Photo by Nick Whitaker
The bike lanes that have cropped up all over New York City (thanks to Mayor Bloomberg and his Commissioner of Transportation, Jeanette Sadik-Kahn) caused me to start thinking about how urban design relates to sustainable living. Biking is a nearly perfect mode of transportation for the streets of New York. It’s just fast enough to allow the city to unscroll before you, allowing you to absorb the unique atmosphere of each neighborhood.
Even more, I realized how unnatural it is for people to be shunted to the sidewalks so that cars can dominate our streets. New York was built with foot, cart, and horse traffic in mind, not auto traffic. And, the best views of New York are from its boulevards, but who can see them from the tin box of their automobile?
The Livable Streets Initiative looks to change that by taking the streets back from the machines. I spoke to Sarah Goodyear, editor of the Initiative’s Streetsblog Network, about what we can do to share the streets. She pointed out, “If you design a street to be friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists as well as motor vehicles, if you think about older users, people with disabilities, if you design it to be a slower, more pleasant place to be, everybody benefits.”
This philosophy, the core of the Livable Streets Initiative, is part of an urban planning movement called “complete streets.” It’s a sort of holistic view of what a street is: a place that’s part of the neighborhood, not just a patch of asphalt between buildings to drive on. “If you have places where people can walk,” Sarah stated, “they get to know their neighbors, they form the relationships that make for healthier lives.”
The Livable Streets Initiative wants everyone to know about the highs and lows of street usage in their community. That’s why they have four blogs, each reporting on the streets of a different city: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington DC. The blogs report on local politics, highlight news from around the country, offer opinion pieces and statistics and even run a police blotter that lists street-related crime.
The Initiative is not only a great resource for information about city development and urban planning, it’s also an educational and artistic venue. Streetfilms offers online content that highlights different streets issues and looks at different cities (one recent clip joins Seattle’s mayor on his 6-mile bike-commute to city hall). There’s also an education wing that visits schools to teach students about street safety.
The New, and more walkable, Times Sqare. Photo by Nick Whitaker
Sarah offered plenty of advice for citizens who want to change their relationship with the streets, “You can take a huge burden off yourself by not having an automobile. Go for a week or two weeks without driving a car, and see what it’s like.” (See also our “Car-Free In…” column for first hand accounts of ordinary people living without cars in various cities.) She admits that sometimes her family needs a car, so they’re members of Zipcar.
Sarah is also a strong proponent of riding bicycles, “They’re a tool to get from one place to another,” she explained, “And anything we can do to make it easier, safer, more convenient, we should be doing.” She’s thrilled at the growth of bicycling in New York, her hometown. “I started riding a bike when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I remember biking to a club with a friend. When we would ride up, everybody was like, ‘Oh my God I can’t believe you’re doing that!’ You can’t even imagine how much worse it was then!”
This sort of enthusiasm is inspiring. Browsing the Livable Streets website, I found plenty of inspiring data about the link between urban design and sustainable living. But even more importantly, I found a thriving community of people who had come to the same conclusion as me: city life is more pleasurable, and more safe, when the streets aren’t clogged by cars.
