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.
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.
Roman street in Pompeii. Its east–west-oriented Decumanus Maximus
Tverskaya Street the main radial street in Moscow
Rue Saint-Jacques, a street in Montreal, 1910
A road is a thoroughfare for the conveyance of traffic that mostly has an improved surface for use by vehicles and pedestrians. Unlike streets, whose primary function is to serve as public spaces, the main function of roads is transportation.
Bundesautobahn 73 and its slip road leading to Erlangen
The Porta Rosa, a Greek street dating from the 3rd to 4th century BC in Velia, with a paved surface and gutters
A paved Roman road in Pompeii
Part of the AVUS road in Berlin, the first automobile-only road, which served as an inspiration for Piero Puricelli's 1924 autostrada between Milan and the northern Italian lakes, the first motorway in the world.