Livable Streets

The press conference is underway right now in at Tavern on the Green in Central Park. Here are verbatim portions of the City's press release and a response from Transportation Alternatives. Stay tuned for more news and analysis:

Hell's Kitchen Miracle TicketA Clarence Eckerson Street FilmRunning time: 1:13 - 3.59 MB, QuickTime

With nothing much happening in the American League East this Fall, we've been turning our attention to Boston's burgeoning Livable Street movement instead. Last year a fellow named Jeff Rosenblum founded an organization called the Livable Streets Alliance that is setting out to do work similar to that of New York City's Transportation Alternatives. Jeff's group appears to be doing a good job of moving the issues up on Boston's civic agenda. Last week's Boston Globe ran a story on a City Counci member's efforts to transform a congested street in Little Italy into a pedestrian piazza and an op/ed arguing:

Chinatown businessman Jan Lee was cuffed and detained for photographing police officers' illegally parked cars in front of his shop.

I had dinner last Saturday with a couple of people at Enzo's Cafe on Arthur Avenue after a day spent helping prepare the route for the New York City Century bicycle tour, which this year will be sending twice as many people to the Bronx as it has in the past.

Whatever you think of the idea of a highrise cluster in Downtown Brooklyn, you have to worry that the sponsors of the Atlantic Yards project suggest that creating jobs and housing justifies the kind of planning that discourages street life. Among the lowlights of the marathon August 23 "public hearing" on the draft Environmental Impact Statement covering the Atlantic Yards, consider these signs: