I've lived in New York City for just about twenty years now but yesterday was my first trip to Times Square.

Sure, I've been to Times Square before. Plenty of times. But until yesterday Times Square had never ever been a destination for me. Rather, it had always been a place to avoid or, if unavoidable, a place to get in and out of as fast as possible on my way to somewhere else.

The New York City Department of Transportation's "Green Light for Midtown" plan brought me and a lot of other people to Times Square yesterday. And it kept us there. By simply removing motor vehicles from Broadway around Times and Herald Squares and inviting pedestrians in with seating, street performers, good people-watching -- and a naked cowboy -- New York City has created two great new public spaces for tourists, office workers and, yes, even jaded residents.

Streetfilms' Clarence Eckerson squares off with the Naked Cowboy. Icon Parking Systems, the Cowboy's sponsor, may be one of the few businesses unhappy with the new Times Square. The Cowboy is pleased.

The space is still raw and unfinished and it'll be interesting to see how it works during the weekday, but my two young sons and I had a blast yesterday along with thousands of others. Times Square is suddenly a place worth visiting and staying a while (especially if you're a parent desperate for an easy, low-cost weekend adventure for your kids).

The Naparstek boys experience Times Square for the first time. ("Can we get a big TV on the front of our house too?")

A large part of the design’s success stems from the altered relationship between the pedestrian and the structures that frame the square. Walking down the cramped, narrow sidewalks, a visitor could never get a feel for the vastness of the place. Now, standing in the middle of Broadway, you have the sense of being in a big public room, the towering billboards and digital screens pressing in on all sides.

This adds to the intimacy of the plaza itself, which, however undefined, can now function as a genuine social space: people can mill around, ogle one another and gaze up at the city around them without the fear of being caught under the wheels of a cab.

A more personal Times Square: Sunning in the middle of Broadway.

No doubt some aspects of the new Times Square will be found to be successful and others not working all that well. Still, DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and her team already deserve a ton of credit for their willingness to experiment and innovate. During the Iris Weinshall era at DOT, the idea of removing motor vehicles from Broadway was considered a huge long-shot, a Hail Mary pass, a kind of Livable Streets Holy Grail. It was difficult to imagine a version of the New York City Dept. of Transportation that would do it. These guys and their colleagues went ahead and did it...

NYC DOT's Seth Solomonow, Janette Sadik-Khan, Andy Wiley-Schwartz, Ryan Russo and Sean Quinn at Times Square on Monday morning.

Open Planning Project executive director Mark Gorton catches some rays.

The changes underway in New York City right now are pretty breathtaking and livable streets advocates deserve some credit too. Yesterday I couldn't help but think back to a January 2005 dinner at Mark Gorton's Upper West Side apartment. Former Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa was the guest of honor. Transportation Alternatives' new executive director Paul Steely White set up the event and Jody Gorton cooked up a delicious meal for Times Square Alliance president Tim Tompkins and about fifteen advocates and civic leaders.

The topic of discussion that evening was Broadway and it's potential to be a truly great, pedestrian-only public space. Peñalosa believed it was possible and he was inspirational in laying out the vision. Project for Public Space president Fred Kent had been thinking about the idea for 30 years and he provided the historic perspective. ITDP director Walter Hook had seen pedestrian streets work all over the world and he talked about international best practices. Tompkins had to live with the daily consequences of whatever happened at Times Square and he reminded everyone of the political realities. At the time it seemed a little far-fetched, this notion that Times Square might someday be a mostly car-free space. But here we are five years later and it's happening along with lots of other good stuff.

It was from meetings like this one that the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign was born and ideas like physically separated bike lanes, car-free streets and a less automobile-dependent city were popularized and made politically possible in New York and beyond. If you've been a part of New York City's livable streets movement, today's a day to pat yourself on the back. As Danish urban designer Jan Gehl says: "How nice it is to wake up every morning and know that your city is a little better than it was the day before."

