Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Urban Design

Birth of a Class III Bike Route

By Aaron Naparstek | Nov 13, 2006 | 15 Comments

Department of Transportation contractors put down the long-awaited Class III "Shared Lane" bicycle stencils on Brooklyn’s Fifth Avenue this weekend. As I understand them, the markings are meant to do two things: Inform cyclists that Fifth Avenue is a preferred bike route. The more people who bike on Fifth Avenue, the safer Fifth Avenue will be for biking. […]

T is for Transit-Oriented Development

By Alec | Nov 10, 2006 | 61 Comments

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 […]

DOT to Neighborhood: Your School’s in the Way of Our Highway

By Charles Komanoff | Nov 9, 2006 | 7 Comments

There is a palpable schizophrenia in the Bloomberg Administration these days when it comes to Livable Streets issues. On the one hand, the Administration is developing some 200 miles of new bike lanes, initiating a long-term sustainability project and, for the first time, talking openly about reducing automobile use. On the other hand, very little […]

Car-Free Manhattan: Just Wait 100 Years

By Aaron Naparstek | Nov 8, 2006 | 1 Comment

I just caught up with this article in the Times on Saturday about a competition for engineers and architects to envision New York City in 2106. Check out one of the winning design concepts: After the judges’ hasty deliberations, Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city’s deputy mayor for economic development, presented the prizes. He said his office […]

Connecting Urban Design and Public Health

By Jason Varone | Nov 8, 2006 | No Comments

Public-Health advocate Richard Jackson, author of "Urban Sprawl and Public Health: Designing, Planning, and Building for Healthy Communities," argues in this month’s Metropolis Magazine that the way we build cities and neighborhoods is a major source of illness. When did you first start to make the connection between the design of our national landscape and […]

Reverse Engineering Pedestrian Safety in Boerum Hill

By Andy | Nov 7, 2006 | 16 Comments

They are putting up a traffic light on my corner this week. It’s one of the last intersections in Boerum Hill with four-way stop signs, at Bond and Wyckoff Streets, and I can’t imagine who thought this was a good idea. It would seem obvious that stop signs are much preferable to a traffic light in this type of […]

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