Category Archives: Urbanism

Think of a city and what comes to mind?

“Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs. Think of a city and what comes to mind? Its streets. If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.” — Jane Jacobs, The Death & Life of Great American Cities

There’s a revolution going on in how we use our streets, but the evolution of the revolution is slow. Complete Streets, Slow Streets, Open Streets—what would Jane say?

Join CNU NYC and John Massengale for a virtual tour of Jane’s Greenwich Village, a history of New City streets, and a discussion of Streets for People and Slow New York.

WHEN: Tuesday, May 4 (Jane’s Birthday), 3 PM (Happy Hour to Follow — BYOB)

REGISTER: MAS Janes Walks

The photo above shows CNU NYC’s 2020 Jane’s Walk on Charles Street in Greenwich Village. Below is Jane Jacobs at the White Horse Tavern. Jane’s house at 555 Hudson Street was on the same block.

New York Quiet Streets — Making Lemonade from Lemons

Yorkville Promenade (Second Avenue), New York, New York, Massengale & Co LLC and Dover, Kohl & Partners, 2011. An aerial view looking south from 86th Street.

A Streetsblog Op-Ed from John Massengale:

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson called for making New York City streets safer for pedestrians and social distancing while we all stay close to home. Mayor de Blasio responded with a program to open more space for pedestrians on one street per borough.

We can do more. We should use this time when traffic is light to work on ideas for safer, quieter, and more pleasant streets for pedestrians and cyclists now and in the future. During this COVID-19 crisis, we can implement ideas that are great for the long-term health of the city. Specifically, let’s make some of our quiet side-streets primarily for cyclists and walkers.

Quiet Streets (continue reading at Streetsblog)

More Photos at Slow New York
Download a PDF

Daily News Op-Ed: A Highway That Hurts The City


On November 25, 2019, CNU NYC Chair John Massengale and former Congress for New Urbanism Chair and President John Norquist published an Op-Ed in the New York Daily News. The topic was what to do about the falling-down Brooklyn Queens Expressway and to improve city life in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The drawing above illustrates this part of the text:

On the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, Chambers Street used to go through the Municipal Building to a dense urban neighborhood. Now the gateway to Manhattan is a 24-hour mass of irritated drivers honking at pedestrians trying to get from the subway to City Hall Park. There are enough existing ramps that all the cars could be redirected back towards Water Street and the FDR Drive. That would free up the no-man’s land between Park Street and Centre Street for a great new public space at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge.

John Norquist has decades of experience with highway tear downs. When he was Mayor of Milwaukee, Norquist was one of the first American mayors to tear down a city highway. As Chair and President of the CNU, he started a program called Highways to Boulevards that has worked with states, cities, and Congress. Their 2019 report Cities Without Futures can be downloaded here.

The online version of the Daily News Op-Ed is here, with the title “Buck the BQE: The city should not replace a key stretch of the cantilevered Brooklyn highway.” Twitter replied, “Don’t need no stinkin’ BQE.”

NANTUCKET SOS! (Save Our Streets)

pleasantsttreeA FRIEND called me today with the sad news that what I once called my favorite street in America is under attack from the island’s own Public Works Department. I don’t know the details, but it’s surprising, because as we wrote in Street Design, Nantucket has a long history of not changing things that work—as their streets do.

Case in point, the beautiful Elm trees on and near Main Street, like the one above.

I gather the problem is handicap access, which is a real problem. But there’s more than one way to do anything, and design is about solving problems with solutions that are both functional and beautiful.

There’s a meeting tomorrow night to discuss the problem. While we wait to hear what that is, here’s a limerick I wrote while visiting Nantucket for Street Design:

There once was a tree on Nantucket,
With none of its roots in a bucket,
“That can’t be,”
Said the state DOT,
But no car has ever yet struck it.

pleasantsttree
After the jump, another Nantucket Elm Continue reading →

New York Times Op-Ed: “There Are Better Ways to Get Around Town”

New York City Streets for People After the Congestion Zone
May 15, 2018 (link)

Jane Jacobs Square, New York, New York. © Massengale & Co LLC, watercolor by Gabrielle Stroik Johnson. Before & After: Looking south on Bleecker Street from the intersection of Bleecker and West 10th Streets.

The debate continues over how to make New York City’s streets less crowded, safer and better for people as well as cars. Some, like Gov. Andrew Cuomo, call for congestion pricing in Manhattan, although so far the New York State Legislature has not allowed that. Mayor Bill de Blasio and groups such as Transportation Alternatives promote Vision Zero, aiming for zero traffic deaths in New York City by 2024.

It’s worth looking at European cities, which have led the movement to make city streets that are as good for public life as they are for driving. In recent months, I’ve visited four of the cities with the most innovative street designs: London, Stockholm, Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Continue reading at the New York Times

Occupy Broad Street

Today is the fifth Anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. For some thoughts about that, click here.

Broad Street
THE BROAD crossroads where Wall Street and Broad Street come together is a beautiful space, fully the equal of medieval European plazas. Today, post-911, it’s closed to almost all traffic, because the New York Stock Exchange sits at the southwest corner of the intersection. A few weeks ago, it was the symbolic center of the NYC DOT’s Shared Streets Lower Manhattan, when one Saturday afternoon 60 blocks were designated “shared spaces,” where “Pedestrians, cyclists, and motor vehicles will share the historic streets of Lower Manhattan and motorists [were] encouraged to drive 5 mph.”

When Americans talk about shared space, someone will often say, “We’re not Amsterdam.” Well, parts of Nieuw Amsterdam / New York City make a good place to start shared space experiments. Eighty per cent of Manhattan residents don’t own a car, and only twenty per cent of Manhattan workers commute to work by private car. Then add the fact that many streets in the Financial District have restricted access: some streets are only open to residents or workers employed on the street; while other streets have tank barricades and are only open to emergency and delivery vehicles.

In the real Amsterdam, 85% of the streets today have s speed limit of 30 kilometers per hour (18.6 mph), and the other 15% have a top speed of 50 kph (31 mph). On the slower streets, pedestrian and cyclist have as much right to the street as cars and trucks, and may be anywhere on the street at any time. All of the detritus of traffic engineering—bold stripes and arrows painted on the pavement, large signs, colored bus lanes, and the like—is missing, and at the intersections, there are no stop lights, stop signs, yield signs, or crosswalks. Motor vehicles must be driven at a speed that successfully allows cars and trucks to stop for pedestrians and cyclists in the intersection.

That is “Shared Space.” That is the spirit behind the experiment the DOT tried out on Saturday, August 13, and what it hopes to try again in the future. I hope they will and therefore I make Broad Street my Street of the Day. Some of the my notes on that continue below. Continue reading →