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Eyes on the Street

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

5:00 PM EDT on May 25, 2007

Broad_Street_2007_05_24.jpg
Broad Street looking north from Exchange Place

Remove cars from a New York City street, even just for security reasons, and civil society flourishes in their place. On Broad Steet traffic has been restricted in front of the New York Stock Exchange since September 11, 2001. Special pavement, tables, chairs and benches have turned a dull and commonplace automobile-movement-and-storage zone into what amounts to a public park, a kind of a permanent parking spot squat for Wall Street.

Happy Memorial Day weekend from Streetsblog. If you're driving out of town, consider paying down your carbon debt with a solar-powered barbecue -- just make sure to wear sunscreen while you're using it. See you Tuesday

Aaron Donovan
Before he began blogging about land use and transportation, Aaron Donovan wrote The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund's annual fundraising appeal for three years and earned a master's degree in urban planning from Columbia. Since then, he has worked for nonprofit organizations devoted to New York City economic development. He lives and works in the Financial District, and sees New York's pre-automobile built form as an asset that makes New York unique in the United States, and as a strategic advantage that should be capitalized upon.

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