Street

Service street ("mews") in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. Mews are typically found at the back of older rows of townhouses, with a more elegant street in the front.

A street is a public thoroughfare in a built environment. It is a public parcel of land adjoining buildings in an urban context, on which people may freely assemble, interact, and move about. A street can be as simple as a level patch of dirt, but is more often paved with a hard, durable surface such as tarmac, concrete, cobblestone or brick. Portions may also be smoothed with asphalt, embedded with rails, or otherwise prepared to accommodate non-pedestrian traffic.

Originally, the word street simply meant a paved road (Latin: via strata). The word street is still sometimes used informally as a synonym for road, for example in connection with the ancient Watling Street, but city residents and urban planners draw a crucial modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction.[1] Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets too crowded for road vehicles to pass. Conversely, highways and motorways are types of roads, but few would refer to them as streets.[2][3]

  1. ^ Dictionary.
  2. ^ Road vs Street at Using English forum.
  3. ^ Avenue vs Street at Using English forum.