Public Health

If you spend much time in upper Manhattan, you know it's blessed with hundreds of acres of parkland, much of which serves to showcase the area's naturally rugged terrain. To help bring attention to this sometimes overlooked resource while promoting public health, an organization called CLIMB (City Life is Moving Bodies), in conjunction with Creative Arts Workshops for Kids, hosts an event called Hike the Heights, an "urban safari" through parks from Morningside Heights to Inwood. Streetfilms correspondent Mark Read has the lowdown.

On Tuesday WNYC's Brian Lehrer asked listeners to send in their suggestions for future "Summer Streets" locations. Responses -- which included Flatbush Avenue, one tube of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and the Henry Hudson Parkway -- were mapped here.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson delivers this snappy video recap of yesterday's press conference announcing "Summer Streets," the Ciclovía-style car-free event that will open six miles of Manhattan thoroughfares to pedestrians and cyclists for three Saturdays in August. One quote from Mayor Bloomberg, which doesn't seem to have made the cut in this morning's media coverage, addresses (tentatively) the potential of the event to change the way people look at the city:

David Byrne, Janette Sadik-Khan, Paul Steely White, Lance Armstrong, and Scott Stringer look on mirthfully as Mayor Bloomberg announces "Summer Streets."

Last month we reported that DOT was planning a major car-free event this summer in the mold of Bogotá, Colombia's weekly Ciclovía. Details emerged on Friday in the Downtown Express:

If there's one thing a neighborhood overrun by traffic doesn't need, it's more public parking garages. But that's exactly what New Yorkers who live by the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel will get if the City Planning Commission allows current development patterns to continue.

Cyclists enjoy Bogotá's weekly Ciclovía. Which New York streets will host a similar event this summer?

With development projects across the city threatened by an uncertain economy, critics of Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards project believe that a slowdown in construction could burden Prospect Heights with decades of blight. A slide show by the Municipal Art Society, called "Atlantic Yards or Atlantic Lots?," offers a bleak look into the future, like this rendering of neighborhood blocks destroyed for "temporary" surface lots that would accommodate some 1,400 cars.