How to Design a Sidewalk? The Key Role of Street Furniture

If the pavement is a key element in organizing the flow, the urban furniture chosen to design the public space is responsible for qualifying the place and creating friendlier spaces. Dumpsters, flower beds, signposts, benches, lighting, bike racks and much more help transform a space that, although only a thoroughfare, is also the only public space in most cities.

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The urban fabric as we know it today has the main land use in private lots, leaving roads and public areas to fill the remaining space between these lots. In some cities where urban planning has managed to guarantee a designed territory, the public spaces are more spacious, with parks and plazas spread over allocated areas. In other cities dominated by freeways, the streets are designed primarily for the needs of cars, resulting in few lavish collection areas. Over time, society has understood the importance of qualifying available public spaces, sidewalks being the most common.

Urban furniture, used to qualify collective spaces, consists of devices and objects available to the population or supporting the city’s services and meeting the needs of collective life. In order to organize the flow and indicate the rules of a specific place, the city needs general signs such as traffic lights, signs and information steles. Trash cans and street lamps that illuminate the streets at night are needed to ensure cleanliness. On sidewalks, where space is scarcer and more crowded than in squares and parks, the furniture adapts to the different configuration options.

While the material can vary, being mainly concrete and steel, street furniture needs to be easy to maintain, very durable and not get in the way of people walking the pavement. Without disturbing the flow of pedestrians, they are given the lane closest to the front of the properties and closest to the streets. Some facilities are necessary for organization, such as signs, bins and lighting, while others are interesting to better qualify the place by offering pedestrians places to rest, reflect and stop, such as benches, bike racks and flower beds.

However, all are located either near the streets or near the facades and shop windows, so urban planning must define the most suitable places, considering that the furniture must also be compatible with water, sewage, gas and electricity infrastructure . However, all are located either near the streets or near the facades and shop windows, so urban planning must define the most suitable places, since the furniture must also be compatible with water and sewage infrastructure , gas and electricity. In order to ensure good quality sidewalks, it is important that the architectural project takes into account the street furniture along the facade, prioritizing the pedestrian walkway and providing for lighting, shading, cleanliness, etc.

In this way, it is important to consider that the urban furniture of the sidewalks should not be secondary in the architectural project, since they are part of the communication between the building and the street. In some cases it is possible to propose more complex structures aimed at satisfying the demand for collective public spaces such as squares and parks, while qualifying less active spaces such as the All Colors Sidewalk.

In addition, street furniture can also be mobile and only installed at certain times of the day to comply with local laws, especially on busy roads or sidewalks. Temporary, mobile or permanent street furniture helps to improve sidewalks and bring better quality of life to citizens; Therefore, they are a fundamental part of any good pavement design.