سلام عليكم!
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) talk each month about cities & all their contents: streets, environment, energy, cultures, people, food, form, etc. This month, we cover:
- the power of e-trikes for all of those suburban Boomers (hi Dad!);
- a local tragedy converted into safe streets momentum;
- a massive silver lining of remote work.
& much, much more.
Hey all!
Briefly on the news front: as someone who covered breaking news for many years (those were the days), I want to send my respect to all the reporters who thought they’d be able to enjoy their early spring Thursday evening before finding out the former president was indicated indicted. But then again, those folks haven’t had a normal news cycle since, like, 2015. Especially after yet another month in the upside-down.
That aside, a heartfelt THANK YOU to the folks are (voluntarily!) opting to be paid subscribers. It’s amazing to see the reader count grow each day—for the past few months, every edition has had over a thousand views. There is plenty to cover in the world of cities, and the fact that more and more people are wanting to read about it is, as my late aunt Pat would say, a beautiful thing.
On that end, a programming note: after two years, I’m sadly paring down the ‘Public Space of the Month’ section of this newsletter. For the old-timers, this section started off as an ode to parklets, which were (and continue to be) all the rage in the early days of the pandemic. Then I broadened the scope. But what I found is that I was repeating the same themes. So, a new approach: if you want to submit a photo of your favorite public space—i.e. park, plaza, library, station—I will feature it at the top of this here newsletter. I’ll drop the submission form at the end of this edition, just below my cat. (And the archive will always exist.)
Now, let’s talk:
E-trikes for all (older adults)
My dad and I are planning a trip soon to the new Rad Power Bikes showroom in Brooklyn. As someone who returned to two wheels in 2020 after years away, he’s the target audience for Rad Power, America’s largest e-bike seller. Baby Boomers like himself make up the bulk of e-bike purchases—and that makes sense: cycling gets harder with age; older folks tend to have more space and money for one; and, also, they’re fun. (And if there’s anything pickle ball has taught us, Boomers love fun.) This is part of the power of e-bikes: they make cycling way more accessible than traditional bikes.
But when we consider the larger demographic shift underway—both in America, and worldwide—electric mobility is also about get way more important. After decades of suburbanization, Boomers are set to retire en masse in environments shaped by the automobile, and soon, that very same population will be less physically capable of driving. This is also a generation that is living longer, growing old alone, and at risk of isolation. So being pigeon-holed into a neighborhood where you have to drive to get a carton of milk isn’t exactly ideal.
Enter the e-trike: the latest in a series of e-mobility advances that are poised to reshape towns and villages alike, particularly for our aging population. That’s the gist of my latest piece, for Bloomberg CityLab. Read it here.
A mourning, and an outcry
Last month, I told the story in these pages of Dolma Naadhum, a seven-year-old child who was killed in late February about six blocks from my home, after a driver (with a permit and some alcohol in their blood) blew through a stop sign. She was walking home from the park Angela and I go to often.
Since then, a few things have happened.
For one, Dolma’s grieving family members and infuriated parents at her school have mobilized—they’ve gotten thousands of signatures for her brother’s petition, demanding a traffic light be installed at the corner; they had NYCDOT Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez visit the site, with top brass and elected officials in tow; and they’ve successfully pushed for a curb extension and a few ‘No Standing’ signs at the corner. This week, they found out that the stop light (and some other changes) are coming next month.
Secondly, the 114th Precinct’s often-laudatory monthly meetings are now a flashpoint for a hyperlocal debate over street safety. The two since Dolma’s death have seen a steady flood of residents asking questions like, why do I almost get hit every single day crossing the street? Or, why is it often the police parked illegally? Or, in short: is anyone doing anything about anything?
Knowing my proximity to it all, Streetsblog has asked me to chronicle what’s been happening in my own backyard. The first dispatch is about my street—Newtown Road—and how Dolma’s death there has average Astorians thinking beyond a stop light or street sign. And the second brings us to the last precinct meetup, and how folks are showing up to say: enough is enough.
Local tragedies tend to spark an eruption of anger, which recedes as change appears null and the steady march of time goes on. But, neighbors keep telling me, something about this seems different. And it’s starting to look that way.
Steps forward, steps backward
This last month has seen a few facets of my policy work for Center for an Urban Future converge. (It is city and state budget season, y’all.) And some are worth noting, because they say a lot about where priorities are right now.
Let’s start with CUNY Reconnect. This was the program launched by the New York City Council to help older students return to CUNY and finish their degree. A brief I authored for CUF, which highlighted the successes of Tennessee Reconnect, its model, was directly cited by Council Speaker Adrienne Adams in her announcement. And some fantastic news since: CUNY started the 2023 spring semester with 14,000 students signed up for re-enrollment, surpassing its goal by 4,000. That’s a lot of folks back on track to graduate.
