Category Archives: History

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.

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 →

Slow Street of the Day

Via della Dogana Vecchia, Rome
Click on the image for larger version

HANS MONDERMAN AND SHARED SPACE are all the rage, but the Italians starting making slow streets in the late 1960s without naming them. Rome and Bologna don’t have all the traffic-calming bicycles that Amsterdam and Delft have, but the streets in the Centro Storico of Rome are still shared-space slow streets, with very few of the signs and markings that make drivers comfortable.