Streetscape and transportation

This CIRD-created document tracks potential funding opportunities and resources for various rural-related community design challenges. It will be updated periodically as new resources are identified.

Since the beginning of the Complete Streets movement in the early 2000s, more than 1,700 Complete Streets policies have been adopted in jurisdictions of all sizes and contexts across the United States. Adopting Complete Streets policies is a crucial first step to reducing traffic violence, improving health equity, responding to the climate crisis, and rectifying a long history of inequitable transportation practices. This Best Complete Streets Policies report spotlights the communities that have

Source: Project for Public Spaces Author: Jay Walljasper Summary: Transportation benefits our sense of place, and our sense of place benefits transportation. A place-based approach to transportation planning redefines how both transportation and land use planners view their goals.

Source: WalkBoston Authors: Robert Sloane and Wendy Landman Outside of urbanized town centers, many parts of Massachusetts suffer from poor infrastructure for walking, with few sidewalks, a dangerous lack of crosswalks and unattractive streetscaping. Yet, as walking is increasingly recognized as an essential part of healthy living, many residents of rural and low-density suburban areas are seeking opportunities to improve the walking environments in their communities.

Source:The Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ The Citizens' Institute on Rural Design™ has assembled a list of planning and design terms to help community members understand the terms used in design charrettes by architects, planners, and designers. This glossary is helpful not only for participants at a workshop or charrette, but also forunderstanding the vocabulary used by the design field.

Tourism provides communities with numerous benefits including, new jobs, an expanded tax base, improved facilities, and a new market for local products. However, tourism can also exacerbate crowding, traffic congestion, and haphazard development if not planned for correctly. This resource article provides tactics needed to maximize the benefits of tourism, while minimizing the burdens.

This document produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 provides policy options that can help rural communities strengthen their economies while preserving rural character. These policies can help rural communities ensure that their development is fiscally sound, environmentally responsible, and socially equitable.

This resource is intended to help those who want to re-invigorate and strengthen neighborhood centers of economy, culture, and history through a smart growth approach to development.

The guide provides clear examples of how to interpret and apply design flexibility to improve bicycling and walking conditions and presents compelling photographs, visual illustrations and technical diagrams to communicate design issues and solutions in a smaller scale setting.

Is your town or community interested in a short-term project to improve public space? Check out this toolkit, the Tactical Urbanists' Guide to Materials and Design from the Street Plans Collective. This resource is great if you have ideas for 1-7 day “demonstration” projects such as pop-up bike lanes, traffic safety upgrades, or flexible and visible parks projects.

Empty buildings and vacant lots are spaces of opportunity! The following guidebook by bcWORKSHOP takes you through the steps building a network of stakeholders for a community space, envisioning what that empty space could become, and making those plans happen.

Sometimes all your need for community togetherness is tape and some wood! Better Block has compiled a few low-cost, high-impact "recipes" for public space activation from temporary bike lanes and parklets to a garden plaza.