Photos: Aaron Naparstek, Brad Aaron and Nick Whitaker.

In November 2006, Danish planner Jan Gehl met Streetsblog Publisher Mark Gorton in Times Square to reflect on the state of the city's public spaces. In this Streetfilm by Clarence Eckerson, EIC Aaron Naparstek catches up with Gehl in the new Madison Square to talk about what has changed in the intervening two years, and what can still be done to make New York a world-class pedestrian city.

Residents of all ages, electeds and planner-about-town Jan Gehl gathered at PS 87 last Thursday to mark the launch of "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets." A year-long community-based project of the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance campaign, the Blueprint [PDF], as its name implies, offers a detailed vision of street designs intended to improve safety, access and mobility for the car-free majority. Streetfilms' Robin Urban Smith was there and filed this report.

After evaluating downtown streets, city staff reported their findings on public life. Photo: Shin-pei Tsay.

Calling the assembled city staff "the pied pipers of the new way of doing business," Sadik-Khan touted the city's transition to more human-centered street metrics. "The tools that we've used in the past have done a really good job of helping us measure cars and traffic," she said, "but as we're looking to improve the condition of our streets for other users of the system -- for pedestrians, for cyclists, for people whether they're walking around, riding around, chatting, strolling, having lunch -- we need a much more comprehensive approach."

After a powerpoint from team Gehl, everyone got a feel for what Sadik-Khan was referring to. Fanning out from City Planning's Reade Street headquarters, 11 groups headed to different sites downtown, timers in hand, to see how well New York's streets and public spaces serve the people who use them. The evaluation combines hard stats like pedestrian and cyclist counts with open-ended questions that touch on the quality of the public environment and how well it supports social activity. The same technique underlies much of the data presented in World Class Streets.

DOT Assistant Commissioner Andy Wiley-Schwartz, who heads up the Public Plaza Program, said that the day's events presage permanent changes. "We are going to be working on different ways of building some of these methodologies into our standard operating procedure," he said, "so that we are more versed in studying street life." DOT will both perform the evaluations on its own, he added, and insert the work into consultant contracts.

Many of the city's urban planning advocacy groups were on hand, including the Regional Plan Association, Project for Public Spaces, and the Municipal Art Society. The multi-agency get-together drew their praise. "I think it's great that DOT, DCP, and EDC are collaborating on this initiative to create more sustainable streets in New York City," wrote MAS's Elizabeth Werbe in an email message. "This inter-agency cooperation bodes well for the city, considering the expertise of Gehl Architects in providing innovative tools to measure the conditions that allow for the development of pedestrian and bicycle friendly environments, in addition to the analysis and methodology needed to translate these findings into recommendations that will improve the public realm."

Another thing that bodes well, says Gehl, is simply the act of observing places close-up -- "to get people out there to see with their own eyes what's going on... by the end of the day, you know a lot about the city beyond the figures that you got."

Building upon PlaNYC and DOT's Sustainable Streets, World Class Streets focuses on improving the public realm by concentrating on plazas, complete street design, and Summer Streets-style pedestrian and cycling events. Together these measures aim to transform New York streets into "an environment that is enjoyable as well as functional" for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users of all ages.

For the report, Gehl Architects and DOT conducted a "Public Life Survey," gathering a wealth of data that identifies overcrowded sidewalks, streets without seats, excessive scaffolding, isolated public spaces, and a low ratio of stationary activities as shortcomings to address. "Often the most crowded areas (such as sidewalks near subway stops and street corners) are the places where most obstacles exist," it observes, also noting that "a vastly disproportionate amount of space is allocated to parking cars than to public seating spaces." One telling example is Main Street in Flushing, Queens, where pedestrians outnumber vehicle passengers by a ratio of two to one, yet pedestrians must squeeze into less than one-third of the space.

