Seaside's urban elements, its layout and the design of its streets, appear in nearly all American and European small towns. Other qualities, such as its front porches and native vegetation, singularly place it in the Northwest Florida region. This combination of local and widespread ingredients, of particularity and universality, make Seaside emulable but never replicable.

Seaside’s streets were designed with pedestrians in mind. Their narrowness forces cars to slow down, increasing the safety of those on foot, while brick paving creates a comfortable surface to tread on. In addition, a grid of sandy footpaths behind and between the cottages links the entire town, to make traversing it more manageable.

From inception, Seaside’s downtown has been an important part of its plan. All of its residences are within a five minute stroll of the town center, so that the necessities and the pleasures of daily existence can be easily accessed by foot.

Seaside’s houses are different from one another, but by using similar building forms and materials they speak a common language. Adherence to indigenous materials and to the region’s building tradition gives the town coherence and a strong sense of place.

By design, Seaside has no private front lawns, and only native plants - no sod - are used in the yards. This plan makes for an environmentally friendly landscape, with no herbicides and pesticides, no underground irrigation systems, and no intrusive lawn mowers.