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Streetfilms: “A City Is a Means to a Way of Life”

At last October's Manhattan Transportation Policy Conference, convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, people from every neighborhood in Manhattan gathered to discuss a vision for the future of transportation in New York.


Manhattan on the Move Conference

Edited by Nick Whitaker
Running time: 6 minutes 52 seconds

At last October’s Manhattan Transportation Policy Conference, convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, people from every neighborhood in Manhattan gathered to discuss a vision for the future of transportation in New York.

In his keynote address, Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, made it clear that the conference was about much more than transportation:

I’m often asked to talk people in cities about transport. I say, I cannot talk about transport unless we have an idea of what type of a city we want. Before we have a vision of what type of city we want, we have to know, how do we want to live. Because really, a city is only a means to a way of life. So actually, whenever we start talking about transport, we really end up discussing how we want to organize our daily life.”

This latest episode of Streetfilms captures the highlights of the conference.

Photo of Aaron Naparstek
Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.

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