Among other interesting tidbits in the report:

• Stroget in Copenhagen has 444 cafe seats per 1,000 yards, vs. 15 on Broadway (p. 15).
• Just six percent of pedestrians on Broadway are either under the age of 14 or over 65 (p. 31).
• Sixty percent of storefronts in the Lower Manhattan survey area had closed metal gates on a Sunday at noon (p. 35).

Accusing city higher-ups since Robert Moses of asking only "how the cars can be really happy," Gehl said today's DOT has finally recognized that streets should accommodate a multitude of uses. "New York has wonderful, wide streets compared to other places," he told the audience. Thanks to these relatively spacious streets as well as unique urban density, cultural vitality, parks, and waterways, he said, "New York can have the best streets in the world."

A new city street design manual -- due out this winter -- will set technical guidelines for DOT and all city agencies to implement the changes advocated by World Class Streets. Meanwhile there are miles of bike lanes to create, sidewalks to widen, pedestrian refuges to build, new bike racks to install, and recalcitrant drivers to educate.

Streets designed for safe, accessible, and equitable use. That is the vision of the "Blueprint for the Upper West Side: A Roadmap for Truly Livable Streets," to be unveiled tonight by the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign. The product of one year of community-driven planning, in consultation with urbanist legends Jan Gehl and Donald Shoup, the 51-page Blueprint [PDF] is an expansive neighborhood-wide plan that would employ many livable streets concepts already in use by NYC DOT. 

Proposals include:

• Separated bike lanes and bike boxes on Broadway, Amsterdam and Columbus
  
• Bollard-protected pedestrian bulb-outs
  
• Leading Pedestrian Intervals
• Curb extensions to slow auto traffic and allow for garbage pick-up
• Bus bulbs with bike parking 
• Chicanes with reverse-angle parking on cross streets

The Blueprint was composed from input gathered via neighborhood surveys and citizen workshops in a community where drivers account for 10 percent of commutes but absorb 228 times more street space per capita, and where over 5,000 pedestrians and cyclists were injured or killed between 1995 and 2005.

Gehl will be on hand for tonight's reveal, as he was at the project's inception last November. The event is free and open to the public.

Where: P.S. 87, 160 W. 78th St. between Amsterdam and Columbus

When: 6:30 p.m.

RSVP here

"When I was a visiting professor at Berkeley in the 1980s, I used to come to Fisherman's Wharf and walk around," Danish urban designer Jan Gehl said Wednesday night, to more than 100 San Franciscans at the Pier 39 Theater near Fisherman's Wharf. "Now it's like deja vu; it's exactly like I remember it 25 years ago."

The Wednesday event was part of the ongoing public outreach effort for the Planning Department's Fisherman's Wharf Public Realm Project, which seeks to greatly enhance the quality of the public spaces around the famous tourist destination (nearly 13 million annual visitors, or roughly one-fourth of all visitors to New York City). Having been recruited by the city to impart his internationally-renowned vision locally, Gehl urged San Franciscans to consider best practices from cities throughout the world that have transformed waterfronts from failing public spaces into the vibrant heart of the public realm. He argued that the spirit and principles that have made Oslo, Copenhagen, and Melbourne so successful could work in San Francisco.

Gehl presented the preliminary findings of his study of the area [PDF], asserting that the most interesting places in a city are "where the water and the streets come together." He said smart city leaders around the world have reversed the trend of abandoning their waterfronts to so-called "undesirable elements," and instead have developed integrated parks and promenades that appeal to the various needs of every demographic. Successful cities have recognized the changing interests of city dwellers who often congregate in public spaces not out of necessity, but out of an interest in being near other people.

He was adamant, however, that quality public space was not the same as commodified public space, or the "Rouse-fication" of waterfronts so that they resemble theme parks or festival markets (think South Street Seaport in New York or the Bayside Marketplace in Miami, projects of the Rouse Company). These, he said, are "based on getting people down to the waterfront and then skinning them in different ways... getting them to buy things they don't want."

While Fisherman's Wharf already has a number of gimmicky shops that local residents loathe, Gehl believes that much can be done to improve the quality of public space with simple amenities, such as more benches and movable furniture. He was shocked that the area didn't have more places to sit and watch people pass by.

Gehl's study notes that the volume of pedestrian traffic to Fisherman's Wharf is already higher than some other prominent walking cities, including London and Copenhagen. Much like the "ped-lock" in Times Square, in Fisherman's Wharf there are far more pedestrians than cars, though the city has made greater relative concessions to the latter. While Jefferson Street's 60-foot width is equally allotted between pedestrians and cars, during peak periods there are 15 times more pedestrians using the space.

During the sometimes contentious question-and-answer period after the presentation, the audience voiced support for preserving (and in some cases renewing) the area's historical maritime traditions. Several commenters suggested developing a fish market to attract local residents to the area, while one woman, a captain of a fishing vessel, invited Gehl to sail the harbor to better understand the perspective of those who still make a living from the sea. A large round of applause went up when one audience member recommended closing Jefferson Street entirely to private cars.

Jeffrey Pollack, Proprietor of Nick's Lighthouse restaurant and the head of the Fisherman's Wharf Restaurant Association, said his organization hoped that the city would alter zoning laws to improve the retail environment, specifically supporting local businesses as opposed to chain stores. "We're the second largest tourist draw in California behind Disneyland," he said, "but we don't want to be Disneyland."

Photo: Matthew Roth

Hoping to keep pace with the progress in New York City over the past two years, the San Francisco Planning Department has commissioned Gehl Architects to transform several prominent streets and public spaces in the city, starting with one of the busiest tourist attractions in the U.S., Fisherman's Wharf. 

On Tuesday night, in front of a standing-room audience of special guests at Pier One's Bayside Room, Gehl presented his general vision for improving San Francisco's public realm. The event, sponsored by Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Livable City, and Walk SF, was the first in the new Great Streets Campaign Speakers Series, which will bring some of the world's most remarkable urban visionaries to the Bay Area in the coming months to share their successes and offer San Francisco models for instituting its own vision for a sustainable and healthy city. 

Gehl is in town for a week of presentations to the public, to city agencies, and to merchants' associations. On Wednesday, he will present the results of his firm's Fisherman's Wharf study to the public for the first time. The Planning Department is hopeful that his work will stimulate a larger discussion of the quality of public space among the stakeholders in the area.

John Rahaim, director of the Planning Department, noted that Gehl's work around the world brings a cachet to San Francisco and helps "set the stage to implement pedestrian improvements and demonstration projects on our streets." Rahaim is optimistic that Gehl's work will "start a process to implement the principles of [San Francisco's] Better Streets Plan," the comprehensive new pedestrian and public space plan that is awaiting completion of environmental review.

Gehl was cagey when asked about what San Francisco should do to be more like Copenhagen or Paris, arguing that the study his firm has completed for the Fisherman's Wharf project is only a preliminary analysis and not a proposal. Nevertheless, he argued that if San Francisco wants to be a "lively, attractive, safe and sustainable city [it must] be sweet to its pedestrians, sweet to its cyclists."

Photo of Jan Gehl and SPUR Executive Director Gabriel Metcalf by Matthew Roth

DOT has unveiled plans for a Grand Street cycle track [PDF] that bear the fingerprints of Danish planner Jan Gehl. It would be Manhattan's first cross-town protected bike path.

Grand Street is narrower than Ninth Avenue, where the existing protected path runs. Whereas the Ninth Avenue cycle track uses signal timing to prevent conflicts between bikes and turning vehicles, the Grand Street plan uses what DOT is calling a "mixing zone," a space shared by cyclists and drivers at the approach to an intersection (shown above).

In an unusually thorough and bike-positive story about cycle tracks (headline: "Streets are on track for safer bike lanes"), Villager reporter Gabriel Zucker explains:

The narrow-street pilot on Grand St. lacks these special lights; instead, a 90-foot “mixing zone” where the bike lane merges with a right-turn bay will allow cyclists and motorists to negotiate the intersection themselves. The mixing zone, like the entire cycle track design, was copied from Copenhagen, Denmark. According to Josh Benson, New York City D.O.T. bicycle program coordinator, the zones have led to a steep decrease in intersection crashes in Copenhagen.

The Grand Street cycle track would run from Varick Street to Chrystie Street, making the lack of a protected path on Chrystie, a north-south route, look like an even bigger missed opportunity. As DOT creates a network-within-a-network of safer bike lanes, what's holding back protected paths? Community Board politics seem to be the determining factor. While the Grand Street path falls almost entirely within the boundaries of CB2, which recently approved an Eighth Avenue cycle track, Chrystie Street is the domain of CB3. Community Board votes are not binding, but they are seen as a proxy for public opinion.

CB2 voted on the Grand Street cycle track last night. A CB2 representative was not able to retrieve the results of the vote this morning.

Image: NYCDOT 

Transportation Alternatives is seeking proposals to reinvent the intersection of 9th Street and 4th Avenue in Park Slope. "Designing the 21st Century Street," a competition open to the general public, will reward the three most promising submissions with up to $6,000 in prize money.

TA lays out some of the obstacles at hand on the competition web site:

Ninth Street is excessively wide and allows motorists to travel at speeds greater than the posted City speed limit of 30 miles per hour. Furthermore, Ninth Street was recently treated with a new bicycle lane that leads people to and from Prospect Park. Though the reasons for placing a bike lane on this street are clear ... the bike lanes have attracted some controversy because of the rampant double-parking that occurs in the neighborhood.

Fourth Avenue has a raised median to separate travel direction for the length of the avenue. At this intersection, the median has been shaved away to create dedicated turning lanes. This is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirements and is not a safe refuge for pedestrians, particularly the children and elderly, who can not make it across the street in the allotted time.

To be contenders, TA says, "Competitors must re-imagine this intersection as a healthy, safe and sustainable street that serves pedestrians and bicyclists first, while functioning as a transit hub and truck route."

Jury members include city planning and transportation staff, along with "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz and Danish planner Jan Gehl. Entrants must register by July 18 and submit proposals by August 18.

Care to get the ball rolling, Streetsbloggers? 

Photo: Transportation Alternatives

Why have Danes again been named the happiest people on the planet? Early this year ABC News cited bikes as "perhaps ... the best symbol of Danish happiness," and in this clip from "Contested Streets" it isn't hard to see why. Here, livable streets guru Jan Gehl and others explain the many ways an increase in bike traffic (now one-third of all commutes) has improved life in the capital city of Copenhagen.

But it didn't happen overnight. Rather, it took four decades of gradual change to make Copenhagen the place it is today. As for replicating that success elsewhere, says Gehl: "if you don't have enough nice spaces, you can see these [become] overcrowded spaces. Then you should just make more spaces."

In a piece from the March issue of Outside Magazine that seems especially relevant today, Tim Sohn writes about public space reform in New York City. His article is accompanied by an illustration of what the future of our city could look like: complete streets with dedicated bus and bike lanes, traffic calming gardens, and sidewalks wide enough to accommodate window shoppers without slowing pedestrian traffic -- none of which would depend on Albany for approval.

Recently, a New Yorker (let's call him Tim) was forced off a sidewalk by a double-wide stroller, a large dog, and an elderly pedestrian all traveling abreast. So he shimmied between parked cars, nearly collided with a bike messenger going the wrong way up a one-way street, and walked through the exhaust-choked margin of the avenue while fantasizing about a future in which New York City's clogged streets are reconfigured in favor of pedestrians and cyclists. A pipe dream? Nope, and you can thank advocacy/watchdog group Transportation Alternatives. New York is a walker's city, but its streets, which represent 85 percent of its public space, are monopolized by the fume-spewing, driving minority.