Next up: parks. After the 2017 publication of A New Leaf, New Yorkers for Parks took our data—which showed that the city’s parks infrastructure was falling apart—and ran with it, creating the Play Fair advocacy coalition and scoring some major policy wins, like a historic infusion of dollars into maintenance. The pandemic scaled back those gains, which are just now being reinstated. But still, the coalition hasn’t seen its biggest goal realized: 1% of the city budget. (Currently, parks see ~0.6%.) This month, NY4P put out a report detailing what, exactly, 1% would get us—and it’s a great read. Now, will it convince Mayor Eric Adams, who swore to 1% as a candidate after the pandemic sent park usage into the stratosphere? (It hasn’t yet landed.) That’s anyone’s guess.
On that note: libraries. I’m glad to see Branches to Recovery mentioned in several articles detailing how the Adams administration wants to ax library services in the budget, which would: a) cut Saturday operating hours; b) reduce educational programs; and c) freeze any new branch construction. (The NYPD overtime budget? Untouched.) In our report—which took years of research, interviews and site visits all over the five boroughs—we talked about how: a) more operating hours expands library services to more people, like families and gig workers; b) more educational programs could teach more people ESL and tech skills, both crucial to well-paying jobs; and c) many communities go without a functional (let alone ADA-accessible) branch. The City Council is fighting to restore the cuts in the final budget, and it’s gotten lots of press attention. (As it does every year.) Because libraries need more right now, not the same as before.
And lastly: capital construction The city takes forever to build stuff, which wastes taxpayers’ dollars, time and confidence in the system. There are a set of recommendations being pushed forth by the City right now, many of which were taken almost word-for-word from Stretching New York City’s Capital Dollars. And now, the state (who controls a lot of this) is considering a few of them, at the same time it’s hoping to finalize a contentious budget. (More on that next month.) Let’s see if it gets the priority it deserves.
Better routes = better ridership
Much of the conversation around public transit’s pandemic recovery has focused on rail (metro, commuter, light, etc.) rather than buses. And that’s for a number of reasons: rail carry more people; their emptiness during the pandemic’s first waves were more visibly visceral; and their ridership is dominated by white-collar, wealthier riders, who—unsurprisingly—get more attention paid to them in the news cycle. And when we’re discussing the long-term impacts of remote work on transit, it’s perhaps more prevalent there.
But buses have a seat at the table. Our former streetcars are the overlooked workhorses of so many cities, and often the only public transit option around. Their ridership also bounced back faster than their on-track counterparts. (For example: New York’s Capital District bus service, CDTA, is basically back to pre-pandemic levels of ridership, which is a rarity right now.) And that’s because frontline workers tend to fit bus riders’ profiles: older; immigrant; low-income; outer borough; and from communities of color. Bus ridership returned because those riders needed to get back to work.
Last year, bus-time revival was the theme of a story I wrote for Bloomberg CityLab about how New York City was planning to improve its system—the largest in the country—in this new landscape. One of the main focuses: network redesigns, where transit agencies reassess routes to reflect more modern travel patterns. (This hasn’t been done in almost a century!) The overhaul of the Bronx—the borough with the most bus riders—was due that summer, and now, the results are in: it’s working. Ridership is up six percent (read: thousands of more people each day) and speeds, about two to three percent, notably on routes that saw the biggest changes. It’s a living example of my colleague David Zipper’s argument in Vox this last month: improve service, and riders will come.
Back on the radio
When Diane Jenks asks you to return to the Outspoken Cyclist podcast, it’s an instant yes. In the latest episode, our wide-ranging interview covered the new ‘super sidewalks’ of Manhattan; the conclusion of my work at the Central Park Conservancy; antiquated road regulations; teaching journalism in 2023; and all sorts of other fun stuff. Tune in!
OSA: Building a Culture
I’m going to make this section fairly brief this month. We’re now in the 30-day countdown to the launch of the fourth (!!!) year of the 31st Ave Open Street, and we are busy. (I’ll let you know how it goes next month.) We’ve told the world, we’ve launched a fundraiser for $10k, and we’ve opened the hatch for folks to submit requests for events. Now, we’re in the process of lining all of those things up so we’re good to go on Earth Day, the city’s official launch date.
But I did want to talk about what a fourth season means. Since this program’s start, NYCDOT (the agency who oversees Open Streets) has made a big deal about repetition. As in, a true public space is reliable; it’s there when you expect it to be, not whenever it decides to be. Parks function in this way. So, for the last three years, the 31st Ave Open Street has followed that: it’s up and running every Saturday and Sunday, from April to October.
