Quality of Life

After Mayor Bloomberg's December announcement of his PlaNYC initiative to prepare for a sustainable New York of 9 million people by 2030, New York New Visions, the group of architects and planners originally organized around Ground Zero rebuilding, announced it was expanding its scope to tackle the new challenge. Last night, in a stark white room in the basement of the American Institute of Architects building in Greenwich Village, a collection of almost equally stark white faces began reimagining the New York of the future.  

A new study to be published in the Feb. 17 issue of the Lancet makes a strong case for the link between proximity to vehicular traffic and poor lung function in children. An article on Medical News Today sums up the report, which is currently available online to Lancet subscribers.

On Thursday, as New York City's highest ranking transportation officials argued before City Council that the city's increasing traffic congestion and automobile dependence is "an indication of the vitality and the growth of the city of New York," London's Mayor Ken Livingstone was in Davos, Switzerland announcing that he aims "to make London the world's leading center for research and financial development on climate change." Livingstone said:

The top brass over at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey are patting themselves on the back about the PA's plan to take over Stewart Airport near Newburgh, NY. "The region clearly needs additional capacity for air travel," Anthony Coscia, the agency's chairman, was quoted as saying in the New York Times. "It's undeniable. This is intended to remedy exactly that problem." If the deal goes through, Stewart, 60 miles north of New York City, will become the region's fourth major air hub.

Unlike New York, Copenhagen, Denmark's planners measure city streets for much more than "Vehicular Level of Service." This map, for example, quantifies stationary activities on a summer weekday in the city center. From Public Spaces Public Life by Lars Gemzoe and Jan Gehl, 1996.

Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff had an excellent letter in the New York Times on Sunday in response to the article about Sara Robbins, the Brooklyn Heights woman tragically, horrifyingly killed by a private sanitation truck last month:

Thirty years ago the health arguments against car-dependence were 90 percent about air pollution and 10 percent about physical inactivity. Now, with tailpipe pollution down and obesity and diabetes up, those percentages are reversed. The latest evidence is a valuable new report, Steps to Get New Yorkers Moving (PDF file), from the Public Health Association of New York City.

Via a Streetsblog tipster: In Valley Village, Calif., near L.A., people leave their trash in the bike lane for the convenience of the sanitation crews.

Monday night was the first meeting of the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project. About 130 neighborhood stakeholders filled the gym at the Holy Cross School in Midtown to begin a process to transform Ninth Avenue from a dysfunctional, traffic-choked, polluted highway into, what organizer Christine Berthet says should be "a neighborhood Main Street" for Hell's Kitchen and Clinton.