Curb the Chaos:
Solutions for Cities at the Curb
The curb is undergoing an evolution. E-commerce, food delivery, for-hire vehicles, micromobility, and more have created immense demand for the curb lane — the narrow part of our streetscape in between the travel lane and the sidewalk.
In order to adapt to these changes at the curb, cities are undertaking physical and digital infrastructure upgrades. But many developments at the curb have grown in siloes; as cities respond quickly to urgent new demands, curb leaders have emerged across the country with limited collaboration.
Open Plans spoke with over 40 curb stakeholders, including a dozen practitioners from cities across the country, to determine the emerging themes in curb management and develop four persuasive case studies. From these themes, we developed a generalized set of recommendations that cities can adopt at any stage in their curb management development. And because we live and work in New York, we also make specific recommendations for how our city can build from prior work and make New York's curbs safe, efficient, equitable and useful for all. You can read the result of this research, Curb the Chaos: Solutions for Cities at the Curb, below:
By collaborating and sharing learnings among cities, we can continue to work towards our shared goal of making streets work for all. In this spirit, Open Plans organized Curb the Chaos: A Convening on Curb Management to pull together curb practitioners, companies, and users to discuss what works and what doesn’t in the realm of curb management.
Together, we can resolve the chaos at the curb.
Check our digital curb sample
We partnered with BetaNYC to create a digital curb sample, designed using insights from other cities and stakeholders. It is made to show our vision of a publicly accessible, standardized digital curb; the two streetscapes — one residential, one commercial — display a diverse set of curb uses. Block segments are interactive, displaying use and/or regulation when interacted with, and the sample’s accompanying pie chart provides a big-picture view of a curb’s use.