Human rights to the street: Ethical frameworks to guide planning, design, and engineering decisions toward livability, equity, and justice

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in statements about people’s rights to our streets. Drawing broadly from the literature and from an examination of a comprehensive collection of these rights, this article works toward establishing a comprehensive ethical framework that can be used to guide planning, design and engineering decisions to support pedestrian rights for street and urban livability. To identify and propose these ethical principles and help achieve optimal livability for individuals, groups and society, we: (a) comprehensively examine the literature to clarify the various concepts of street livability and human rights to the street (as related to a collection of various pedestrian rights statements); (b) explore what is being said in these rights to better understand people’s needs and wants; and (c) provide a roadmap for planners, urban designers, and engineers to address these needs in practice. Building on the previous steps and incorporating business practice literature of Functional Area Ethics, relevant functional areas are identified to help professionals act in support of these pedestrian rights.