The City That Never Walks

11:14 AM EST on January 29, 2007

The messenger is unexpected -- Robert Sullivan, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine -- but the message to Mayor Bloomberg on today's New York Times op/ed page is clear: It is time to act. When it comes to building a more livable urban environment and reversing automobile domination, New York City is falling behind other world cities. In fact, we're even lagging behind a number of American cities too, Sullivan writes:

I am saddened to see our city falling behind places like downtown Albuquerque, where one-way streets have become more pedestrian-friendly two-way streets, and car lanes are replaced by bike lanes, with bike racks everywhere. Then there is Grand Rapids, Mich., which has a walkable downtown with purposely limited parking and is home to a new bus plaza that is part of a mass transit renaissance in Michigan.

The editorial references three recent Transportation Alternatives' studies and touches on so many stories that we've been covering, that I've created a version of the article with embedded links to Streetsblog and other sources. It's such a good, comprehensive little piece, it's hard to decide what to excerpt, so I'll just leave it at this:

"Roads no longer merely lead to places; they are places," wrote John Brinckerhoff Jackson, the landscape historian. We've already lost a lot of New York to traffic. If New Yorkers don't get out of their cars soon, the city's future residents won't have a reason to.

Aaron Naparstek

AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.

The City That Never Walks

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