"For so many years, the streets have just been for cars, like NASCAR speedways," says Paul Steely White, TA's executive director. "We're trying to reclaim the city for the people." How? Well, thanks in part to TA's dogged pursuit of transportation reform, the city recently took a major step forward by retaining the services of the godfather of anti-automobile urbanism: Copenhagen-based urban designer Jan Gehl, whose Gehl Architects has helped draft plans for Stockholm, Melbourne, and, most famously, London. Gehl is now in the midst of an American invasion, having signed on to consult not only for New York but for Seattle and, possibly, San Francisco. The first step, he says, is getting people to think anew about urban life. "We can talk about it in terms of ingrown habits," he says. "Many people don't ask for changes because they don't know that changes are possible. "But NYC's hiring of Gehl's team is indicative of a general upsurge in both awareness of the need for change and the city's willingness to take action."

In April 2007, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled PlaNYC 2030, an ambitious 127-point strategy for the greening of the city, including ample transportation and public-space reforms. Already, pilot projects have been implemented all over New York to show people what the near future might look like: new painted, protected bike lanes on Ninth Avenue; dedicated bus lanes in Midtown; countdown signals at crosswalks; HOV/bus lanes on the Manhattan Bridge; landscaped pedestrian islands in Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza; a lot more bike racks. And even Bloomberg's controversial proposal for a London-style congestion charge ($8 to drive into Manhattan) has its supporters. According to White, "A year ago, congestion pricing was impossible, all this other stuff was impossible, but now it's a very fluid situation, and that's exciting." Gehl sees progress, too. "In New York, they are beginning to ask the right questions," he says. "What do we have cities for? Is it for getting from A to B or is it for developing the culture?" In his estimation, New Yorkers already know the answer: "The 21st-century lifestyle has arrived in New York, but, apart from the great parks, the spaces have not been developed to accommodate it. Yet."

A PDF (4.8 MB) of the illustration can be downloaded here

We do a lot of criticism here on Streetsblog, so in the spirit of the season we thought we'd reflect on what we in the livable streets universe have to be thankful for.

We'll get the most obvious one out of the way: a Department of Transportation that looks at the city's streets and sees more than just cars. Then there are the many specific improvements we've seen under the "new" DOT, from sidewalk directional decals to the Ninth Ave cycle track to the hiring of Jan Gehl. And of course there's a lot going on that doesn't involve city government.

What's on your list?

Photo: Louanne/Flickr

An op/ed by Eduardo Porter in today's New York Times makes a passing suggestion that by reducing the number of people who do solo car commutes, congestion pricing would make New Yorkers happier.

I can say this for sure: If it also reduces the number of honking, revving, careening and exhaust-spewing sociopaths clogging New York City streets in their gigundo sedans and sports utes it'll definitely make me happier. I don't know if it's just me or if for some reason there has been a sudden increase in idiotic driving and needless horn-blasting but lately I find myself wanting to take a sledgehammer to lots of New York City drivers' windshields. I suppose this sinks me pretty far down in the happiness rankings. Here's an excerpt:

The framers of the Declaration of Independence evidently believed that happiness could be achieved, putting its pursuit up there alongside the unalienable rights to life and liberty. Though governments since then have seen life and liberty as deserving of vigorous protection, for all the public policies aimed at increasing economic growth, people have been left to sort out their happiness.

This is an unfortunate omission. Despite all the wealth we have accumulated — increased life expectancy, central heating, plasma TVs and venti-white-chocolate-mocha Frappuccinos — true happiness has lagged our prosperity...

Despite happiness’ apparently Sisyphean nature, there may be ways to increase satisfaction over the long term. While the extra happiness derived from a raise or a winning lottery ticket might be fleeting, studies have found that the happiness people derive from free time or social interaction is less susceptible to comparisons with other people around them. Non-monetary rewards — like more vacations, or more time with friends or family — are likely to produce more lasting changes in satisfaction.

