Building Complete Streets in China: An Assessment of Local Urban Street Design Guidelines

Recognizing the negative consequences of auto-oriented urban transportation, Chinese cities began developing Urban Street Design Guidelines (USDGs) in 2016. The literature on urban transportation design from a decision-making perspective is very limited. As the first systematic evaluation of the pioneering effort by cities in China, this study analyzes local USDG documents and interviews key practitioner stakeholders from ten large cities by adapting a leading policy evaluation tool of urban street design for sustainable transportation based on the Complete Streets Policy Framework. A total of 11 USDGs adopted between 2016 and 2020 were evaluated to represent the wide range of urban contexts in China. The evaluation revealed an average performance of only 30.9% of the total possible score. Despite strong aspirations, local USDGs face significant implementation challenges, lack consideration of disadvantaged communities, and need clarify modal priorities in diverse contexts. Targeted improvements could contribute to more effective and sustainable urban street building and management in China’s cities. As an ex-ante assessment, this study provides a key reference for the future analyses of the outcomes of local USDGs.