Quality of Life

Project for Public Spaces just published a great piece of work that is very much worth a download. The paper is called "Nine Ways to Transform New York into a City of Great Places." From the introduction:

By way of Clarence Eckerson, who is always keeping an eye on Portland, BikePortland has coverage of International Walk and Bike to School Day.

Transportation Alternatives' new study, Traffic's Human Toll, is getting picked up all over the place (CBS, NBC, Post). The report is an update on the famous Appleyard Study and it found that New Yorkers who live on high traffic streets have a measurably lower quality of life. Not exactly a huge surprise, and yet this is the first time that anyone has ever quantified it. The study is yet another argument in on behalf of an aggressive traffic reduction program for New York City.

A special New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign event.

Copenhagen, Denmark is not a natural bicycling city. In the early 1960's it was very much of a car town. In 1962 the city created its first pedestrian street, the Stroget, and every year since then Copenhagen has allocated more and more of its public space to bicycles, pedestrians and people who just want to sit and take a load off. The result is a remarkably pleasant city. Danish urban designer Jan Gehl says that the single biggest key to the change has been the development of the city's extensive bicycle network and that the Copenhagen of great public spaces that we see today would not be possible without bicycles.

For the last two years or so Transportation Alternatives' Karla Quintero has been working on a New York City-based update of the famous "Appleyard Study" examining the social costs of traffic. Karla presented the study's preliminary findings last year at a forum I helped organize in Brooklyn and it was really interesting. This event is sure to be a good one. From Transalt:

How do you measure a city's bike-friendliness? Do you count the number of lane miles, daily commuters or annual injuries? Here is one set of metrics that I found in Copenhagen:

The Nyhavn or "New Harbor." Twenty years ago Copenhagen's quaint inner harbor was a parking lot. Today it is one of the city's most popular and iconic outdoor destinations.

If New York or other large cities are looking for a solution to congestion and its negative impact on the economy, Hong Kong offers an excellent strategy and success story. I was there a few weeks back working on waterfront issues (that rival New York City for unrealized opportunities), and was struck by changes that have taken place since my previous visit five years earlier. In 2001, there were few streets or districts that were comfortable to walk in or engage with despite being known as a bustling shopping city. In the intervening time the city has undergone a major transformation led by non other than the city's Transport Department.