Development

What could be worse than replacing neighborhood parks with private parking decks, built with the specific intent of increasing car trips by the tens of thousands through a community already suffering from so much disease-causing pollution that its nickname is "Asthma Alley"?

All across the city neighborhood groups are coming together to re-envision and plan their own communities. In the last few months we've seen valuable community-planning processes taking place in Hell's Kitchen, the Meatpacking District and, to a certain extent, along Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. People aren't waiting around for real estate developers or city agencies to tell them how their neighborhoods should be. They are going out and doing the thinking and planning themselves.

The once traffic-filled street between Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery is now a thriving plaza.

Last week, DOT quietly revealed that it was planning to narrow Fourth Avenue and transform Park Slope, Brooklyn's Sixth and Seventh Avenues in to one-way streets. Agency officials say that the the changes are being proposed for no reason other than "to make it safer for pedestrians crossing the street."

A tipster tells us of a particularly vigorous screaming match in City Hall last week between Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and a career civil servant who must remain nameless.

On Thursday, March 8, in a story titled The New York City Parking Boom, we incorrectly reported that New York City's Economic Development Corporation is funding part of the $500 million Flushing Commons development project in Queens. The situation is actually a bit more nuanced. The EDC is facilitating the sale of city property to a developer but is not subsidizing the project directly.

I can't get behind Prevention Magazine's ranking of New York as 39th among the nation's most walkable cities. But after spending three days in Atlanta for a conference recently, I have no problem understanding why it rates 86th.

The first in a three-part series on New York City parking policy.

Below is a letter from the Park Slope Civic Council to Mayor Bloomberg and local elected representatives regarding the City's plan to transform Sixth and Seventh Avenue's into one-way streets. It's lengthy but it's worth a read (and full disclosure: I'm a trustee of the Civic Council):