Connected Streets and Emergency Response

While the environmental, social, and even market advantages of new urbanist strategies gain recognition, practical questions about how streets serve communities can still slow the building of more connected places.

Danny Pleasant's compelling presentation addressing one of the most important of these questions, emergency response and street connectivity, is now available here on the CNU website.

Delivered at this year's Transportation Summit, this presentation compares the areas of service provided by fire stations in the City of Charlotte. The area of service, defined as the territory within 2 1/2 miles street distance of a station is not surprisingly much greater in more highly connected parts of the city. Because fire station costs are fixed, households in a less well connected area are more expensive to serve.

As Pleasant notes in his presentation, emergency responders favor multiple access routes, notably lacking in recent conventional residential development, and they are understandably interested in safe streets. These interests, and the correlation between connectivity and emergency service coverage should help new urbanists make allies in the emergency services community.