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Car-Free Streets

Streetfilms: Summer Streets 2008

10:25 AM EDT on August 11, 2008

Conditions could hardly have been better for Saturday's Summer Streets debut, and New Yorkers responded, turning out in droves to enjoy a car-free route from Lower Manhattan to Central Park. Of course, Clarence Eckerson was on hand to capture this historic livable streets event for Streetfilms. He offers this testimonial:

We'll spare you the 200 adjectives we could list about howtransformational it was, for it was beyond anything on the printedpage. The general consensus was that the event succeeded beyond eventhe most hoped for expectations and would pass even the mostpessimistic of measuring sticks. A page has been turned, clearly thereis no doubt: the future will hold many more large scale street openingsfor pedestrians, cyclists, runners, children, dog walkers, dancers, andany other reasonable livable space use.

If you missed it this week, take heart: early forecasts for Saturday call for partly cloudy skies with a high in the mid-80s.

Brad Aaron
Brad Aaron began writing for Streetsblog in 2007, after years as a reporter, editor, and publisher in the alternative weekly business. Brad adopted New York'’s dysfunctional traffic justice system as his primary beat for Streetsblog. He lives in Manhattan.

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