Scientists and practitioners alike use the term public space when referring to squares, plazas, markets or parks; less often it is used in connection with streets, although streets and roads occupy the biggest share of un-built urban space. It is not only the sheer amount that makes streets the most important sphere for an urban society, but streets also represent a continuous and all-accessible spatial construct, a network that spans the entire city. Our paper provides an in-depth review of selected historical literature that focuses on streets as public space in densely built-up areas; with the aim of developing an understanding of the on-time academic discussion around the requirements and nature of these streets. This should help us to recognise the genesis of our existing urban structures and in particular of the secondary streets. In the second part, following the previously elaborated findings, we strive to identify existing and potential qualities of those street spaces; whereby it is important for us to leave the usual intra-disciplinary connotations and to read street as an inherent part of the systemic urban parterre. By examining cross-cutting issues that are mostly underrepresented in discipline-specific discourse, the ultimate goal is to achieve a better understanding of one of the most fundamental determinants of a city's quality of life: the actual spatial and functional quality of secondary streets.