Narrow streets are commonplace in city centres throughout Australia; now urban planners are paving the way for skinny roads in the suburbs.

Vehicle speeds, cost and stormwater drainage are all factors pushing councils to make their streets more slender.

Neil Sipe, a professor of planning from the University of Queensland, said narrow streets were the way of the future.

"You only need to look at new developments or go into any neighbourhood in Brisbane to now see a combination of really wide streets and more and more narrow streets," he said.

"We have to come to terms with densifying our inner-city suburbs and there's going to be more pressure on parking — narrow streets help this."

Parking can become an issue for home owners on narrow streets. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Jessica Hinchliffe )

He said it was not only cost that was slimming down Australian streets.

"One is the cost factor, second is speed — many people don't realise that narrower streets control speeds," Mr Sipe told ABC Radio Brisbane's Rebecca Levingston.

"You can put up signs and speed limits, but having a smaller width of a street determines how fast people go."

Moving towards public transport and less cars

With narrow streets, often comes less parking, encouraging residents to ditch the car and use public transport, yet Mr Sipe said Australians were still opting for their vehicles.

"What we've found from research in other Australian capital cities is even people who live close to good public transport, still have the same number of cars that people who live in the suburbs have," he said.

"If you're putting a building near high-frequency public transport that people would say, 'I don't need a car', but that's not always the case."

Mr Sipe added that not everyone agreed with narrow streets and some residents were taking action into their own hands.

Residents sometimes paint their own yellow line to stop drivers parking in front of their house. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Jessica Hinchliffe )

"There has been issues around the yellow [no-parking] line and where it is.

"I know a couple of cases where people have been going out and making their own yellow lines on the street in front of their house so people can't park there."

What is the right road width?

Each city has different regulations when it comes to roads, depending on how many cars travel on the road each day.

"In Brisbane City Council areas, a neighbourhood street needs to be 7.5 metres wide, and if there's a street with a bus service it has to be 11 metres," Mr Sipe said.

"These widths are generally what we see around the country.

Wide streets are becoming rare in suburbs as urban planners opt for narrow streets. ( ABC Radio Brisbane: Jessica Hinchliffe )

"Reducing the width can aid heat island effects, where temperature in urban areas increase due to roads and infrastructure."

In the United States, a new initiative, Skinny Streets, is seeing road widths reduced in Portland, Oregon.

The city has seen safer driving and better results for small businesses by fostering a sense of community.

"They're taking abnormally wide streets and shrinking them down for a variety of reasons, including speed, stormwater run-off, and in some cases they're converting the width to include bike lanes," Mr Sipe said.