Balancing active travel, accessibility, safety and security in future streets
How do you create streets that balance active travel, accessibility, safety, security and placemaking when every project comes with competing priorities?
In this perspective paper, Marshalls Landscaping explores the challenges shaping future street design and shares five practical priorities for creating safer, more inclusive and more resilient streets. Drawing on experience across active travel and public realm projects, it provides practical insight for local authorities, highways engineers, urban designers, transport professionals and specifiers responsible for delivering future-ready infrastructure.
Download your copy to discover how designing around people, rather than infrastructure alone, can help create streets that work better for everyone.
Why future street design matters
The role of our streets has changed. Once designed primarily to move vehicles efficiently, today's streets are expected to support active travel, improve accessibility, create safer environments, encourage healthier lifestyles, strengthen local economies and provide attractive public spaces that communities want to use.
At the same time, local authorities and design teams face increasing pressure to deliver more with less. Budgets remain constrained, existing infrastructure presents physical limitations, and every project must balance competing priorities ranging from accessibility and placemaking to security, maintenance and long-term value.
The challenge is no longer deciding what good looks like. National guidance such as Local Transport Note 1/20 and the work of Active Travel England have established clear expectations for high-quality active travel infrastructure. The real challenge lies in translating those principles into practical schemes that work for everyone.
Successful projects aren't defined by individual products or isolated interventions. They're defined by how effectively they enable movement, reduce conflict and create places where people feel confident walking, wheeling and cycling.
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What's inside the paper?
Rather than focusing on products, this paper explores the wider design principles behind successful future streets and the practical considerations that influence how infrastructure performs over time.
Drawing on Marshalls' experience across active travel and public realm projects, it examines the challenges facing today's street designers before introducing five practical priorities for creating safer, more accessible and more resilient streets.
Download bookletInside, you'll discover:
- Five practical priorities for designing future-ready streets
- Expert insight into balancing active travel, accessibility, safety and security
- Practical guidance on reducing conflict through better street design
- The role of kerbs, delineation, transitions and other design details in improving the user experience
- How security measures can be successfully integrated without compromising placemaking or accessibility
- Why durability, adaptability and whole-life performance should be considered from the earliest design stages
- A practical future streets checklist to help evaluate upcoming projects
Download your copy
Whether you're involved in highways, transport planning, landscape architecture, urban design or the delivery of active travel infrastructure, this perspective paper offers practical insight into creating streets that balance the needs of all users.
Complete the form below to download your copy and discover the five priorities shaping the future of street design.