MAS is pleased at the City’s announcement today that the two portions of Broadway around Herald and Times squares closed to vehicular traffic since June of last year are to be made into permanent pedestrian plazas.

The goal of the Department of Transportation (DOT) pilot program was to reduce travel times around Times Square and Herald Square by eliminating the congestion where Broadway meets Sixth and Seventh avenues. This goal was achieved in part, but other direct consequences of reclaiming these streets for pedestrians, including a 35 percent reduction in pedestrian injuries, and the creation of 2.5 acres of new public space in one of the city’s densest neighborhoods, are the most exciting outcomes.

MAS welcomed the experiment when it was first announced last March as a great step towards creating improved, pedestrian-friendly streetscapes, and we congratulate Mayor Bloomberg and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan today on having taken this bold step.

MAS President Vin Cipolla said, “Making these two new public plazas permanent fixtures of our streets is a fantastic achievement that promotes what Jane Jacobs called the ballet of the sidewalk — the unrehearsed choreography of people moving through the city. It will be of enormous lasting benefit to New Yorkers and the vitality of our city’s street life.”

Originally, the City had discussed extending the closures of Broadway further to the south, but there seem to be no plans at the moment to do so.

To read more about MAS’ advocacy on New York City streetscape issues click here.

In late October 2009, we reported that the Department of Buildings and the AIA New York Chapter had teamed up with an array of other civic organizations to organize an international design competition to re-imagine the maligned sidewalk construction shed. Yesterday, the city announced that a winning design has been chosen from three finalists.

The winning design, chosen by a jury including MAS Chairman David Childs, is titled Urban Umbrella and was developed by Young-Hwan Choi, a 28-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania. His design will improve quality of life, reduce construction impacts on businesses, increase pedestrian safety, and increase available space for pedestrians on sidewalks, while also complimenting the city’s architectural beauty. Continue Reading>>

Sidewalk sheds are required whenever renovation or new construction takes place on a building, or a Department of Buildings inspector suspects an unsafe condition exists. These sidewalks sheds are erected in order to protect pedestrians and typically remain in place for nearly a year, sometimes even longer. Currently there are more than 6,000 sidewalk sheds standing in New York City, spanning more than a million linear feet. 

The Department of Buildings and AIA New York Chapter have teamed up with an array of other civic organizations to organize an international design competition called UrbanShed that seeks a brighter future for this unique New York City structure. Contestants had been asked to design a sidewalk shed that is sustainable, economical and attractive.  Continue Reading>>

This piece was first published on March 11 of this year, shortly after the City announced its proposal to pedestrianize portions of Broadway as of this past weekend.

When Washington Square Park was closed to traffic in 1959, prominent residents of Greenwich Village, including Jane Jacobs and Eleanor Roosevelt, celebrated with a ribbon-cutting and by burning a car in effigy. Their ceremony marked the conclusion of a decade-long fight with Robert Moses, who had insisted that the park must be traversed by cars in order to ease the city’s traffic congestion. New Yorkers today are reaping the rewards of Jacobs’ victory. Moses’ predictions of traffic coming to a halt proved false, and Washington Square Park is one of the city’s best-known and best-loved public places.

Today, we are on the precipice of a historic moment in reclaiming our streets for people instead of cars. Mayor Bloomberg and the Department of Transportation have announced an ingenious plan to reclaim part of Broadway — at both Times Square and Herald Squares — for pedestrians. Like the closing of Washington Square Park in 1959, their common-sense plan is also one of those rare instances when what is best for the pedestrian is also best for the driver. Continue Reading>>

MAS was delighted to host Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan on Wednesday night for the premiere presentation of the city’s first truly comprehensive set of guidelines for street design, Designing Streets in New York City. David Burney, Commissioner of the Department of Design & Construction, Adrian Benepe, Commissioner of the Department of Parks & Recreation, and Amanda Burden, Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, were also in attendance.

