Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Urban Design

NYC Gets Its First-Ever Physically-Separated Bike Path

By Aaron Naparstek | Sep 20, 2007 | 154 Comments

The Department of Transportation revealed plans for New York City’s first-ever physically-separated bike lane, or "cycle track," at a Manhattan Community Board 4 meeting last night. The new bike path will run southbound on Ninth Avenue from W. 23rd to W. 16th Street in Manhattan. Unlike the typical Class II on-street bike lane in which […]

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, […]

Does New York Need a ‘New Moses’?

By Brad Aaron | Sep 13, 2007 | 24 Comments

Okay, so the question comprising the title of this post sounds naive enough to border on rhetorical. But in light of the city’s current development climate, it takes a stronger resolve than mine to read "Power Broken," by NYU’s Thomas Bender, without wondering which side of the fence to come down on. Published in the latest edition of […]

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 […]

Queens Pedestrian Safety Fixes Move Ahead Despite Opposition

By Aaron Naparstek | Sep 4, 2007 | No Comments

Workers on a DOT truck reconfigured a traffic signal in front of P.S. 200 in Queens on Friday. On Friday, I visited the intersection of Jewel Avenue and 164th Street in Fresh Meadows, Queens to take a look at the Department of Transportation’s latest controversial "road diet." Despite a Monday morning press conference in which […]

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