Urban Design
Streetsblog Basics
Hunter Students Offer a Multi-Modal Vision for Queens Boulevard
About a year ago, the Transportation Alternatives Queens activist committee approached the Hunter College urban planning program about Queens Boulevard. The advocates wanted help jumpstarting real-world changes on the street known as the Boulevard of Death.
June 26, 2015
Envisioning a New Purpose for the Space Beneath NYC’s Elevated Structures
There are nearly 700 miles of elevated highways, rail lines, and bridges crisscrossing New York City. They tend to be dreary places, but they don't have to be. A report released today by the Design Trust for Public Space and DOT, Under the Elevated, envisions new uses for the spaces beneath these elevated structures.
June 18, 2015
What Can an Algorithm Tell Us About How People Perceive Streets?
What makes people feel that a street is safe, and what do those perceptions tell us about different streets? A group of researchers at MIT have developed a formula designed to approximate people's subjective reactions to the way streets look. They hope it will help chart shifts in the quality of city environments over time and prove useful to urban planners and architects seeking to better understand what makes streets appealing.
August 8, 2014
William H. Whyte in His Own Words: “The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces”
When I first got started making NYC bike advocacy and car-free streets videos back in the late-1990s on cable TV, I didn't know who William "Holly" Whyte was or just how much influence his work and research had on New York City. A few years later I met Fred and Ethan Kent at Project for Public Spaces. I got a copy of Whyte's 1980 classic, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, which in its marvelously-written, straightforward style is the one book all burgeoning urbanists should start with.
July 25, 2014
How Do Streets Affect Your City’s Happiness?
In this Streetfilm, Streetsblog publisher Mark Gorton interviews award-winning journalist Charles Montgomery about his fantastic new book, "Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design," which delves into the hard-to-measure question of how the built environment affects our mental wellbeing.
April 28, 2014
New Software Lets You Virtually Stroll Down Streets That You Design
Folks across the blogosphere are geeking out over this new software created by Spencer Boomhower at the Portland firm Cupola Media. "Unity3D Visualization" lets users manipulate the features of a street and then evaluate the changes in an immersive animated display.
November 27, 2013
Flint’s Ingenious Plan to “Right-Size” Its Streets With Road Diets
Flint, Michigan, is probably best known as the poster child for population loss and de-industrialization, as captured in the Michael Moore movie, "Roger and Me."
October 29, 2013
Meet Streetmix, the Website Where You Can Design Your Own Street
Last fall, Lou Huang was at a community meeting for the initiative to redesign Second Street in San Francisco. Planners handed out paper cutouts, allowing participants to mix and match to create their ideal street. Huang, an urban designer himself, thought the exercise would make for a great website. Now, after months of work beginning at a January hackathon with colleagues at Code for America, it is a great website.
August 12, 2013
Rewriting the Manual: How Safe Streets Will Be the Rule, Not the Exception
Cities and towns have been leading the charge for safer streets, incorporating design elements like protected bike lanes and sidewalk extensions. But design guidance from state highway officials often gets in the way when agencies don't have the technical or political heft to deviate from "the rules" that have long held sway in the field of street engineering. Last night, a panel of experts discussed how progressive best practices can be codified and included in the guidelines that shape decisions about street design across the nation.
April 24, 2013
Positively 3rd Street
Strolling up 3rd Street in Park Slope from 7th Avenue toward Prospect Park, it’s easy to see this is one of the most magnificent streets in what is, let’s face it, one of the prettiest neighborhoods in the city. The homes, built in the late 19th century and often clad in white stone, are set back further. The double flanking of trees lend a calming tone. A bike lane is set along one side of the one-way street.
January 25, 2013