Urban Planning
Streetsblog Basics
Commissioner Weinshall Agrees: Two-Way Streets Calm Traffic
While Michael Primeggia, DOT's Deputy Commissioner for Traffic Operations is trying to sell one-way mini-highways through Park Slope as a pedestrian safety improvement, his boss, DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall, is hawking the exact opposite. On Thursday, March 1, at the City Council Transportation Committee oversight hearing on the Mayor's Long-Term Planning initiative, Weinshall touted two-way streets as successful traffic calming measure for Downtown Brooklyn. From her lips to your ears:
March 5, 2007
DOT’s Plan for Park Slope Traffic “Improvements” Confirmed
We have more details and official confirmation of DOT's proposed changes for three Avenues running through Park Slope, Brooklyn. Brooklyn Community Board 6, which runs one of the better community board web sites out there, has posted its agenda for the next Transportation Committee meeting:
February 28, 2007
Bloomberg Admin Misses “Golden Opportunity” on Intro. 199
In the latest issue of Mobilizing the Region, the Tri-State Transportation Campaign questions how the Bloomberg Administration's purported commitment to long-term planning and sustainability squares with the Department of Transportation's opposition to Intro. 199, City Council legislation aimed at collecting better data on how New York City's streets are managed and used:
February 26, 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
Will “Atlantic Yards” Kill the JFK-Lower Manhattan Rail Link?
The Atlantic Yards plan superimposed on the released JFK-to-Lower Manhattan rail link study (PDF docs). Click here for a much bigger map.
February 20, 2007
PlanNYC 2030: What makes a Community Sustainable?
A few weeks ago I attended the first of the Community Leader meetings for the PlanNYC 2030 Sustainability initiative. I thought Streetsblog readers might be interested in some reflections on this from a neighborhood environmentalist perspective.
February 20, 2007
The Power of Moses: Please Wield Responsibly
An op-ed piece by Eleanor Randolph in today's New York Times finds yet another lesson in the current re-examination of Robert Moses's legacy. Randolph looks at the enormously powerful entities, usually known as authorities, that Moses left behind: "public-private hybrid[s] that can collect fees, take on debt and build things with little government interference."
February 14, 2007
Sustainable Transportation for NYC: How to Make it Happen
Today on Gotham Gazette, Bruce Schaller outlines how transportation policy could fit in to Mayor Bloomberg's sustainability initiative for 2030. The piece merits a full read, but Schaller frames his argument in terms of three big ideas:
February 13, 2007
The Seed of a Revolution in Red Hook
How can we get drivers to respect the communities they are driving though? How can we make traffic slow down if we can't change the design of the street or the timing of the lights? How can a community reclaim its neighborhood streets?
February 12, 2007