Preference 1. Spatially defined and coherent streetscapes
While not always so, most contemporary housing developments have returned to street-based typologies. Despite this, their spatial qualities can be very variable..
People prefer visually continuous street walls that define identifiable streets, with buildings, trees, or landscaping enclosing views.
In the award-winning Goldsmiths Street in Norwich, the homes provide clear edges to the street and in between define a comfortable human scaled space. The frontages vary. On one side of the street, they extend up to the pavement with just a thin planting strip between. On the other, they are set back behind small front gardens and low planting. The resulting street is further punctuated and softened by regular street trees while the end of the street is closed by neighbouring buildings.
People dislike fragmented or incoherent street layouts.
Arriving at this new housing development, the street has few of the same qualities. The composition is determined by highway standards rather than aesthetic principles, with buildings either set back – without creating positive sub-spaces – or turned sideways on. The view down the street simply drifts off around a bend following the path of optimum vehicle tracking rather than design. The feeling is of a road rather than a street, with the absence of street trees compounding a spatially leaky composition.