Bourke Street Surry Hills
Vision for local streets
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About local streets
Local streets are strongly influenced by their edge conditions and adjacent properties. While the street types described in this guide are a helpful concept for structuring design advice, real-life situations are far more diverse, and require you to establish a fine-grain understanding of the specific context you are designing for.
Urban morphologies across NSW depend on geography, the era of urbanisation, cadastral patterns, land-use zoning, development intensity and neighbourhood character. Diversity in urban areas includes cities and towns laid out on street grids throughout the 19th century; the walkable, interwar suburbs following the tram and train lines; and the mid to late 20th century residential estates, business parks and shopping centres catering for increasing private vehicle ownership.
Contextual diversity is reflected in the range of local streets extending across hundreds of neighbourhoods from Ballina to Bega and Bourke to Bondi. Although streets can be the same type as defined by role and basic functions, their performance, character and elements can vary greatly depending on context.
In many cases, you will be dealing with existing local streets with fixed constraints and limited funds available for improvement. For the widest application to the most people, the common street design queries links to a number of design solutions, such as retrofitting incremental improvements in a typical suburban context.
Mapping
A map of local street environments.
Local streets make up a large number of the roads and streets in a network. They exist in a wide variety of urban contexts, and have a diversity of layouts and configurations.