Plazas
Streetsblog Basics
Shared Space: The Street Design NYC’s Financial District Was Made For
For people in cars, the Financial District is a slow-speed maze. For everyone else, it is one of the city's most transit-rich destinations. Despite this, most of the street space in the area is devoted to cars.
July 3, 2014
In Harlem, Bradhurst Plaza Supporters Struggle to Change Status Quo
Manhattan Community Board 10's transportation committee ended months of foot-dragging this week by backing a road diet for Morningside Avenue in Harlem. It's not quite a brand new day at CB 10 though: A community effort to convert a short, irregular block into a public plaza still has an uphill climb at the Harlem board. While there's a substantial local coalition backing the project, a cadre of outspoken opponents use the existing street as a drop-off zone for their apartment building and don't want to see any changes.
May 16, 2014
Eyes on the Street: Jackson Heights Triangle Turns Into a Plaza
Sometimes, it's the little things that make a big difference. Manuel de Dios Unanue Triangle provides a speck of green along Roosevelt Avenue in the packed Jackson Heights neighborhood, but for years, there was nowhere to sit.
May 5, 2014
Plaza Upgrades Planned Beneath Train Viaduct on Queens Blvd in Sunnyside
The parking-flanked space in the middle of Queens Boulevard in Sunnyside, beneath the vaulted elevated train viaduct at 40th and 46th Streets, today looks more forgotten than fun. The Sunnyside Shines BID is hoping to change that, and their plan to upgrade the pedestrian space was recently accepted by NYC DOT's pedestrian plaza program.
April 15, 2014
Can Snow Inspire Better Streets? It Already Has.
Sneckdowns are having a big moment. In case you've missed the viral blog posts and major press coverage, sneckowns (a contraction of "snowy neckdowns" popularized by Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson Jr. and Streetsblog founding editor Aaron Naparstek) are leftover snow piles on city streets that show space that could easily be reclaimed for pedestrians.
February 12, 2014
Jan Gehl Joins Advocates to Talk Public Plazas in Low-Income Neighborhoods
Ask a New Yorker about the city's plazas, and they're likely to first think of Times Square. While the city's marquee pedestrian space gets most of the attention, there are dozens of neighborhood-scale plazas across the city, with dozens more in the works in communities requesting them from DOT. Not all local groups have the financial might of Midtown Manhattan behind them, but there is still a need to maintain and support these spaces. Without city funds or donations, it can be hard to keep a good thing going -- or to get it off the ground in the first place.
February 6, 2014
Watch NYC Reclaim Its Streets With the Swipe of a Finger
If you didn't spend at least some of your Friday ogling this post on the Architect's Newspaper Blog, you've been missing out. A/N Blog overlaid before and after shots of 25 Bloomberg-era NYC street transformations, allowing readers to "slide" between views.
January 31, 2014
Ped Plazas in Low-Income Neighborhoods Get $800,000 Boost From Chase
Under cloudy skies this morning at Corona Plaza, elected officials and community members gathered to announce an $800,000 contribution from the JPMorgan Chase Foundation to help fund the upkeep of pedestrian plazas in low-income communities. The funds are going to the Neighborhood Plaza Partnership (NPP), a program of the Horticultural Society of New York that works with merchant associations and non-profits to maintain plazas in neighborhoods including Corona, Jackson Heights, East New York, and Ridgewood.
November 26, 2013
Eyes on the Street: Reading in Ozone Park’s New Plaza
The intersection of Liberty Avenue and 101st Avenue sits on the border of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, and Ozone Park, Queens. A few blocks from the A train and surrounded by small businesses, it's a natural hub for the neighborhood, but the road configuration gave over large areas of the angled intersection to cars. Last year, the Bangladeshi American Community Development and Youth Services Corp. (BACDYS) applied to DOT's plaza program, and last month, the finishing touches were put on the new plaza space.
November 25, 2013
DOT Cuts Community-Endorsed Harlem Pedestrian Space for Double Parking
A big new pedestrian space next to a busy Harlem park, installed last summer as part of a community board-backed traffic calming plan, is being scaled down by the agency that created it. Why the change? DOT says it’s responding to complaints that the original design created too much space for pedestrians, and not enough for double-parked drivers.
November 21, 2013