Four street environments
While there are many different types of roads and streets – reflecting the variety and complexity of their contexts, functions, and users – this guide uses four road and street environments - main roads, main streets, local streets and civic spaces - to explain the major characteristics and considerations that will inform your task as a designer:
The four street environments of the NSW Movement and Place Framework are civic spaces, main streets, local streets, and main roads.
These four environments are the basis of the NSW Movement and Place Framework.
Road and street types
Within the four environments, 21 road and street types are described in this guide. While this list is not exhaustive, it reflect an aspiration for how roads and streets in NSW should be designed to serve their users and to fit their context.
Main roads | Main streets |
Local streets | Civic spaces |
This guide identifies 21 road and street types amongst the diversity of roads and streets throughout NSW.
Suggestions for identifying road and street types
Some road and street types are more closely related, and the guidance below can help to identify the most appropriate type in each instance:
- High streets include arterial high streets located along important movement routes, and destination high streets located where movement functions are relatively lower. Malls are destination high streets with a staying and walking focus, while high-activity malls add more public transport and interchange activities.
- Transit types have significant multi-modal mobility functions, and include smaller scale transit streets, larger scale transit boulevards, and transit ways dedicated to active and public transport.
- Connectors are important medium scale streets for linking people with local destinations (connector streets) or larger scale neighbourhoods and centres (connector avenues).
- Residential streets are focused on local living activities, and range in size from wider neighbourhood streets, medium-sized yield streets, and smaller residential ways.
- Lanes include residential lanes, service lanes in mixed-use areas, and civic lanes where place intensity is higher.
- Urban roads include principal arterials and motorways with significant movement functions.
- Rural roads include larger scale rural highways and smaller scale rural links.
- Street parks provide open space for people at a local scale.
- Enterprise streets serve industrial and commercial areas.
Road and street widths
Many NSW cities and towns were originally surveyed using ‘chains’ – a unit of length approximately 20m long. Many street reservations were laid out as one chain (~20m wide) and many others as one and a half chains (~30m wide). The ‘standard’ 20m width is generally more common in metropolitan areas while the ‘wide’ 30m width is more common in regional areas. The varying widths are an example of how the same street type can exist in different contexts. You may also need to design for other widths, using your professional judgement to apply the standards.
These are two examples of arterial high streets with different widths. Hyde Street Bellingen has a ‘standard’ width of approximately 20m while Summer Street Orange has a ‘wide’ 30m street reservation. These width variations can be seen in cities and towns in both metropolitan and regional NSW.