Alec

This Morning's Forum: Road Pricing Worked in London. Can It Work in New York?

Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief Press Conference A few quick scenes from yesterday's event Running time: 2:02

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 fits into a local rail line and a regional rail network extending as far as Sweden.

While we're seeking great streets, we've found an exemplary store in Manhattan's Build a Green Bakery. This tiny East Village shop sells organic pastries, coffee and tea in an all-sustainable setting. The owner, City Bakery's Maury Rubin, made the space an environmentalists' showroom. He chose walls of wheat and sunflower husks and colored them with a milk-based paint. His floor is cork and his tabletop is responsibly-harvested bamboo, with recycled denim under the display counter. And get this: If you transport yourself to the store by bicycle, you get a 50% discount.

Whatever you think of the idea of a highrise cluster in Downtown Brooklyn, you have to worry that the sponsors of the Atlantic Yards project suggest that creating jobs and housing justifies the kind of planning that discourages street life. Among the lowlights of the marathon August 23 "public hearing" on the draft Environmental Impact Statement covering the Atlantic Yards, consider these signs:

Matthew Scheuerman in today's New York Observer runs a meaty cover story about secret efforts underway in City Hall to build a foundation for a more livable city. This is a big story and there is a lot more that has yet to come out. Stay tuned:

At the Museum of the City of New York, Vincent Cianni's bracing photos show how a group of teens on Williamsburg's south side organized to get a skate park built in the shadowy wasteland beneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. If these kids can persuade City Hall to let them shape their own terrain, imagine what five boroughs'-worth of block associations, business improvement districts and Livable Streets advocates can accomplish. Check out the show, We Skate Hardcore, and get the wheels turning. It closes August 6. 

The death of Derek Lake, killed one month ago at age 23 when his bicycle tripped a metal plate on Houston Street, hints at a tragedy shared by all New Yorkers: City Hall's continued insistence that the ultimate goal of a New York City street is to move as many cars and trucks each day as physically possible.

Derek Lake died on June 26 when his bike tripped over a steel plate and fell beneath the wheels of a moving truck in the midst of Houston Street's reconstruction mess. Brad Hoylman, a Village resident, chairs the Traffic and Transportation Committee of Community Board 2. Hoylman talks to Streetsblog about the  Community Board's reaction to Lake's death and its plans to try to prevent similar horrors. And he reminds us that, despite a $30 million reconstruction project that includes no new bicycle amenities, Houston Street is supposed to be a part of New York City's Bicycle Master Plan.