Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Livable Streets

Making the Case for Compact Development

By Sarah Goodyear | Sep 21, 2007 | 9 Comments

From the people at Smart Growth America comes word of a new book, Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, just out from the Urban Land Institute. In the book, researchers argue that more compact development (such as Atlantic Station, a mixed-use complex in Atlanta built on reclaimed industrial land, shown at […]

Why is There a Picnic in My Parking Spot?

By Aaron Naparstek | Sep 21, 2007 | 13 Comments

Park(ing) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, May 6, 2006. The sign says, "Public space reclamation in progress." Today is International Park(ing) Day, the day when urban dwellers all around the world reclaim on-street parking spaces for purposes more creative and life-affirming than private motor vehicle storage. If you found a bunch of kids playing in an […]

Seeing Myrtle Avenue With Fresh Eyes

By Sarah Goodyear | Sep 18, 2007 | 6 Comments

The folks over at the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership have unveiled the results of a collaboration with the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) undertaken over the last couple of years. Two public workshops were held to get community input on the plans, which address four different areas of Myrtle Avenue, one of the main commercial […]

German Town Chooses Human Interaction Over Traffic Signals

By Aaron Naparstek | Sep 14, 2007 | 8 Comments

Driving (carefully) with Dutch "shared space" guru and traffic engineer Hans Monderman. While battles rage here in New York City over signs and markings and the segregation of the public right-of-way for different types of users, yet another Northern European town is ditching its traffic control devices altogether. Spiegel reports that as of September 12, […]

A Gehl Dispatch From Down Under

By Brad Aaron | Sep 13, 2007 | 2 Comments

We reported yesterday that noted Danish urbanist Jan Gehl will soon be surveying New York streets with an eye toward improving them for human use. Gehl has been working in Sydney, Australia as of late, and an essay he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald offers insight into what he may be looking for here in […]

DOT Launches Gehl Street Survey Project

By Brad Aaron | Sep 12, 2007 | 12 Comments

The New York City Department of Transportation has retained Danish urbanist Jan Gehl’s firm to evaluate city streets and other public spaces. Streetsblog first reported this development as a possibility back in June, when we interviewed Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Not long after, we got word that Gehl had been hired by the city as a […]

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