A Round and a Roundy: Let’s Redesign Our City — With Moats!

Bill Roundy may be a cartoonist — you know, a guy who plays with crayons all day — but he’s not blind to the fact that everyone and his brother have been calling for substantive changes in how our city is run after the coronavirus crisis is over.

In the past few weeks, we’ve printed op-eds about how our sidewalks need to be widened, how the mayor should bolster cycling, how the city should focus on public health, why the city should investigate crashes differently, how quarantining shouldn’t be its own tale of two cities, and so many others.

But Roundy is a cartoonist, which means he sees things through the gimlet eye of a cynic. We all have millions of ways we think the city could be better — but good ideas about the future of transportation seem to reach Mayor de Blasio’s desk, where they collect dust.

So Roundy went with four-color mockery this week. If everyone is going to reach for the stars (yet not even make it into de Blasio’s low orbit), so will Roundy! Let’s have real bike lanes, he argues, protected by topiary (too expensive, the mayor will say), sandpaper (think of the damage to our long-suffering drivers!), a shark-filled moat (the liability! The liability!) or even mounds of garbage (actually, this one may happen!)

We hope you enjoy his take. All of Roundy’s cartoons are archived here.