Constituting 26% of the total area of the City, the streets and sidewalks are by far its largest public space, and the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) new manual represents a rethinking of the way city government works with regard to this vital resource. Continue Reading>>

As is often the case, Jane Jacobs said it best: “Streets and their sidewalks, the main public places of a city, are its most vital organs… If a city’s streets look interesting, the city looks interesting; if they look dull, the city looks dull.”  Citing Jacobs in a recent decision which affirmed the constitutionality of New York City’s billboards and signage regulations, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rightfully recognized the City’s substantial interests in protecting neighborhood aesthetics and promoting traffic safety. For 115 years the Municipal Art Society of New York has been fighting to improve New York City’s streets; this decision, coupled with the City’s renewed promise to enforce its signage restrictions, is a significant victory in that fight.

The problems of outdoor advertising are not, of course, a recent phenomenon; when the New York Times noted that one of Manhattan’s most celebrated retail districts had become a “frightful spectacle” characterized by a “wilderness of discordant and shrieking signs” it was not merely recalling the ills of non-compliant signage, but forecasting them, in 1902.  Continue Reading>>

MAS has been involved with signage regulations since the turn of the 20th century, when the New York Times noted that one of the City’s famed retail districts had become a “frightful spectacle, made so more by the wilderness of discordant and shrieking signs.”  MAS even introduced a revision of the building code in 1908 that would regulate billboards for the first time. The problem of signage pollution continues to impact New York’s streetscapes, but recent litigation has affirmed the City’s right to regulate outdoor advertising in favor of traffic safety and aesthetics.

The Southern District of New York held today that New York City may enforce its arterial highway advertising ban, regulate the registration and permitting of existing outdoor arterial signs, and restrict the locations of internally illuminated signs throughout the City.

A number of New York City’s signage regulations were challenged by Plaintiffs Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc., Atlantic Outdoor Advertising, Inc., Scenic Outdoor, Inc., Troystar City Outdoor, Inc., Willow Media, LLC (together, the “Clear Channel Plaintiffs”) and Metro Fuel, LLC. Continue Reading>>

Click here to read Lauren Collins’ article in this week’s New Yorker magazine on Howard Brandston’s recent “Night and Light and the City” MAS walking tour.

Noticing the difference between the yellow light of high pressure sodium and the white light of metal halide is akin to learning a new word. Once you know it, you see it everywhere. One woman on the walking tour suddenly noticed on her umpteenth bike ride across the Brooklyn Bridge that it is partly lighted by metal halide and partly by high pressure sodium — and that she much prefers the true colors conveyed by metal halide lights.

What about you? Do you have a favorite nighttime walk or bike ride? A park or street or esplanade that has special beauty after the sun goes down? Or, are there parts of city that you dislike because of the lighting? Let us know and it will help us plan our next nighttime walking tour, come fall.

A group of more than 50 New Yorkers gathered last night in Herald Square for an after-dark walking tour. They came to hear about the difference between high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) lighting from Howard Brandston, one of this country’s leading lighting designers — and to see the difference for themselves. The City is in favor of HPS lights to save energy, money, and lessen light pollution of the night sky. The streetscape committee at MAS favors MH.

Under HPS lights on Eighth Avenue, fair-skinned people looked yellow, evergreens appeared brown and dying, and primary colors (held aloft on colored foam core boards) turned muddy and difficult to distinguish. Howard Brandston described HPS lighting as appropriate for roadways and highways, but not for a city which (as Lewis Mumford wrote) “…exists not for the passage of motor cars, but for the care and culture of man.” Continue Reading>>

Noted lighting designer Howard Brandston, whose commissions include the Statue of Liberty and Battery Park City, will be leading a free walking tour on Thursday, March 5 at 6:30 p.m. to examine how different kinds of electric light can highlight architecture and increase livability or decrease visibility and hamper livability.

In this podcast [click on player above to listen], Mr. Brandston discusses the ways that lighting in the city can affect a citizen’s perception of color and peripheral vision, its impact on crime and property values, and how different kinds of lighting is appropriate in different circumstances, with MAS Director of Tours & Programs Tamara Coombs.

For more information about the tour, including meeting place, click here, and to learn more about this issue click here.