Alec
Alec Appelbaum writes about New York's outdoor life for the Architect's Newspaper, Metropolis, New York and others. He operates NewYorkerbyNature.com and runs over the East River bridges several times a week. If he gets his act together this summer, he'll buy a bike.
Recent Posts
Three Concrete Proposals for New York City Traffic Relief
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This Morning’s Forum: Road Pricing Worked in London. Can It Work in New York? Three specific proposals to reduce New York City’s ever-increasing traffic congestion emerged from a highly anticipated Manhattan Institute forum this morning. One seeks variable prices on cars driving in to central Manhattan, with express toll lanes and higher parking fees to keep things […]
Streetfilms: Yesterday’s Traffic Relief Rally at City Hall
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Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief Press Conference A few quick scenes from yesterday’s event Running time: 2:02 "As this city is booming, it’s not moving," lamented City Councilmember Gale Brewer outside City Hall yesterday. But with support from 125 civic groups in five boroughs, the Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief assembled behind her and outlined […]
T is for Transit-Oriented Development
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Planning a city around transit doesn’t mean you have to cluster everything inside the core business district. Copenhagen, whose thoughtful bike network we’ve explored elsewhere, recently commissioned Chelsea-based architect Steven Holl to design T-Husene, a place for living and working outside the core city. The architect’s renderings, released November 2, fit into a town that […]
Thursday’s Transpo Conference: A Call for Reform
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While former Bogota Mayor Enrique Peñalosa and DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall got most of the attention for their keynote speeches at last week’s transportation policy conference, much of the day’s real intellectual ferment took place in the five separate breakout sessions that convened before lunch. The groups were organized as follows: Subways and Commuter Rail […]
Ride a Bike & Get the World’s Best Cookie Half-Price
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While we’re seeking great streets, we’ve found an exemplary store in Manhattan’s Build a Green Bakery. This tiny East Village shop sells organic pastries, coffee and tea in an all-sustainable setting. The owner, City Bakery’s Maury Rubin, made the space an environmentalists’ showroom. He chose walls of wheat and sunflower husks and colored them with […]
Dead Ball
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Whatever you think of the idea of a highrise cluster in Downtown Brooklyn, you have to worry that the sponsors of the Atlantic Yards project suggest that creating jobs and housing justifies the kind of planning that discourages street life. Among the lowlights of the marathon August 23 "public hearing" on the draft Environmental Impact […]
Bloomberg Working on Livable Legacy
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Matthew Scheuerman in today’s New York Observer runs a meaty cover story about secret efforts underway in City Hall to build a foundation for a more livable city. This is a big story and there is a lot more that has yet to come out. Stay tuned: The Shape of Things to Come: View City […]
Speed Bumps
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At the Museum of the City of New York, Vincent Cianni’s bracing photos show how a group of teens on Williamsburg’s south side organized to get a skate park built in the shadowy wasteland beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. If these kids can persuade City Hall to let them shape their own terrain, imagine what five boroughs’-worth of block […]
Houston Street Redesign: The $30 Million Missed Opportunity
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The death of Derek Lake, killed one month ago at age 23 when his bicycle tripped a metal plate on Houston Street, hints at a tragedy shared by all New Yorkers: City Hall’s continued insistence that the ultimate goal of a New York City street is to move as many cars and trucks each day […]
Revisiting Houston Street, One Month Later
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Derek Lake died on June 26 when his bike tripped over a steel plate and fell beneath the wheels of a moving truck in the midst of Houston Street’s reconstruction mess. Brad Hoylman, a Village resident, chairs the Traffic and Transportation Committee of Community Board 2. Hoylman talks to Streetsblog about the Community Board’s reaction […]
Hugh Hardy: Architect Calls for Fresh Take on Public Life
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Hugh Hardy’s Greenwich Street South Study "The greatest achievement of New York is the streets," says architect Hugh Hardy. And he says we can achieve richer public places — if New York’s citizens can persuade officials to make those places serve people rather than cars. Hardy, who designed 42nd Street’s New Victory Theater and the […]
New Film Fires up Faithful in Manhattan Debut
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Like Al Gore, the idea of making New York safer for walkers and bicyclists commands more popular support than government action would suggest. Also like the former veep, the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign is using film to rally support. (The campaign has never struggled, though, to keep its weight under control.) "Contested Streets," […]