Urban Design
Basics
NYC Gets Its First-Ever Physically-Separated Bike Path
The Department of Transportation revealed plans for New York City's first-ever physically-separated bike lane, or "cycle track," at a Manhattan Community Board 4 meeting last night. The new bike path will run southbound on Ninth Avenue from W. 23rd to W. 16th Street in Manhattan. Unlike the typical Class II on-street bike lane in which cyclists mix with motor vehicle traffic, this new design will create an exclusive path for bicycles between the sidewalk and parked cars.
September 20, 2007
German Town Chooses Human Interaction Over Traffic Signals
Driving (carefully) with Dutch "shared space" guru and traffic engineer Hans Monderman.
September 14, 2007
A Gehl Dispatch From Down Under
We reported yesterday that noted Danish urbanist Jan Gehl will soon be surveying New York streets with an eye toward improving them for human use. Gehl has been working in Sydney, Australia as of late, and an essay he wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald offers insight into what he may be looking for here in the city.
September 13, 2007
Bike & Ped Improvements Slated for Manhattan Bridge Approach
DOT plans to build a physically-separated two-way bike lane on this one block stretch of Canal Street at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge. The project also includes pedestrian safety fixes.
August 27, 2007
Transit-Oriented America, Part 3: Three More Cities
Part 3 in a series on rail and transit-only travel across the United States focuses on the final three cities of our journey. Part 2 looked at the first three and Part 1 presented an overview of our travel.
August 22, 2007
Pay Phones May Be a Bad Call for City
An article in today's New York Times looks at the city's most prominent -- and profitable -- form of street furniture, the pay telephone:
August 17, 2007
Melbourne, Australia After a Decade of Focus on Public Spaces
With apologies for my carbon footprint, I recently returned from a working tour of eight cities Down Under. The trip included an invitation to Melbourne to work with the staff of the city's successful new public space development, Federation Square, and to help lead a Placemaking training course that included many city staff, local developers and "place managers." In the process, I had the opportunity to learn a few things relevant to my hometown, New York City.
August 2, 2007
Famed Danish Urbanist Jan Gehl in Town to Consult on PlaNYC
The Urbanist Musketeers: Alex Garvin, Jan Gehl and Fred Kent in Copenhagen, Denmark, Sept. 30, 2006.
August 2, 2007
The Suburbanist Paradox
The Atlantic Monthly's Matthew Yglesias argues that high-density living is a key strategy to fight climate change. Yglesias takes issue with fellow Atlantic Online blogger Ross Douthat and author Joel Kotkin, who defend suburban sprawl -- what James Kunstler has famously called "the most destructive development pattern the world has ever seen, and perhaps the greatest misallocation of resources the world has ever known." Reporting on a recent talk by Kotkin, Douthat writes:
July 6, 2007