Quality of Life
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Will NYC Finally Get Garbage Out of Pedestrians’ Way?
The departments of Sanitation and Transportation say they'll do something about it. But will their formal "request for expressions of interest" from community, industry and advocacy groups actually solve the problem?
June 4, 2019
City Loading Zone Plan Will Help Ease Traffic On Austin Street In Queens — But Local Pols Still Oppose It
Loading zones reduce congestion and improve safety in commercial areas. Why do politicians instinctively support on-street car storage instead?
August 27, 2018
Study: High-Traffic Arterial Roads Reduce Quality of Life, Even Blocks Away
Seminal research by Donald Appleyard in the 1970s found the volume of traffic on a street affects quality of life for residents in profound and unexpected ways. For example, the amount of social contact people had with their neighbors was curtailed for those who lived on high traffic streets compared with those living on quieter streets. People even defined their "home area" much more narrowly if they lived on a busy road.
August 17, 2016
Shared Space: The Street Design NYC’s Financial District Was Made For
For people in cars, the Financial District is a slow-speed maze. For everyone else, it is one of the city's most transit-rich destinations. Despite this, most of the street space in the area is devoted to cars.
July 3, 2014
How Road Planners Fail Neighborhoods
Why do neighborhood groups -- especially in low-income areas -- have such a hard time influencing the design of major road projects? An interesting case study from the University of Colorado-Denver sheds some light.
June 4, 2014
Meet Streetmix, the Website Where You Can Design Your Own Street
Last fall, Lou Huang was at a community meeting for the initiative to redesign Second Street in San Francisco. Planners handed out paper cutouts, allowing participants to mix and match to create their ideal street. Huang, an urban designer himself, thought the exercise would make for a great website. Now, after months of work beginning at a January hackathon with colleagues at Code for America, it is a great website.
August 12, 2013
Transportation Investments and America’s Quality-of-Life Gap
For a while it didn't seem certain, but after a critical vote earlier this month, it looks like California's on track to build high-speed rail. And, I'll be the first to admit, California -- with two large, global metros just a few hundred miles apart -- is a great place for it.
July 20, 2012
Pedestrian Burdens: Send Us Pics of the Parking Garages Killing Your Street
Get your cameras ready, Streetsbloggers. It's time to show Department of City Planning Director Amanda Burden what city-mandated parking garages are doing to the streets in your neighborhood.
November 10, 2011
Rezoning to Encourage Street Life on Brooklyn’s Fourth Avenue
When the Department of City Planning put forward its rezoning of Park Slope in 2003, one of the earliest of the now 111 rezonings under Mayor Bloomberg and City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, it was intended to help turn Fourth Avenue into "a grand boulevard of the 21st Century."
June 22, 2011
MAS Survey: New York City Is Livable But Not Everyone Benefits Equally
New Yorkers think their city is very livable, a new survey conducted by the Municipal Art Society shows, but livability isn't equitably distributed across the five boroughs. To make the city truly livable, said panelists today at an MAS conference, New York needs to figure out how to bring its best features to all neighborhoods.
October 21, 2010