Envisioning an Upper West Side Streets Renaissance

11:18 AM EST on November 6, 2007

If you're thinking about coming to tonight's Upper West Side workshop with Jan Gehl but you are having trouble picturing what a "Streets Renaissance" might look like, the video above was made for you. It consists of a series of photo simulations produced by New York City Streets Renaissance Creative Director Carly Clark.

Whipped into a StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson and set to some bumpin' electronic dance music, the photo sims seek to answer questions like: What if Amsterdam Avenue were a "complete street" rather than a 5-lane highway, or a stretch of Broadway were turned over to pedestrians, or a neighborhood street were designed to accommodate community life rather than traffic throughput and automobile storage? Watch out. By the end of this one minute video you might be dancing.

You can find three more short Upper West Side StreetFilms and a bit more of Carly's photo sim work here:

Redesigning Amsterdam Avenue for People Rather Than Speeding Traffic (1:03)
The Perverse Allocation of Streets Space on the Upper West Side (1:24)
Is SUV Storage the Best Use of Upper West Side Street Space? (1:02)

Aaron Naparstek

@naparstek.bsky.social

Aaron Naparstek is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparstek's 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. He was also one of the original cast members of the "War on Cars" podcast. You can find more of his work on his website.

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