Following the lead of innovative cities such as Bogota, El Paso, Ottowa, Guadalajara and Paris, New York City is shifting its focus from cars to people on its streets.  Through its Summer Streets program, the city will close down a 6.9-mile stretch of road to cars on three consecutive Saturdays between the Brooklyn Bridge and East 72nd Street, creating an opportunity for safe cycling, walking and exploring.

The program is modeled off of Ciclovia, a similar initiative in Bogota, Colombia, that provides 70 miles worth of car-free streets each weekend to pedestrians and cyclists.  Now in its 32nd year, Ciclovia is considered to be an enormous success.

The road closure isn't favored by all.  Taxi drivers and business owners alike are concerned about the financial impact of their livelihoods.

The Summer Streets route will include stretches of Centre Street, Lafayette, Fourth Avenue and Park Avenue and will take place on August 9, 16 and 23 from 7am until 1pm.

Further Reading:

• Car-Free Streets, a Colombian Import, Inspire Debate [NY Times]
• City to Experiment with Car-Free Streets [CityRoom] 

Photo: Woonerf in Copenhagen, Denmark

The New York Times reports on ten progressive street designs that are challenging the traditional "street-curb-sidewalk motif," which has defined so many streets in NYC and around the world by giving priority to automobiles. The ten designs are:

1. Woonerfs
2. Play Streets 
3. Bicycle Boulevards  
4. Pavement Hierarchy 
5. Green Grid 
6. Mental Speed Bumps
7. Swaled Streets
8. Lanescapes 
9. Gentle Congestion 
10. Urban Acupuncture

Ethan Kent, PPS Vice President, who has been involved with the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign, remarks:

"Let's go to the next level to create great streets that really draw the life of the communities they are meant to serve."

Some of the transportation reforms, like the conversion of a parking lot to a public plaza in DUMBO, have been met with overwhelming community support, while other proposals stir mixed reactions.   

More On Great Streets:
APA Great Streets in America
Book by Alan Jacobs
Greatstreets.org

Despite the large number of Americans now living in cities, urban issues have been astonishingly absent from the U.S. presidential debates. PPS did a spoof article for Faking Places, the annual April Fool's Newsletter, in which Hillary, McCain and Obama make promises for more livable neighborhoods. The glaring omission of urban issues from the national discourse is actually no laughing matter.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

"There are three times as many urbanites in America as country folk, yet you wouldn't know it listening to the three main presidential candidates, or perusing their Web sites. Instead, you might come away thinking the United States is a collection of Norman Rockwell small towns surrounded by picture-book farms."

Related Stories: 
The Candidates and the City [Gotham Gazette]
Urban Issues Get Short Shrift [Politico]
Candidates Largely Ignore Urban Issues [City Mayors]

"For four decades, activists for greener, safer NYC streets have scrounged at the margins of this automobilized streetscape. A few feet of traffic lanes converted to bike lanes, the occasional sidewalk extended to relieve a dangerous intersection — all important changes, but all within the context of streets that serve cars, first and foremost. But what would our streets look like if they were redesigned, building-to-building, to first accommodate walkers, bicyclists, the disabled and surface transit? The days of living at the margins are over: the Complete Streets revolution has begun.

The Complete Streets movement represents a newer, bolder approach to making streets safe, accessible and multi-modal. Advocates have shifted their tactics: Instead of improving streets one block or intersection at time, they are working towards new design standards that can be implemented on a grand scale as streets come up for reconstruction or resurfacing. In much the same way that the motor-vehicle lobby irrevocably altered streetscapes in the early 20th century, Complete Streets advocates are creating the blueprints for 21st century streets."

You know that scene in the movie I Am Legend where Will Smith (playing the last man on Earth) and his German shepherd (playing the world’s last good dog) go deer hunting in a depopulated Times Square? Well, to my urbanist-geek way of thinking, the most impressive aspect of this masterpiece of computer-generated cityscape is that the new TKTS booth, currently under construction, plays a pivotal role in the action. How is it that before the whole human race perished from a nasty viral infection (or was transformed into obnoxious zombies) we still had the presence of mind to complete a lovely public amenity, the long-neglected winner of a 1999 design competition?

Planetizen has named PPS/Jay Walljasper's The Great Neighborhood Book as one of its top 10 planing books of 2007.  http://www.planetizen.com/books/2008

Also, Urban Land magazine recently reviewed The Great Neighborhood Book in the November/December 2007 issue. Click here to read the review.

The Great Neighborhood Book also received an honorable mention on the American Booksellers Association's list of books about promoting local businesses.

Jay Walljasper discusses the need for cities to have life on their streets -- even in the most frigid days (and nights) of winter.

"Plunging temperatures don't necessarily sentence us to months of house arrest. People around the world from Copenhagen to New York are figuring out how to keep things lively throughout the colder months. City streets bustle with festivals and outdoor attractions showing that winter is something to enjoy rather than endure.

My colleague Cynthia Nikitin, vice president of Project for Public Spaces, describes Berlin in the dead of winter: "It gets dark at 3:30. It's snowing like crazy. But it's no problem. People are playing bocce ball on the ice. There are tents selling hot mulled wine. You are walking down the street just watching all the other people. Life is good, and winter feels good, too."

But you need to give people reasons to be outside, Nikitin adds -- "a market, ice skating, music, decorative lighting. No one will stay outdoors to stare at an empty plaza."

New York City's streets and intersections expose elderly pedestrians to unacceptable risks. As a result, many senior citizens are not as mobile as they want to be, do not get the physical activity they need to maximize their health, and are often the victims of crashes with motor vehicles.

