Street Projects as they stand now are meant to be an avenue for the entire community to come together and bring forth new streets from the mysterious Unimagined territory. However, due to the nature of the mechanics, street projects are more about preparation than active participation. The following is a suggested roadmap for fostering a more equal community participation in the expanding of the world.
The first step involves creating a daily donation limit similar to how shrines work. When a new project opens up, you are limited to the amount of resources that you can contibute to a project. My suggestion would be 1% of one donation item request per game day, or a set amount like 100 or 200 of any item, depending on how the ratios of items requested works out. This would be combined with an increase in the number of donated items requested, so that even if say, 1000 glitches participated in one game day, the phase would still last a few game days, making each street last maybe a day or two assuming 4-phase streets. As the game grows, there will be lots of competition to contribute to these projects, especially since badges are associated with them. By creating limits on the amount that can be donated to a street project, you also lengthen the time of each phase (ideally), making the content as an activity last longer. I could see a region the size of Polloko lasting a week or a week and a half, which would give everyone an opportunity to participate.
This limit also placates the badge hounds vs. those who just want to see the new content. The value of your contribution to the project is based on the value of currants you chose to donate. So, if you are after top 5, you would have to make a decision on which item will give you the most contribution (ie you'd rather donate 100 crystals vs 100 grain if you had to make a choice). After you have hit your cap, you can make one of two decisions. Give resources to a fellow Glitch to help the project move along (gives opportunity to be crafty, make others donate the grain while you donate all the crystals), as well as making that Glitch feel part of the contribution/community, or you can use the rest of your game day preparing for your next donation. Having higher quantities and slower phases would allow people to feel like they are working on the project while the project is actually happening, instead of feeling like they can only participate if they did a bunch of hoarding and farming before the project even started. It would also drain resources faster, and cause the Glitch to expend energy while the project is up, making it more difficult of an endeavor to prepare for.
I don't have an opinion on how the crafting portion of each phase would mesh into this overall idea, but perhaps those could play less of a role in the contribution ratings of the project, since the idea is to try and reduce the amount of traffic and lag associated with the activity.