The San Diego Freeway is not a complete street. The New Jersey Turnpike is not a complete street. Neither is the Holland Tunnel, the Daytona Speedway, the drive-through at McDonald’s, or the golf cart path at the country club. The six runways at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport: not complete streets. ...

How do you create streets that are walkable and bikeable, part of lively downtowns and neighborhoods? Planners and city officials need to take a careful look at how people actually travel in their communities and use public spaces. That is the guiding insight of what amounted to a revolution in the field of urban planning that began building momentum in the 1950s....

A delivery man pulled and pushed for min-utes on end but couldn’t get his hand truck over the extra high curb. Upon one last try, the frustrated worker’s shipment—a heavy keg of beer—tipped over and rolled into the downtown Washington, D.C., roadway.

Before the City of Concord renovated its Main Street, residents and visitors had to walk up two steps to access the restaurants and storefronts along the western side of the road. ...

Bicycling as a mode of daily travel is booming — cities are installing bike lanes and bike racks, creating bike share programs, and even giving bicyclist their own traffic lights. But the car is still king for nearly all trips in smaller and more rural towns

Across the country engineers and planners are turning to innovative techniques to make roads more “complete.” In North Jersey, modern roundabouts are replacing complex intersections in suburban areas, while downtowns are using a different approach—a narrowing of lanes called “road diets”—to make streets safer for all users. ...