Architecture Commons^™

One-Way To Two-Way Street Conversions As A Preservation And Downtown Revitalization Tool: The Case Study Of Upper King Street, Charleston, South Carolina, Meagan Baco

All Theses

In the first half of the twentieth century, historic urban areas in America were retrofitted to accommodate a mass amount of automobile traffic. These retrofits came in the form of highways, thruways, and one-way streets. Many historic commercial streets in American downtowns were converted to one-way streets, because of traffic engineers' narrow perspectives. After decades of decline, largely linked to automobile dominance, downtown economic revitalization emerged in the 1990s. One technique that appears to be remarkably successful is the re-conversion of one-way streets to two-way streets.
One-way streets allow for greater traffic capacity and higher automobile speeds, while two-way streets …