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You might call it the Coalition of the Public Realm.
The leadership two dozen public space advocacy groups — an august group that includes the Make McGuinness Safe Coalition, New Yorkers for Parks, the 34th Ave Open Street Coalition, North Brooklyn Open Streets, Tri-State Transportation Campaign, Municipal Art Society, Alliance for Paseo Park, AIA NY, WXY, Center for Zero Waste Design, Friends of the QueensWay, Gotham Park, Brooklyn Greenway Initiative, and our own parent company, Open Plans — is demanding that Mayor Mamdani rejigger City Hall to create a new office: the Deputy Mayor for the Public Realm.
“The public realm is where life happens—on the city’s streets, sidewalks, blacktops, green spaces, and everywhere in between. And in order for a city to be livable and affordable for all, everyone deserves equal access,” the groups wrote in an “open letter” the incoming administration.
“Without resources or insider knowledge, it’s near-impossible to create or care for high-quality public spaces,” the letter continues. “Meanwhile, interagency logjams and silos cause unnecessary delays, leading to sky-high price tags and subpar products. The result is an uneven landscape: thriving parks and open spaces for some, but not all, cutting off countless New Yorkers from the many social, economic, and environmental benefits they offer.”
Hopefully, they’re not preaching to the converted. Indeed, most signatories of the letter have long since gotten behind Open Plans and other groups’ call for a specific office that handles the myriad of issues that play out in public, free from the territorialism that’s baked into the current agency regime. (The group, the Alliance for Public Space Leadership, is now defunct, judging from its website, but it’s mentioned in tributes, including this one and this one.)
That push did indeed encourage Mayor Adams in 2022 to appoint Ya-Ting Liu as “Director of the Public Realm.” But that office was never an agency, nor was it at the deputy mayor level — indeed, Liu never had a real staff, nor did she get to devote herself fully to the task, given that she retained her role as chief strategy officer to the deputy mayor for operations.
So now it’s up to Mayor-elect Mamdani — and it’s not as if he’s not open to better public realm management. In his now-famous answers to Streetsblog’s candidate questionnaire earlier this year, Mamdani couldn’t stop talking about better public space oversight:
He said he’d no longer use public space in a way that “neglects the large majority of New Yorkers who walk, bike or take transit to get where they are going everyday.”
He said he’d “transform large amounts of public space [to] focus on pedestrianization and building protected bike lanes, dedicated bus lanes and other street infrastructure, particularly for high foot traffic areas in and around Times Square and the entire Financial District.”
He said he would restore all-year outdoor dining and create a car-free school street at every single school.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Mamdani’s incoming First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan made some similar music when asked about another aspect of the public realm: Vision Zero and the Streets Master Plan. We covered it (and, to a much-lesser degree, so did amNY).
In other news from a bit of a slow day:
As you know, we like to start our daily news digest during December with a roll call of the kind benefactors who donated to our annual fundraising drive. Thanks, Mark! (Yes, there was only one donor yesterday, but we are very thankful. Hopefully, some of our dear readers out there will be inspired. If not, read this.)
Congestion pricing means more elevators in the subway … (Curbed)
… and, indeed, the toll is one of the 39 reasons to love New York right now, along with Mayor Adams containerizing trash, according to Curbed.
West Side Rag followed our story about the benefits of the closure of the 125th Street ramp off the West Side Highway.
A 15-mile-per-hour speed limit for all vehicles in Central Park seems prudent. Let’s hope the cops and other city car drivers adhere to it. (NYDN)
… but spikes and paddles are still coming to a station near you. (Gothamist)
President Trump’s war on electric cars just blew a $20-billion hole in a major American carmaker. (NY Times)
Council Transportation Committee Chair Selvena Brooks-Powers is clearly gunning to retain her post, leaking to amNY her demand for no fare hike. She has a point, but raising the eligibility for Fair Fares is a far more important fight.
What would you put in a Mayor Adams time capsule, The City wants to know. I offered one idea on Twitter:
Obviously, a GIF of Ingrid Lewis-Martin's blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance on "Godfather of Harlem," for which she sold out Greenpoint residents who only wanted safe streets.
Waymo posted an interesting clip of its driverless car driving around the city, and there’s an interesting moment at 1:03 where the car stops for a pedestrian who happens to be standing to the side of the travel lane wanting to cross mid-block. Check it out:
And, finally, when car drivers complain that there are “too many” bike lanes that are never used, we’d like to point out that our transportation needs don’t get served in the same manner as drivers’. Case in point, our own Sophia Lebowitz was biking from Brooklyn to Queens for the 2025 performance of the Car-Free Carolers at around 1 p.m. on Monday — nearly 24 hours after the last flakes fell. Here’s what she discovered on the Kosciuszko Bridge:
Photo: Sophia Lebowitz
Lebowitz said she had to walk her bike for most of the bridge. Three hours later, Lebowitz headed home and discovered nothing had changed, except for the the sun bidding its crepuscular adieu over New York City.
Photo: Sophia Lebowitz
We wrote to DOT to demand an explanation and was told, “This location has been salted and crews will be back tomorrow [Tuesday].” That’s an insufficient answer for the hundreds of delivery workers and cycling commuters who rely on safe roads to get to and from work — and for all of the advocates for a sustainable future who fight every day to get this infrastructure built in the first place. But, of course, if you’d prefer a city underwater or completely choked by congestion…
Update: On Tuesday morning, DOT spokesman Vin Barone said the lane had actually been “cleared last night,” meaning Monday night. Streetsblog would like to thank the workers who performed their duties in the cold of the night, more than 30 hours after the last flakes fell.
Tabloid legend Gersh Kuntzman has been with New York newspapers since 1989, including stints at the New York Daily News, the Post, the Brooklyn Paper and even a cup of coffee with the Times. He's also the writer and producer of "Murder at the Food Coop," which was a hit at the NYC Fringe Festival in 2016, and “SUV: The Musical” in 2007. He also writes the Cycle of Rage column, which is archived here.
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