Category Archives: Urbanism

NYC DOT Shared Streets: Lower Manhattan THIS SATURDAY

THE NYC DOT’S SHARED STREETS: LOWER MANHATTAN will take place Saturday, August 13  as part of the annual Summer Streets program. Frankly, it looks like the weather will not be good, but the rain will come and go, and this … Continue reading

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Attempting to answer now and forever the claims of English cyclists that the Amsterdam streets like the one on the cover of “Street Design” are not “shared space” because they are “filtered” or….

Moved to streets-book.com: http://bit.ly/sssettle. Seemingly every time I say something about shared space on Twitter, one or more English cyclists pop up to say “That’s not shared space.” Let’s settle this once and for all, without the character count limits of Twitter … Continue reading

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Urban Design: The Good Kind & the Other Kind

WE ALL UNDERSTAND why so many normal, rational New Yorkers can act like NIMBYs—because we’ve all seen alien, intrusive development in New York like Billionaire Row and Atlantic Yards. Recent developments at the American Museum of Natural History brought this … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Beauty, Classical, Culture, Current, Egotecture, Good Kind, New Urbanism, New York, The Other Kind, Urbanism | Comments Off on Urban Design: The Good Kind & the Other Kind

Leon Wieseltier on Modern Cliches

IF you apply for a grant today and want to be successful, you’d better use the words “innovate” and “innovative” in your proposal. In art and architecture, words like “challenging,” “transgressive,” and “disruptive” are among the most used. So I … Continue reading

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To Stop Pedestrian Deaths NYC Must Change How it Builds Streets

From CITYLIMITS.ORG: November 13th—Friday the 13th—marked the 13th day in a row that a pedestrian died on a New York City Street, all killed by cars or buses going too fast. They were among the 19 pedestrian deaths in the … Continue reading

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God is in the details

I’m working on a project in Connecticut where the team is proposing a “Slow Zone” in the center of town. An engineer on a project is a little worried about some of the details I’ve proposed. He wrote, “I think we … Continue reading

Posted in Architecture, Beauty, Bicycle, Craft, Culture, Current, Good Kind, Materials, Pedestrian, Slow Streets, Street Design, Urbanism, Walkability | Comments Off on God is in the details

Places Where People Want To Walk

: MY COMMENT ON BIKE PORTLAND’s Bike-friendliness and walk-friendliness are actually pretty different, study says I’ve only been to Portland twice, mainly downtown. There was no bike share then, so I’ve never ridden a bike in Portland. In other words, … Continue reading

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QB Redux: I think that I shall never see…

WHEN I SHOWED A TRANSFORMATION FOR QUEENS BOULEVARD that included trees over the subway beneath the wide street, some people naturally had some doubts about how well the trees would grow. But look at these trees above the similar “cut and … Continue reading

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The Three Best Entries in the World War I Competition are Classical

THERE’S STILL no resolution to the war in Washington over Frank Gehry’s design for a memorial to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Many who love Gehry’s work hate the memorial design,* which the Eisenhower family rejected. But Kansas Senator Bob Dole and … Continue reading

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My Comment on CityLab: “What’s the Matter With San Francisco?”

POSTSCRIPT: When the highest profits in a market like New York’s come from 1) converting affordable rental housing into housing for sale that buyers use for investment and speculation, and from 2) building housing for the rich and the super-rich, there is … Continue reading

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Vester Voldgade – Our Street of the Day / A Street Design Supplement*

VESTER VOLDGADE, KØBENHAVN (“West Rampart Street, Copenhagen”) is interesting both for its current condition and and its original state. It’s called “Voldgade” because like the boulevards of Paris, it was built where the old city wall stood (the French word “boulevard” … Continue reading

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