Cobblestone in the context of "Fulham"

A street is a public thoroughfare in a city, town or village, typically lined with buildings on one or both sides. Streets often include pavements (sidewalks), pedestrian crossings, and sometimes amenities like streetlights or benches. 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. It can be designed for both social activity and movement.

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 significant modern distinction: a road's main function is transportation, while streets facilitate public interaction. Examples of streets include pedestrian streets, alleys, and city-centre streets too crowded for motor vehicles to pass. Conversely, highways and motorways are types of roads, but few would refer to them as streets.

A road surface (British English) or pavement (North American English) is the durable surface material laid down on an area intended to sustain vehicular or foot traffic, such as a road or walkway. In the past, gravel road surfaces, macadam, hoggin, cobblestone and granite setts were extensively used, but these have mostly been replaced by asphalt or concrete laid on a compacted base course. Asphalt mixtures have been used in pavement construction since the beginning of the 20th century and are of two types: metalled (hard-surfaced) and unmetalled roads. Metalled roadways are made to sustain vehicular load and so are usually made on frequently used roads. Unmetalled roads, also known as gravel roads or dirt roads, are rough and can sustain less weight. Road surfaces are frequently marked to guide traffic.

Today, permeable paving methods are beginning to be used for low-impact roadways and walkways to prevent flooding. Pavements are crucial to countries such as United States and Canada, which heavily depend on road transportation. Therefore, research projects such as Long-Term Pavement Performance have been launched to optimize the life cycle of different road surfaces.

A cobble (also sometimes called a cobblestone) is a clast of rock defined on the Udden–Wentworth scale as having a particle size of 64–256 millimeters (2.5–10.1 in), larger than a pebble and smaller than a boulder. Other scales define a cobble's size differently. A rock made predominantly of cobbles is termed a conglomerate. Cobblestone is a building material based on cobbles.

San Cristóbal de las Casas (Spanish: [saŋkɾisˈtoβal de las ˈkasas] ), also known by its native Tzotzil name, Jovel (pronounced [xɤ̞ˈve̞l]), is a town and municipality located in the Central Highlands region of the Mexican state of Chiapas. It was the capital of the state until 1892, and is still considered the cultural capital of Chiapas.

The municipality is mostly made up of mountainous terrain, but the city sits in a small valley surrounded by hills. The city’s center maintains its Spanish colonial layout and much of its architecture, with red tile roofs, cobblestone streets and wrought iron balconies often with flowers. Most of the city’s economy is based on commerce, services and tourism.

Shuri (首里; Okinawan: スイ Sui or Shui, Northern Ryukyuan: しより Shiyori) is a district of the city of Naha, Okinawa, Japan. Formerly a separate city in and of itself, it was once the royal capital of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, hence the name. A number of famous historical sites are located in Shuri, including Shuri Castle, the Shureimon gate, Sunuhyan-utaki (a sacred space of the native Ryukyuan religion), and royal mausoleum Tamaudun, all of which are designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO.

Originally established as a castle town surrounding the royal palace, Shuri ceased to be the capital when the kingdom was annexed and incorporated into Japan as Okinawa prefecture. In 1896, Shuri was made a ward (区, ku) of the new prefectural capital, Naha, though it was made a separate city again in 1921. In 1954, it was merged again into Naha.

A sett, also known as a block or Belgian block, is a broadly rectangular quarried stone used in paving roads and walkways. Formerly in widespread use, particularly on steeper streets because setts provided horses' hooves with better grip than a smooth surface, they are now encountered more usually as decorative stone paving in landscape architecture. Setts may be referred to incorrectly as cobblestones, but a sett is distinct from a cobblestone in that it is quarried or worked to a regular shape, whereas the latter is generally a small, naturally-rounded rock. Setts are usually made of granite.

Beautification is the process of making visual improvements to a town, city, or urban area. This most often involves planting trees, shrubbery, and other greenery, but frequently also includes adding decorative or historic-style street lights and other lighting and replacing broken pavement, often with brick or other natural materials. Old-fashioned cobblestones are sometimes used for crosswalks; they provide the additional benefit of slowing motorists.

Beautification projects are often undertaken by city councils to refurbish their downtown areas, in order to boost tourism or other commerce. Often, this is also spurred by broken sidewalks, which pose a safety hazard for pedestrians and potentially insurmountable obstacles for wheelchair users. These projects are frequently part of other larger projects such as construction, especially in conjunction with ones for transit, such as streets and roads and mass transit.