Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Urban Planning

Which Cities Are Adding Walkable Housing the Fastest?

By Angie Schmitt | Feb 4, 2016 | No Comments

As more Americans look for walkable places to live, cities are struggling to deliver, and a lot of neighborhoods are becoming less affordable. A new analysis by Kasey Klimes of Copenhagen’s Gehl Studio illustrates how major metro areas have let their supply of walkable housing shrink over the years, contributing to today’s housing crunch. In this chart, Klimes shows how […]

The Port Authority Bus Terminal and Our Glaring Lack of Transit Leadership

By Stephen Miller | Sep 24, 2015 | 40 Comments

The effort to replace the aging and overcrowded Port Authority Bus Terminal continues to suffer from the New York region’s inability to coordinate its transit mega-projects. The bus terminal already handles more than 225,000 passengers per weekday and cannot accommodate all the bus traffic that crosses the Hudson in Midtown. Demand is expected to increase about 50 percent by 2040, […]

This Map Shows Where de Blasio Wants to Reduce Parking Mandates

By Stephen Miller | Sep 23, 2015 | 20 Comments

In February, the Department of City Planning outlined the broad strokes of how the de Blasio administration will seek to change the rules that shape new development in New York. After eight months of public meetings and behind-the-scenes work, City Hall’s proposals were released this week. The documents reveal details of how the city wants to handle parking minimums in […]

The New Plan to Connect Downtown Brooklyn to Its Waterfront

By Stephen Miller | Mar 18, 2015 | 6 Comments

Starting in the 1930s, entire city blocks in Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, and DUMBO were razed for expressways and parks. Today, this jumble of on-ramps and disconnected green space separates Brooklyn’s waterfront from its downtown core. A new public-private initiative, called “The Brooklyn Strand,” seeks to knit these disjointed areas back together. On Monday evening, Claire Weisz […]

De Blasio Team Gradually Beefing Up Its Parking Reform Proposals

By Stephen Miller | Feb 24, 2015 | 20 Comments

New York is one step closer to overhauling a discredited policy that drives up the cost of housing and makes traffic congestion worse, but the scope of the reforms the de Blasio administration is pursuing remains limited. Last week, the Department of City Planning came out with the broad strokes of a major update to […]

Peak Sprawl? The Fringes of the New York Region Are Shrinking

By Stephen Miller | Oct 2, 2014 | 9 Comments

A new report out of Rutgers University [PDF] reveals that since 2010, the fringes of the New York region have lost population as the core has grown, a reversal of the sprawling pattern that predominated starting in 1950, when the suburbs grew and the city shrank. The report compares regional growth between 1950 and 1980 […]

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