Superblocks
Streetsblog Basics
Pedestrianize ‘Main Street’ To Save It, Says Comptroller (and Mayoral Hopeful) Scott Stringer
The future of the city's economic recovery could be determined by our own two feet, according to a series of proposals from the city's top money man.
August 7, 2020
Scott Stringer Channels Robert F. Kennedy in Vision for Mid-Block Playgrounds
A back-to-the-future plan to turn through streets into cul-de-sacs with playgrounds in the middle (and FedEx on the sidewalk).
April 29, 2019
Barcelona’s Superblocks: Change the Grid, Change Your Neighborhood
Without dangerous, noisy car traffic overrunning the streets, superblocks are full of life.
August 7, 2018
A Proposal for Incremental Parking Reform in NYC
In most of New York City, zoning requirements compel new development to include a certain amount of parking. These mandates make housing more expensive while causing more traffic and pollution, but the Department of City Planning took only the most timid steps to reform them during the Bloomberg administration, and the de Blasio administration isn't shaping up much differently. Now a small team of architects and urban designers has a strategy to make progress on parking reform, and while it's not exactly bold, it may appeal to the conflict-averse DCP.
August 19, 2014
In Third Term, Bloomberg Must Align All Agencies With PlaNYC
We continue our series on the next four years of New York City transportation and planning policy with today's essay by Ron Shiffman. Co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development and a professor at the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning, Shiffman served on the City Planning Commission from 1990 to 1996. Read previous installments in this series here, here, and here.
November 19, 2009
Let’s Chop Up Superblocks
Forest City's Atlantic Yards project would create two massive superblocks in Prospect Hts., Brooklyn
February 22, 2008
Seeing Myrtle Avenue With Fresh Eyes
The folks over at the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership have unveiled the results
of a collaboration with the Project for Public Spaces (PPS) undertaken
over the last couple of years. Two public workshops were held to get
community input on the plans, which address four different areas of
Myrtle Avenue, one of the main commercial streets for Fort Greene and Clinton Hill.
September 18, 2007
A Streets Renaissance in Lower Manhattan
Last weekend the New York Times published a nice piece about a resurgence in downtown Manhattan street life.
September 12, 2007
Atlantic Yards Planner: “Space on Streets is Useless Space”
In this week's New York Observer, Matthew Schuerman talks at length with Laurie Olin, the landscape architect who may or may not have been teamed up with starchitect Frank Gehry on Forest City Enterprise's Atlantic Yards project "to compensate for Mr. Gehry's reputed lack of urban-planning skills." Schuerman writes:
February 22, 2007