Public Space

According to the Project for Public Spaces (PPS), Portland, Oregon's Pioneer Courthouse Square is one of the Top 10 greatest public spaces in the U.S. & Canada. I couldn't agree more. Affectionately referred to as the city's "living room" the charming and versatile block was once slated to be a parking garage in the 1960s. Thankfully the residents didn't let that happen.

9th St. and 4th Ave.: "A dangerous crossing that divides surrounding neighborhoods and inhibits street life."

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.

Our coverage of the Toward Carfree Cities conference continues with this Streetfilm from Elizabeth Press, who brings us a unique public service project.

Next Thursday, artist Olaf Eliasson's much-anticipated "New York City Waterfalls" installation will debut along the East River. The project, as elegantly described in this week's New Yorker, "features four tall, widely separated, openwork steel towers housing powerful pumps that will pull river water up to a high basin and send it cascading down again, continuously, from seven in the morning until ten at night, through mid-October."

Last night's Tony winners aren't the only newsmakers on Broadway these days. In May DOT quietly rolled out plans to give the city's premier north-south thoroughfare the livable streets treatment from Times Square to Herald Square (between 42nd and 35th Streets). The redesign replaces two car travel lanes with pedestrian plazas and a protected bike lane.