This swings the door wide open for government intervention. On a small scale, congestion taxes to encourage people to carpool would reduce the distress of the solo morning commute, which apparently drives people nuts.

Perhaps no coincidence, Denmark -- the land of Jan Gehl, communal, car-free public spaces and high-heeled cyclists -- consistently lands the #1 spot in studies of the world's happiest nation. Here is a recent study in the British Medical Journal.

Map of World Happiness: University of Leicester School of Psychology.

The street re-surfacing men and machinery were out in force in Soho last night. Houston Street Bike Safety Initiative Director Ian Dutton snapped this photo on Prince Street. Once the street is repaved, the Department of Transportation will stripe the hotly debated Prince and Bleecker Street bike lanes.

Lower Manhattan's newest east-west bike route is an alternative to the physically-separated bike lane that activists have long been pushing for on deadly Houston Street. In a presentation to Community Board 2 in March, DOT made the case that parallel bike lanes on either side of Houston Street is the better choice. DOT says its parallel route plan is based on successful projects in Berkeley, California and the Bergen/Dean Street bike lanes that run alongside busy Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. After extended debate, CB2 approved DOT's plan in April.

As a side benefit of the re-surfacing project, around 200 parking spaces will be eliminated to make way for the new bike lanes. Needless to say, the Soho Alliance will not be pleased.

Jan Gehl tried hard not to reveal any secrets during his Upper West Side Streets Renaissance presentation Tuesday night, but if you took a close look at his maps, it was apparent that Prince and Spring Streets have been part of his team's study area. What are the odds that Gehl will recommend that Mayor Bloomberg try out a car-free weekend pilot project for Soho next year? Pretty high, I'm guessing. If that moves ahead, how would a pedestrianized Prince Street fit with the new bike lane plan? Perhaps we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves here.

Dutton says there will be a ribbon-cutting for the new Lower Manhattan bike route at the end of the month.

Related:

• StreetFilms: Curbing Cars in Soho. 

It could have been just another gathering of urban idealists, agreeing with each other about how great it would be to have more public space for people, and less for cars.

Except last night's NYC Streets Renaissance event, "A New Vision for the Upper West Side," featured renowned Danish planner Jan Gehl -- who, as has been mentioned a time or two on Streetsblog, has been hired by the city to help bring to life the long-held wishes of New Yorkers who want their streets to be welcoming communal destinations, or, at least, something more than loud, dirty, traffic-choked motoring facilities.

After introductions by Transportation Alternatives' Paul Steely White, The Open Planning Project's Mark Gorton and Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Gehl joked that he was not yet at liberty to discuss his analysis of New York City streets, specific recommendations or much of anything else. Despite the warning, he teased the capacity crowd at the Jewish Community Center with vignettes of what the city could look like in the near and not-too-distant future. Ten years from now, Gehl said, New York could compete with Copenhagen, where nearly 40 percent of commuters travel by bike, for the crown of world's bike-friendliest city.

Whereas pedestrians now spend up to 25 percent of their walking time waiting on signal changes, Gehl sees a city where a presently accepted nod to auto supremacy like the button-activated walk light ("an application to cross the street," as he calls it) becomes an outmoded relic. Gehl's New York is one of flourishing street trees, attractive and functional street furniture, dedicated bus lanes, local outdoor art, complementary lighting, relaxed pedestrians and so many cyclists that the city will need to widen bike lanes to make room.

Specifically, Gehl looks to have big plans in the works for Broadway between Columbus Circle and the Battery. He also spent a bit of time discussing Fordham Road in the Bronx and Main Street in Flushing, noting that pedestrian volumes on these beleaguered outer borough thoroughfares are comparable to Times Square and some of the world's busiest urban promenades.

