Streetfilms: “A City Is a Means to a Way of Life”

2:05 PM EST on February 9, 2007

Manhattan on the Move Conference
Edited by Nick Whitaker
Running time: 6 minutes 52 seconds

At last October's Manhattan Transportation Policy Conference, convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, people from every neighborhood in Manhattan gathered to discuss a vision for the future of transportation in New York.

In his keynote address, Enrique PeÃ±alosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, made it clear that the conference was about much more than transportation:

I'm often asked to talk people in cities about transport. I say, I cannot talk about transport unless we have an idea of what type of a city we want. Before we have a vision of what type of city we want, we have to know, how do we want to live. Because really, a city is only a means to a way of life. So actually, whenever we start talking about transport, we really end up discussing how we want to organize our daily life."

This latest episode of Streetfilms captures the highlights of the conference.

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.

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