “collide”, so it’s very walkable in this same manner.

I think as long as we adopt a transit-first approach to planning in Philly, we can overcome the lack of on-site parking and make it both safe and cheap to park your car closer to high speed mass transit, and then use that (or just walk/bike) to get around. We shouldn’t really need cars, and IMO they make city living harder, not easier.

[toastquest]

there's a tiny single block of charming rowhouses in my american city, and it's so narrow there's only space for parking on one side and one sidewalk on the other. it's absolutely lovely and cozy, and is protected as historic.

[pabloquijadasalazar]

I think the USA could benefit from Barcelona-style superblocks. It would be similar to what you said about big blocks being broken up by small pedestrian streets.

[smith]

Great vid! I was just telling my students the other week about how Boston and Philly are the two cities to go to in the US if you want a Euro pedestrian experience! And we'd also touched on that very interesting situation: how Euro cities seem "organic" in their growth, like they grew up right out of the earth (whereas US cities are generally very Sim City -esque).

[jconti]

I live on quince Street in Philly. Because we have no 'outdoor space' we hang out on the street. Grilling or throwing the football around. Because there's no/minimal cars it's very much a public shared space that you can hang out on. It's how/where I meet all my neighbors and out-of-towners

[henryreinach]

I grew up on Jessup St, shown in the video right next to Quince!! Absolutely amazing area to grow up, I wish that the US had more of this.

[theangrycynic]

You should take a look at Baltimore. It's got a really good setup for improvement right now, and there are many walkable neighborhoods that you don't need a car in. They are also looking to expand transit, but we have many roads of abandoned yet high-density housing that could be transformed into something like this. I believe that would help the city a lot.

[icomefromcanadia]

Lots of old blocks in London, and elsewhere in The UK have old mews, originally for horses and such, that have often been converted into additional housing units, but could also stand as inspiration for weaving parking into terraced home blocks.
They often have a single car width entrance with nicely built archways over/around them, so from the street, the beautiful old blocks aren't interrupted by giant parking lots or open garage entrances. These then open to a small courtyard where there could either be parking spots directly, or they it could open into individual garages, or a parkade entrance. The main thing is that an inset mews-type space gives a spot for parking, and access to the back of units without the visual or spatial interruption of an open, exposed parking area. Parking is perfectly accessible, but hidden from and minimized on the narrower, more pedestrian friendly street frontages; instead of multiple garage entrances on the street, all cars are funneled to the one pleasant entrance to the mews, yet by having a courtyard-like space inside the mews, they still offer direct access to the backs of the units on that block/building.

The built up archways actually create visual interest to the block as they form part of the built facades, even if it's just an entrance to parking.