Aaron Donovan

Ariella Rosenberg Moran, Senior Policy Advisor on Sustainability at the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability will speak about the mayor's sustainability initiative. Here's your opportunity to hear first-hand about PLANYC 2030, ask questions and provide your comments during the public outreach stage.

Robert Caro, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Knopf, 1974) and the three-volume The Years of Lyndon Johnson, will offer reflections on the career of Robert Moses three decades after the publication of his seminal biography.

You're planning on attending the 2007 Annual Polis Conference: Innovation in Local Transport for Attractive Cities and Regions and you've already booked your hotel room.

For those considering attending the 2007 Annual Polis Conference: Innovation in Local Transport for Attractive Cities and Regions in Toulouse, France in March: Toulouse has a very low hotel capacity. Several rooms have been pre-booked by Polis until today. Conference organizers therefore kindly advise all participants to book their hotel rooms before that date. While booking, do not forget to mention that you are a participant to the Polis Annual Conference!

Focusing on the planned Atlantic Yards development in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, this spirited documentary film reviews how the project gained approval, its potential impact on Brooklyn, and the politics surrounding one of the largest development proposals in the city’s history. The documentary — featuring candid interviews, strong opinions and lively characters — is an insightful and sometimes startling view of how land-use decisions are made. A discussion will follow.

On January 18, 2007, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will host a panel discussion as part of Taxi 07, the Design Trust program aiming to reinvent the NYC taxi and taxi system. This coming spring, Taxi 07 will mount an exhibit at the NY International Auto Show, demonstrating an improved taxi and taxi system. New York's top design minds have been invited to contribute to the exhibit. This panel discussion, "Transforming an Icon," will explore how the designers approach their task of improving a globally recognized icon.

Via a Streetsblog tipster: In Valley Village, Calif., near L.A., people leave their trash in the bike lane for the convenience of the sanitation crews.

Here's the scene at the corner of Grand Street and the F.D.R. Drive, where motorists exiting the expressway turn 90 degrees onto the local street. The DOT recently installed this modest pedestrian refuge island, which sparked an outcry from area residents, who complained that the island was hard to see.

National Parks are a distinctively American idea, but it takes people to make them happen. Amy Meyer, co-chair of People for a Golden Gate Recreation Area, and author of the recent book New Guardians for the Golden Gate: How America got a Great National Park, will discuss how Bay Area activists succeeded in preserving all of the spectacular land that frames the Golden Gate Bridge. A panel of New York Harbor District advocates will then consider the lessons learned from this success story and how they can be applied locally. Sponsored by the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and Urban Center Books.