The Rockefeller Foundation is now accepting nominations for the 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal on its website through February 1, 2008. The 2008 Rockefeller Foundation Jane Jacobs Medals will recognize two living individuals whose creative vision for the urban environment has significantly contributed to the vibrancy and variety of New York City.

Click here for the full  press release

Click here for the The 2008 Jane Jacobs Medal Nomination Form

The Open Planning Project founder Mark Gorton in NY talks with "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz about about history of DOT in NYC, car-free Cental Park, and general transportation policy. It gives a great history of the evolution of transportation thinking and policy in NY over the last 40 years.

Running time: approx. 10 mins.

On PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" this week, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters said that instead of raising taxes on gasoline to renew the nation's sagging infrastructure, Congress should examine its spending priorities -- including investments in bike paths and trails, which, Peters said, "are not transportation."

PBS has the full transcript, along with video of the interview. 

With support from the Federal Highway Administration, New York City will be the first locality in the United States to test painted bus lanes, the cityï¾’s Department of Transportation announced today.

As part of a trial period, existing bus lanes on East 57th Street, from Second to Fifth Avenues, and on Fordham Road, from University Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, are being painted terra cotta, a deep red like the color of bricks. If the experiment works, officials hope that more motorists will stay out of the lanes, which are used during the morning and evening rush, on weekdays.

The New York City Department of Transportation wants to hire as a consultant Jan Gehl, who has helped cities like London and Copenhagen create less congested urban areas by taking back the streets from cars - and giving top priority to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Jan Gehl is a world-renowned Danish architect who wants to ban most cars from Times Square - and raise the price of street parking.

Times Square is "beyond the brink" with too many cars and pedestrians cramming into an inadequate amount of space, Gehl says.

The Storefront for Art and Architecture is experimenting with a bicycle share program to demonstrate to New Yorkers that bicycling is a viable, and enjoyable, transportation alternative.

Several European cities have successful bicycle sharing programs - Paris will shortly be making 10,000 bikes available from 750 stations across the city.

“We should learn to build villages in the way they were built in the past,” says Hans Monderman, the Dutch engineer seen as the father of Shared Space. He is not advocating unpaved roads, horse-drawn transport and reinstating stocks – he just wants neighbourhoods that work for everyone, satisfying residents as well as moving traffic along. Cars, he argues, have been allowed to dominate residential areas, particularly in suburbs, for far too long, and quality of life has declined has a result.

After funding the research that helped Jane Jacobs produce her landmark book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" nearly 50 yeas ago, the Rockefeller Foundation has inaugurated the first Jane Jacobs Medals.

Barry Benepe, the 79-year-old founder of Greenmarket, will receive the first medal for "lifetime leadership." Omar Freilla, the 33-year-old founder of Green Worker Cooperatives in the Bronx, was named the winner of the first medal for "new ideas and activism."

The medals will be presented in September in conjunction with the opening by the Municipal Art Society of an exhibit titled "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York."

Bogota, Colombia, has turned itself around by focusing on using the public realm to promote the greatest amount of happiness. First stop? Car-free days.  The city's campaign to return streets from cars to people is now a model for the world.

After Toronto's plan to add bike lanes falls behind schedule, cycling activists paint their own bike lanes.

"The city is taking way too long...Why don't they just paint the bike lanes? People are dying."

The five proposals for Governors Island hold clues to what’s right and wrong about how public space is designed.

"All five concepts are thoughtful approaches to a complex design problem. And the emphasis on public space is reassuring; responses to the agency’s earlier requests for proposals typically included more commercial development. But the five plans still fall short of the sweeping ambition such a unique parcel of undeveloped public land in New York City should inspire. We are mostly left with good intentions."

Cyclovia is a weekly event in Botoga, Colombia, that closes 70 miles of city streets and makes them available to bikers, skaters, and walkers. 

All modes (except cars) and all ages, sizes, classes share the road.  The  event  seems as simple and direct a way as possible at addressing the great class and race divides in Colombia.

Policymakers are ignoring the wishes of local people and exaggerating the importance of “metropolitan” urban design in creating successful public spaces, according to a new report, the Social Value of Public Spaces.  

“Most public spaces that people use are local spaces they visit regularly, often quite banal in design, or untidy in their activities or functions, such as street markets and car boot sales,” the report said.

"The lack of safety on our roads has become an important obstacle to health and development," said WHO's director-general, Dr. Margaret Chan. "Our children and young adults are among the most vulnerable."

A new book The Suburbanization of New York: Is the World's Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? examines the issues surrounding gentrification of New York City's neighborhoods. 

"On the one hand, we like the abundance of restaurants and stores on almost every major street and avenue in Manhattan, as well as the revitalized Steinway Streets and Flatbush Avenues in the outer boroughs; we like the lower crime rates that come with more street activity and the lack of noxious fumes emitted by a dwindling manufacturing sector. On the other hand, we’re concerned about skyrocketing real estate prices, gentrifying neighborhoods, and the slow disappearance of mom-and-pop stores in favor of brand name outlets owned by multinational corporations."

"Chicago can be stiflingly hot during the summer and rain-chilled in the spring, and its wind-whipped winters are the stuff of legend. So when the subject is “bicycle commuting,” Chicago is not the first city that springs to mind. But it’s becoming a hot bike-to-work town. In the next decade, it plans to expand its network of bike trails to 500 miles, and has set a goal of putting a bike path of some sort within half a mile of every city resident."

Yesterday members of Transportation Alternatives staged a parking squat - a "quasi-legal reclamation of urban street space in which a metered, curbside parking spaces are transformed into urban parkland complete with sod, benches, trees and human beings." 

These events always evoke strong reactions - as evident in the comments posted to StreetsBlog.