Gehl said his team was excited by New York City's wide streets and avenues, as they provide the space to easily accommodate wider sidewalks and new kinds of bus and bike lanes. The key, he said, is supply and demand; while cars will fill whatever space you give them, on-street or off, reducing auto capacity by even a small percentage would make a big difference to other users.

According to Gehl, the top priority for any city looking to humanize its infrastructure is to change the way citizens view the purpose and function of the city itself.

"New York has become very much a 'How to get from A to B' city," Gehl said. "It is not a law of nature that you have this much traffic."

Photos: Jonathan Barkey 

A standing room-only crowd turned out for last night's Upper West Side Streets Renaissance event with Danish urban designer Jan Gehl and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. All in all, it was an inspiring night and we'll have a more detailed write-up later today. Though Gehl wasn't allowed to get too specific about the work he is doing for the city, reading between the lines of his presentation, it was apparent that he is set to present some pretty groundbreaking ideas to Mayor Bloomberg. Word has it, Gehl is having lunch with the Mayor today. Hopefully the Mayor will be inspired too. 

Clarence Eckerson has already produced a three-minute StreetFilms wrap up which, frankly, is also inspiring being as how I know for a fact that he didn't get home last night until around midnight and he had quite a few beers in him.

Additionally, the staff at Transportation Alternatives and Open Planning Project deserve a lot of praise. They did a great job preparing materials and organizing the event.

Speaking of which, have you had a chance to play with the new NYC Streets web site? It's still in beta and there are lots of cool features yet to be installed. But pretty soon you'll be able to use this web site to launch your own Livable Streets project. You'll find a variety of tools, resources and other people to help you make changes in your own community and neighborhood.

If you're thinking about coming to tonight's Upper West Side workshop with Jan Gehl but you are having trouble picturing what a "Streets Renaissance" might look like, the video above was made for you. It consists of a series of photo simulations produced by New York City Streets Renaissance Creative Director Carly Clark.

Whipped into a StreetFilm by Clarence Eckerson and set to some bumpin' electronic dance music, the photo sims seek to answer questions like: What if Amsterdam Avenue were a "complete street" rather than a 5-lane highway, or a stretch of Broadway were turned over to pedestrians, or a neighborhood street were designed to accommodate community life rather than traffic throughput and automobile storage? Watch out. By the end of this one minute video you might be dancing.

You can find three more short Upper West Side StreetFilms and a bit more of Carly's photo sim work here:

• Redesigning Amsterdam Avenue for People Rather Than Speeding Traffic (1:03)
  
• The Perverse Allocation of Streets Space on the Upper West Side (1:24)
• Is SUV Storage the Best Use of Upper West Side Street Space? (1:02)
  

Can New York really be tamed?
I don’t have any vision of taming New York, and I don’t think it should be. I do think there’s an imbalance between the various uses of the street that can be adjusted.

You still bike daily. Do you bike when you’re here?
Once it’s reasonably safe, you can ask the senior citizens to bike. I shall be happy to be the first. My younger colleagues bike a lot here to find out how it is. It’s a matter of age and daring, and a few other things.

Like being crazy?
That’s your words.

Is London’s congestion-pricing plan working?
Traffic has dropped there by 18 percent. And when London was given the 2012 Olympics, suddenly everybody was eager to improve the city very fast. If you can only get an Olympics, everything will be fine.

How can we reduce traffic in midtown?
There’s a number of ways, but congestion pricing may be the easiest and most-proven means of doing it quickly.

So you think it’s necessary?
Did I say that? I didn’t say that.

With all the bike theft here, could a Copenhagen- or Paris-style bike-sharing system work?
I certainly think so. These bikes would look different and be geared so that they’d be a little bit awkward to bike long distances on. At first in Copenhagen people collected them, but after a few years, that was not so interesting anymore.

What do you think of the new bike lane on Ninth Avenue?
It’s grossly overdone. You can make the whole thing one third the width.

Have you told the city this?
Not yet. I will next week.