Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Urban Design

Public Tells Planning Commission They Want a Walkable Riverside Center

By Noah Kazis | Sep 16, 2010 | 20 Comments

A hearing on the Riverside Center mega-development yesterday revealed a popular hunger for a more walkable West Side and perhaps some interest from the City Planning Commission in the same. Extell Development is looking to build a housing and retail complex, including 1,800 parking spaces, on this waterfront site equivalent in size to two Manhattan blocks. […]

“Our Cities Ourselves”: Imagining the Future of Urban Transport

By Brad Aaron | Jun 24, 2010 | No Comments

"Brooklyn Bridge Remix/Redux," by Terreform and Michael Sorkin Studio Today, Manhattan’s AIA Center for Architecture debuted an exhibition that envisions a new era of sustainable mobility. For "Our Cities Ourselves," the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy invited architects to take on the evolving transportation needs of the world’s cities, which in two decades are […]

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 […]

What Should Happen at Myrtle Avenue’s New Plaza? The Public Weighs In

By Noah Kazis | Feb 8, 2010 | 5 Comments

A two-block pedestrian plaza is coming to Myrtle Avenue in Clinton Hill, replacing an underused service road between Grand Avenue and Emerson Place. Last Friday, the local business improvement district unveiled eight potential ideas for the site (check out the BID’s Flickr stream to see them all) and asked viewers for their feedback. Myrtle Avenue […]

Coming Soon: Ped-Friendly “Urban Umbrellas” for NYC Sidewalks

By Noah Kazis | Jan 21, 2010 | 23 Comments

Image: NYC Department of Buildings Walking through parts of New York can feel like walking through a tunnel. The city’s ubiquitous sidewalk sheds — typically blue scaffolding holding up green plywood to protect pedestrians from construction overhead — corral people into cramped, dark spaces wherever development or building repairs are underway. There are about 6,000 […]

LIRR’s Brooklyn Bunker: More Extreme Than NYPD Counterterror Guidelines

By Noah Kazis | Jan 21, 2010 | 36 Comments

Security barriers mar the Atlantic Terminal sidewalk. Image: Noah Kazis. Brooklyn’s new Long Island Rail Road terminal opened earlier this month to generally positive reviews for its airy interior. Outside the station? That’s an entirely different matter. The Brooklyn Paper called the "sarcophagus-sized slabs of stone" on the sidewalk — which nearly come up to […]

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