Public Space

Here's a project we're glad not to be doing (but we're thrilled someone is). Gallery owner Robert Hult is spending today walking the route of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, not on the highway but as close alongside it as possible, and posting regular photos to his Twitter account.

The reports are in, and it seems like Fort Greene residents were able to have a productive workshop with NYC DOT and the Fulton Area Business Alliance (FAB) last night to discuss the new public plaza planned for Fowler Square. A reader informs us that aside from a few minutes of haranguing from a few individuals, attendees could sit down together and share ideas.

NYC DOT, Council Member Tish James, Community Board 2, and the Fulton Area Business Alliance are hosting a community workshop tonight to gather ideas for a new plaza at Fowler Square -- the triangle formed by Fulton Street, Lafayette Avenue, and South Elliot Place in Fort Greene. In addition to lending your expertise as the new public space takes shape, this is an important one to turn out for because a handful of project opponents have managed to commandeer past meetings.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, here is a new and interesting way to compare streets. At www.beautiful.st, you can compare 200 randomly selected streets in Philadelphia, plucked from Google Street View, two at a time. Vote for the most beautiful and two more images pop up for you to compare.

Earlier this month you might have noticed a few press accounts about merchants in Jackson Heights who think a new public plaza on one short block of 37th Road is crimping their bottom line. The plaza is actually part of a much broader plan to improve street safety, speed bus trips, and reduce traffic congestion in Jackson Heights, which neighborhood groups and NYC DOT have been working on for years without receiving much media attention. Now that there's a tinge of conflict, the press is all over it -- an innovative and community-driven transportation project has turned into a story about shopkeepers upset over the removal of 20 parking spaces.

Joined by East Harlem seniors, advocates and City Council members, transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today kicked off a program to provide new and improved sidewalk seating.

Here's the second installment of Streetsblog's interview with Dan Biederman, head of the 34th Street Partnership and the Bryant Park Corporation. In the first part of the interview, Biederman discussed reactions to NYC DOT's recent public space projects on Broadway, and why the reality on the ground is much better for Midtown than most press accounts have let on.

Before Dan Biederman came to Bryant Park, there were no movable chairs, no free movies on summer evenings, no kiosks selling sandwiches and refreshments. No lunch time crowds and not much in the way of civic life or social activity, either. There was, basically, an open-air drug market in the New York Public Library's backyard.