Two years ago, frustrated by the desultory and scattershot progress in making New York’s streets safer and more pleasant, Curbed asked a team of volunteer architects and consultants led by WXY to imagine a thoroughly reengineered Third Avenue as a model for the rest of the city. The stretch they came up with seemed like a fantasy then and doesn’t exist now, but a different section of the avenue is getting a makeover, and many of the elements we featured are appearing elsewhere, adding up to creeping yet visible change. It can’t come soon enough: Drivers still slam into pedestrians, bikes, and cars with appalling regularity and horrific consequences. Last year, car crashes killed 267 people, including 132 people who were just walking along.
So a slow-moving wave of streetscape improvements is cause for both celebration and impatience. Bit by bit, the Department of Transportation is updating them, using an ever-more-precise tool kit. The pandemic’s Open Streets program, patched together at first with movable fences and lemonade stands, has borne a new set of permanent transformations, fitted out with measures to tame cars, attract (and slow down) bikers, relax pedestrians, and elide the difference between sidewalk and street.
Making Headway on the Perfect New York Street – Curbed, December 12, 2023
Photo: New York City Department of Transportation via CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED
