Atelihai*
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) share thoughts & writing each month on cities & their contents: streets, people, energy, cultures, food, form, etc. Thanks for being here, and hope you enjoy your time!
Happy to say that the last Streetbeat was the first to break a thousand views.
I’m still surprised every time this newsletter is open by literally anyone with a pulse (fyi, journalists tend to suffer from heavy doses of imposter syndrome), so thank you, thank you, thank you for continuing to subscribe, share and click away. We’ve amassed quite a following—close to 600 subscribers and counting!—and continue to grow each week. If you’ll keep reading ‘em, I’ll keep writing ‘em.
On that note: this month’s version is slightly shorter than usual, as September has been a mad dash of deadlines, new workflows, and other commitments. Summer’s over, folks! (At least in the North.) And the Queen is dead!
Now, let’s get to it:
How does a park better serve the public?
I’ve said this many times before, but as more pockets of society are privatized—meaning they require a receipt of purchase to participate—urban parks are one of the last truly democratic spaces cities have at their disposal; a sort of modern-day Greek forum. But because of that, parks are also where our wedges are often on full display, exposing issues of mental health, implicit bias, socioeconomic divide, amongst others. Our ingrained inequities can play out in parks; sometimes subtly, sometimes viscerally.
So what can park or public space groups do? An urban park enjoyed by the few—or, rather, not entirely the whole—isn’t a great urban park, in my opinion. So thinking through equitable parks development is essential in this day and age, as we confront inequity on a grand scale. What does it take for a park to be truly utilitarian, but also not majoritarian? And how can a group truly engage the public? Of course, parks cannot (and should not) solve all problems, but maybe they can push us in the direction of building safer, healthier places for all.
That was the theme of the Spring Urban Park Roundtable, put on by my team at Central Park Conservancy’s Institute for Urban Parks in St. Louis, MO, this last spring. It was an engaging two days, full of deeper (even uncomfortable at times) conversations and exercises about race, class, and ability within or outside of different organizations. And we devised a ton of solutions to import or export to urban parks and public space groups everywhere. We landed on four categories:
Defining Community: Who is this space for?
Engaging the Public: Whose voices need to be heard?
Catalyzing Growth: What does it take to build meaningful, lasting change?
Measuring Impact: What do success and failure look like?
You can read more about what was discussed here.
This month is the Fall Urban Park Roundtable, in Los Angeles, CA, and we’ll issue similar recommendations and ideas after. The theme: ‘Convening Community in Urban Parks’—a particularly poignant topic in the wake of the pandemic. Excited to hear and learn from a city that, for me, isn’t very synonymous with green space! (And also be in L.A.!)
Back in school
Summer break didn’t last too long for me, but it’s been a delight to see the halls of New York University’s journalism school fill up with life again as the 2022-2023 academic year gets underway. (We’re even doing live events again!) I go back to the basics in the fall—less cities-focused; more of a ‘Here’s how you talk to strangers’ sort of thing—teaching an introductory undergraduate reporting class that I took once upon a time, which is especially fun at a time when New York City is still figuring out what it’s going to look like in 2022 and beyond. We put up what we’re seeing and hearing on Instagram and Medium.
But now that I’m helping out the “Reporting the Nation/New York” graduate concentration as its coordinator, there’s another exciting project in the works: helping to restart Pavement Pieces, the program’s publication. (My foregone days as an editor at NYU Local and Washington Square News are definitely not behind me.) We’re in the process of forming the masthead now before the students embark on reporting trips to Martha’s Vineyard and Wisconsin for the midterm elections. Excited to show off what comes of it!
Streetbeat Recco: ModeShift
I’m constantly looking to add newsletters to my ‘Recommendations’ section, because: a) I appreciate this community; b) there are so many good ones; and c) knowledge is power! If you have any more I should know about, shout them out in the comments! But in the meantime, I’m particularly hyped on ModeShift!
Hosted by Via’s head of policy Andrei Greenawalt and former Via SVP Tiffany Chu, the podcast is like a ‘who’s who?’ in the world of transportation right now. It explores how our mobility became maybe not so mobile, and what cities can do to offer residents more freedom in their options of getting around. (This was a topic Tiffany and I spoke about extensively when I profiled her last year for MIT Tech Review.) First guests feature Boston Mayor Michelle Wu (who Chu is now chief of staff for); the great Yonah Freemark of the Urban Institute; and David Belliard, the Deputy Mayor of Paris.
I’m stoked for it! And hope you’ll give the first episode a spin.
OSA: Permanence
This fall, 31st Ave will finally get a bike corral. We were promised one last year, but stuff came up; now, we’re in the final stages of placement for a curbside bike rack. It may not seem like much—we’re talkin’ about an extension of one corner and maybe 3-4 feet of curb—but it’s one more step towards visualizing what change could look like. The colorful planters (now outfitted with spruces for the fall and winter) we had installed at each street corner yielded a similar effect. But aside from these bits and bobs, when the Open Street ends on Sunday evening, there’s little to show for this two-block stretch’s alter-ego on weekends.
Permanence is important. When we asked people last year what physical infrastructure upgrades they wanted to see, it was tough to garner answers until we offered examples of what else could exist. Often, our creativity can be limited to our perceived spectrum of possibility. (Like the Overton Window, but for our local environs.) And now, that’s slowly, slowly starting to come true.
This year, we’ll also have more than stock photos to show. West 103rd Street, in Washington Heights, is readying its redesign. 39th Ave, in Sunnyside, became the city’s first-ever ‘bike boulevard;’ Berry Street, in Williamsburg, and Underhill Ave, in Prospect Heights, seem destined to follow. Dyckman Street uptown and Doyers Street downtown are now full-on pedestrian plazas, or getting there. And then there’s the Paseo Park, in Jackson Heights, which I wrote about last month.
But permanence, for some, is intimidating; it’s a clear sign that whatever change has come is here to stay, much like what Obama’s election (and then re-election) to the White House represented to swaths of the country who fretted over the inevitable reality of a non-white majority. It’s no surprise then that the introduction of the Paseo Park has ratcheted up the verbal barrage aimed at volunteers, into a new territory of bigotry and hate. Permanence can deter the nay-sayers—it’s hard to roll back progress, once it’s been had—but also, make their voices sound much louder than they really are. (2016 ring a bell?)
We’re not sure what will come next year. (Right now, the city is just barely making its deadlines.) But for now, we’ll take a bike corral.
On a related note, 31st Ave Open Street made a cameo in a segment from Cheddar News about how NYC streets function. Kyle Gorman, the head of the program, and myself come in at the 13-min mark:
Bright Side: Clean Curbs for All
This morning, New York University became the first educational institution to join New York City’s burgeoning Clean Curbs pilot, its latest attempt in reining in the Mount Everests of curbside trash bags that line the streets every night—a problem for all sorts of different reasons. The pilot—which is currently limited to private institutions and Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) as ‘maintenance partners’ (e.g. NYU will join the Union Square Partnership)—essentially flips a parking spot into a home for small containerized bins, and then dresses it up with planters and other accoutrements. There’s sometimes daylighting, too, or when an intersection is made more safe through heightened visibility. So not only does it clean up the sidewalk, but also, it makes the street a little nicer, too.
(Full disclosure: plenty of other cities have had containerized trash for years, and New York City is very far behind.)
City in Spotlight: Giethoorn
This month’s selection is not a city concocting a cutting-edge solution for cutting emissions. Or through traffic. Or planning near schools and libraries. It’s not a global capital; in fact, it’s not even a city, technically. (But hey, rules can be broken here at Streetbeat.) Instead, it’s just a place in the Netherlands that’s not Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, or some other urbanist paradise. It is a Hobbiton-looking and Tolkien-sounding town called Giethoorn, and in lieu of cars and roads, they have boats and bridges. Enjoy.
Public Space of the Month, September 2022 Edition
Name: Bedford Slip
Location: Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Features: Slip lanes, or filter lanes (in British English), are streets designed for cars to make turns, bypassing the normal direction of traffic. You probably have seen one in the last 24 hours—they’re common in almost every modern city, and many suburbs, too. Lots of folks don’t think they should exist, as they can pose a danger to pedestrians by making quick turns more attractive and, therefore, more speedy. So it’s become increasingly common to see slip streets morph into mini-squares or better designed intersections.
Bedford Slip is one of them, but with a unique twist: when NYCDOT put in the curb extension but held back from further action, advocates made a point to maximize what they had. (Again, this goes back to the art of the demo.) So almost every day, vintage clothing stores along the street—in this area, you can throw a rock and hit a dozen—use the extension as their outdoor showroom. When I visited recently, I was surprised to walk through aisles of button-ups and jeans in a tight space of concrete defined by plastic bollards and some granite blocks. Now, the volunteer-led push is being parlayed into a petition to turn Bedford Slip into a proper plaza.
Have a public space you love? Send me your faves!
Streetbeat Gig Board
There are no job listings this month, but a programming note:
The readers of Streetbeat are what make writing Streetbeat so great. So I was happy to receive a message from a group of urban planners working to raise awareness around New York City’s new law: effective November 1, employers must provide a ‘good faith’ salary range for every job posting.
It’s a huge win for workers, who are too often left in the dark when it comes to salary negotiations and then have to scramble once they’re low-balled. This is the unfortunate reality for freelancers like myself in regards to fees for stories or projects, and I’m sure many of you all reading this have your own stories to share. That said, going forward, Streetbeat will only advertise job listings in this newsletter that fit the bill. Thanks, Dash Henley, for bringing it to my attention! (And reading Streetbeat!)
Have a job to post? Submit it here.