Public Space

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:

Recently, a bunch of us took a bike excursion along the East River waterfront from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn to the new Water Taxi Beach in Hunters Point, Queens. Traffic was light most of the way and street life relatively heavy.

This spring, the DOT transformed the corner of Willoughby and Adams Streets in downtown Brooklyn from a dull gray, little-used automobile pass-through (above) into a pedestrian space complete with chairs, benches, plants, tables and sun umbrellas.  But would the people come? Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson took his video camera to the corner to find out. The result is a 1-minute, 26-second Streetfilm on the Willoughby Street transformation.  He quotes Streetsblog's own Ethan Kent:

Every so often I find little gems of street planning that I would love to see replicated elsewhere in the city. For instance, the other night I walked past this side street with bump outs at the crosswalk that give pedestrians more space and prevent automobiles from cutting corners too sharply.

Bayard Street, Chinatown. Photo: SkyShaper

DOT's failure to provide a traffic signal or even a simple crosswalk at intersections along DeKalb Avenue disconnects the neighborhood from its bus stops and its park.

The Post had a story yesterday reporting on the last ditch effort to stop the Yankee's bad plan to build a new stadium with fewer seats for us Yankee fans but dump more traffic and emissions on the already suffering low-income neighborhoods of the south Bronx. Here's how the Post characterizes opponents of the plan:

Remember Wednesday's guess-the-anonymous-suburb contest? I'm very impressed: You all knew the right region -- the northeast United States. (Was it the Ames sign? The trees? The first comment suggesting that this was a place "north of the city"?)