Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Times Square

MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan: What’s Good for Times Square Is Good for America

By Brad Aaron | Apr 27, 2011 | 5 Comments

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Should a pedestrian-friendly Times Square serve as a model for other American cities? Who would ask such a thing? Certainly not the real New Yorkers who constitute the city’s hard-bitten press corps. No, for meaningful analysis of the use of public space, it’s […]

Pedestrians, Including Bill Clinton, Breathe Easier in the New Times Square

By Brad Aaron | Apr 13, 2011 | 4 Comments

A new study commissioned by the city finds that air quality in Times Square has notably improved since the 2009 installation of pedestrian plazas on Broadway. Street-level readings taken by the New York City Community Air Survey, a city-wide air quality monitoring program created as part of PlaNYC, show that “concentrations of traffic-related pollutants were […]

Framing the New Broadway: “Green Ribbon” or “Narrow Passageway”?

By Charles Komanoff | Sep 7, 2010 | 17 Comments

Recession or depression? Estate taxes or death taxes? How events or policies are named, or “framed,” has become crucial to their viability. Indeed, the ascendancy of the right wing in the U.S. in recent decades is attributed in part to the Right’s mastery of political phraseology to demonize leftist and even centrist policies. Framing affects […]

Bloomberg: The Transformation of Broadway Is Here to Stay

By Ben Fried | Feb 11, 2010 | 25 Comments

There’s no going back. Photo: nanpalmero/Flickr Eight months after New York City changed traffic patterns in midtown Manhattan, transforming Broadway and reclaiming acres of urban space for pedestrian plazas at Times Square and Herald Square, Mayor Bloomberg announced this morning that the trial has proven successful and the changes will be permanent. Streetsblog will post […]

Times Square Then and Now: A Streetfilms Retrospective

By Clarence Eckerson Jr. | Feb 5, 2010 | 10 Comments

Mayor Bloomberg is expected to announce his verdict on Times Square’s new pedestrian spaces very soon. Will the changes be permanent? This morning Bloomberg told radio host John Gambling that we’ll find out sometime next week. In the meantime, it seems like the media has decided to fixate on rumors that Midtown traffic speeds may […]

Great Public Spaces for Midtown

By Ben Fried | Feb 3, 2010 | 9 Comments

The new Times Square versus the old Times Square — worth a few seconds of motorist inconvenience on a few streets. Photos: berk2804 and midweekpost via Flickr Mayor Bloomberg has seen some of the data from the city’s trial of car-free, pedestrian-priority spaces in Midtown, and it looks like the changes in traffic speeds are […]

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