And that does something. When a community asset is a known quantity, it’s better absorbed into the cityscape—and community psyche. This is why I often argue that ‘docked’ bikeshare, with designated locations, are better than ‘dockless’ bikeshare, flung all over the place. You know where to look, and what to expect when you get there. It’s also why—and this was a theme of The New York Times’ incredible COVID-19 oral history piece last month—the pandemic was so disruptive. It imploded what sociologists call our ‘blasé attitude’ of things in our lives: that everything will work the same way, forever.
For Open Streets, four years of activity isn’t exactly an experiment anymore; instead, it’s more of a tradition. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard in the last few weeks about ‘open streets season’ coming back. Like it’s as common as the flowers blooming, or the sun setting later. We’re trying to harness that energy by welcoming more volunteers, working with partners to improve our use of the shared space, formalizing processes, and ensuring our operations are air-tight. (You know, like a real organization.) Consider it a spring awakening.
Bright Side: The Accessibility of Remote Work
As we pass the three-year anniversary of the pandemic’s start this month, we’re still arguing about remote work. It’s the small talk of our modern era — do you go in? — an instant icebreaker that so many can relate to (or vent about). But the elasticity of remote work has undertones of ableism—it assumes that, before the COVID-19 restrictions of March 2020, going into an office wasn’t a physical problem for you. It just involved, maybe, a time-sucking commute, awkward water cooler talk, and a bad boss. But otherwise, you were able to get to an office and back home, day in and day out.
It’s worth reminding folks: that wasn’t the case for a lot of people. The idea of commuting to a workplace—where one drives, takes a bus, or rides the subway—was built around systems that weren’t made with folks with disabilities in mind. And that’s not even taking into account whether the building itself is accessible. (So many are not.) The desk you may be sitting at right now, reading this very newsletter, probably couldn’t even fit a wheelchair. Nor could the door frame.
So it’s no surprise that we’re witnessing a record rate of disability employment. Being able to Zoom in, or only having to go a few feet to an ‘office,’ has been quite literally life-changing for people with disabilities—and will continue to be, as workplace policies shift to accommodate. So, to my able-bodied readers: let’s remember that next time we complain about ‘going in on Thursdays.’
On the Radar
‘Have cities become more livable since COVID? Not for everyone.’ (Bloomberg)
This month, I felt obliged to highlight this series for a couple of reasons. The highs and lows of urban life, of course, are themes of this newsletter, and what I obsess over. But also, the writers at Bloomberg chose five global capitals—New York; Rio de Janeiro; London; New Delhi; and Hong Kong—three of which I’ve lived in. (Hong Kong’s the only place I haven’t been.) So, I was interested.
It’s worth reading every part of the series, even if you’ve never been to any of these places. They say a lot about where cities are at in 2023, and how the pandemic’s lasting effects are seen everywhere. But what struck is how economic it all felt. (It is Bloomberg.) Practically every take on ‘livability’—in quotations, because its definition is up for debate—is spoken about in capitalistic terms: the return of tourism; the rate of development; unemployment figures; inward and outward migration; etc. This implies that a city’s finances have this almost existential control over how much joy one pulls from their urban environment. (That’s my definition of livability, fwiw.)
I’m not necessarily saying that’s incorrect. Cities are capitalist states, by and large, and we know that it is difficult to enjoy capitalism if you don’t have… well, capital. It’s hard to love your city if you don’t have the means to. (Not going to make a C.R.E.A.M. reference. Not going to do it.) But thinking of livability in dollars doesn’t tell us the whole story. A good, livable city shouldn’t cost a lot to enjoy. Parks and open space—free, at its core—should be in abundance. Your transportation choice shouldn’t condemn you to debt. Healthcare services should be accessible and equitable. And, shit, it shouldn’t cost you a month’s rent to have a great meal, and small businesses shouldn’t have to charge a racket to make rent. (Related: Angela and I have a very scientific ‘cheap/good’ scale for food that we apply to all cities we visit. Ask me about it sometime.)
Sure, livability is determined by a city’s economic vitality, but it’s also determined by the vitality of the services and security it provides to its citizens. And as we emerge from this seismic shock to the urban core—how we work in cities; how we make money in cities; and how we invest in cities—policymakers and planners shouldn’t forget that there’s more to life than just that.
Streetbeat Gig Board
Wanna post a job? Submit it here.
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Trust for Public Land—part builder, part defender of green space—is looking for a director of health. (Location: Flexible)
New York Focus, a new-ish journalism outfit doing some impressive investigative work, is hiring an audience engagement editor, a Capitol reporter, and contributing writers. (Location: New York)