Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Public Space

Tonight: DOT to Reveal Plans for a Safer Union Square

By Brad Aaron | Apr 26, 2010 | 14 Comments

Image via NY1 Safer street conditions and more space for pedestrians and cyclists could soon be coming to Union Square under a plan to be unveiled by DOT today. We haven’t gotten our hands on the drawings yet, but media reports say that by Labor Day, East 17th Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South, […]

A More Democratic Use of Space on 34th Street

By Noah Kazis | Apr 23, 2010 | 29 Comments

Image: NYCDOT This graphic tells you all you need to know about the rationale behind DOT’s plans for 34th Street, which are getting some play today in the Times and on Gothamist. DOT displayed it prominently at Wednesday’s info session about the project. The biggest group of users — pedestrians — will get wider sidewalks […]

Parks Department Vows to Save New Yorkers From Menacing Street Life

By Brad Aaron | Apr 22, 2010 | 22 Comments

Look out! Vendor "congestion" in Union Square Park. Photo: Ben Fried The parks department will hold a hearing Friday on plans to clamp down on what it sees as an unnecessary, untamed incursion into some of the city’s most vaunted public spaces. Of course, we’re talking about art vending. The idea dates back to at […]

Do You Walk in NYC? Then You Don’t Matter to CBS2’s Marcia Kramer

By Ben Fried | Apr 7, 2010 | 20 Comments

Kramer explains the horror of giving pedestrians more space. No one warps a two-minute segment about New York City pedestrian improvements quite like CBS2 reporter Marcia Kramer. The venerable TV newser, who’s perfected the art of windshield perspective journalism, fired a salvo against the city’s public plaza program on the 6 o’clock broadcast yesterday. This […]

Saturday: Input Wanted on Inwood Waterfront Esplanade

By Brad Aaron | Mar 18, 2010 | 7 Comments

Photo via NYCEDC For years, the New York City Economic Development Corporation intended to have the Sherman Creek area in eastern Inwood rezoned for higher-density residential and commercial development. That effort was ultimately abandoned when stakeholders couldn’t come to terms, but as the Manhattan Times reports, plans survive for a waterfront esplanade along the Harlem […]

City Planning Can Set the Bar Higher on Fourth Avenue

By Ben Fried | Mar 10, 2010 | 9 Comments

Well over a hundred people filled the auditorium of the Saint Thomas Aquinas Church last week for a forum on the future of Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue put on by the Park Slope Civic Council. The stretch of Fourth Avenue on the western edge of Park Slope saw a wave of residential construction after a 2003 […]

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