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Detached / Details / Street to Front Door /

3Designing for a safe and attractive street

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​Design Checklist

  1. ​The house, front yard and boundary treatments help to make the street a safe and attractive place.
Attractive, desirable and safe neighbourhoods are largely the result of the building facades and front yards that run along their street edges. The front of a site also forms the first impressions visitors will have of a home.​

Locating the house close to the street, having outlook from a main living space onto the street and avoiding large blank retaining walls and fencing means that occupants can see what is happening on the road outside the house. This ‘passive surveillance’ discourages crime and​​ creates a sense of safety.

When combined with attractive landscaping these features also make for a pleasant streetscape, varied, interesting and of a more intimate, human scale. 

Better Design Practice

Ensure the street can be seen from a kitchen, living or dining room, and ensure fencing and landscaping does not block views from the building to the street, or vice versa.

Make front fencing low.
It should not be more than 1200mm high, it should be visually permeable, and use planting to soften the look.  Have any high fencing behind the main façade of the house. 

Consider solid materials for front fencing.
Especially when building along a busy street or where the solid fence reflects the use of local materials (e.g. stone walls), and reinforces a valued sense of place. This may also be appropriate as part of a comprehensive landscaping scheme for a large development. 

Locate garages or car parking structures behind the front facade of the building (see Accommodating the car).

Avoid large blank walls visible from the street. ​

Make the front door clearly visible and sheltered, and include a light. 

Clearly define the spaces between the house and the street to make it obvious what is public and what is private.
This can be done with fencing, landscaping or a combination of both. 

If wheelchair accessible ramps are required or intended, integrate these into the landscape design.
A wheelchair accessible ramp should have a maximum gradient of 1:12 with flat areas at each end and at intervals if it is long. Ramps which are too steep are unsafe. To accommodate people of differing levels of physical ability it is better to provide deep, shallow stairs with a handrail.

Consider stepping and integrating planting within any high retaining wall that is visible from the street or a public place, and use high quality materials.
Any fencing on top should allow a view through. Reduce the potential for graffiti on any wall by: ​
  • Establishing planting in front of the wall; 
  • Using low permeable fencing; 
  • Using rough materials, e.g. stone; 
  • Breaking up the horizontal length, i.e. by using vertical spaced hit and miss fencing; 
  • Staining or painting fences with dark colours.