Street Pavements: A Physical Reflection of Street Democracy

Abstract

Street democracy as an aspect of urban democracy, has been seminal to urban design for over 50 years. Good street democracy requires more inclusion on the street, which helps keep a good public realm for a place. This paper reviews existing discussions of street democracy from people’s right to the city and develops the discussion of street democracy related to street pavements. Street pavement should be considered an aspect of street democracy. Street pavement could positively reflect street democracy in a city. This study selects two streets in Cardiff as examples to study their existing street pavement conditions from local and regional policies and observe the changing of street pavements in specific areas during the last decade. The paper advocates for the improvement of street democracy with the development of street pavement in different periods. A good street democracy should have more inclusion and democracy is changing progress for different conditions during different periods.