Baruch ha’ba.
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) talk each month about cities & all their discontents: streets, environment, energy, cultures, people, food, form, etc. This month, we cover:
- What makes a great public space;
- The power of the block party;
- De-escalation through design;
& much, much more.
Each month, I get a notification from Substack that what I’m writing is too long for email, launching me into an editing tailspin. I’m always trying to streamline Streetbeat, so it’s an easy digestivo. (We all consume a lot of content every day, and this shouldn’t add to that clutter.) I’ve cut and consolidated sections to get there, but I’d like to make another snip: what you’re reading right now.
Going forward, I’ll save the pre-amble—since there’s technically already one above us—and jump right into it. Less chit-chat, more real talk.
So without further adieu…
Connective tissue
‘Place-making’ is one of those terms I always loved for what it represents—taken quite literally, it’s the thought process behind making a place—but I always wanted to break it out of the academic circles it often finds itself in. Because it’s something we all think about when we visit anywhere, whether consciously or unconsciously. Why is it that we’re drawn to a particular street? Or part of a park that we love? Or even a shopping center, where we feel so inclined to stay a while? That’s the idea of place-making: pinpointing what those ingredients are, so we can then create a perfect recipe for public space. In a way, it’s understanding what makes us human.
Project for Public Spaces, an organization that helped to popularize the phrase, has boiled down this recipe to four ingredients. They asked me to write about the third in their series: access and linkages. Or how we get to a place; how we get through a place; and how we then get to other places. It’s where accessibility and mobility collide. In that sense, the best public space should allow us to feel more connected to our town or city, and each other. Here’s the scoop.
In session
It’s September, which means the school year has arrived. This start feels particularly autumnal: it’s cold and rainy, it’s darker earlier (in the Northern Hemisphere, that is), and lots of folks are calling out sick. But we’re managing to make it work. During the fall session, I return to teaching Journalistic Inquiry: The Written Word, NYU Journalism’s undergraduate reporting 101 course. I’ve got a lively and curious bunch this year—a relief for my first-ever night class—so expecting some good stories to come soon to our Medium and Instagram.
In addition to teaching, I also help the department coordinate events. Almost every week, faculty members invite journalists of all backgrounds to come and talk on a variety of topics, and the occasions are usually free and open to the public. (For example: we’ve got Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! coming in early October.) This was one of my favorite perks as a student, so I’m glad to now be able to shepherd them into being. And sometimes, I’m a part of the events themselves: this Monday, I’ll join my colleague Felipe De La Hoz, who does a bang-up job covering immigration, on a Zoom discussion moderated by the department’s Publications Director and all-around great person, Whitney Dangerfield. The topic: how to make freelancing work. Tune in!
Fight for your right
I forgot how and when I first heard about LeRoy McCarthy. I do remember that I was living in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights at the time, and one day, I read about how, just a few blocks away, a local hip-hop fan was trying to rename a corner in Bed-Stuy for Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G., who was born there. He had gotten press, but not much. Some saw it as a gimmick; others argued the late rapper didn’t deserve the honor typically bestowed upon firefighters, slain police officers, diplomats, or civil rights leaders because of his music’s graphic nature. (For reference: the nearby Nostrand Avenue is named after a slaveowner.) I was fascinated by LeRoy, the politics of naming our streets, and what that says about us. So I reached out.
I ended up tagging along with LeRoy everywhere for one of my first longform pieces, in Narratively. He hung up signs, worked with artists to paint murals, and testified at what felt like endless community board meetings. I watched LeRoy’s ideas get shelved or lose votes entirely. But he persisted and years later, he won: Christopher ‘Notorious B.I.G.’ Wallace Way, his initial focus, became a reality in 2019. Earlier that year, ‘Wu-Tang Clan District’ went up on Staten Island. He even got the MTA to write ‘RESPECT’ at the Franklin Avenue subway stop after an Aretha with the same last name passed away.
In August, LeRoy was honored for his contribution to hip-hop history at parties and celebrations of the genre’s 50th anniversary. And shortly after, he notched another victory: the renaming of ‘Beastie Boys Square,’ an intersection in the Lower East Side that dons the cover of the trio’s second album, Paul’s Boutique. I get the feeling that LeRoy’s just getting started.
OSA: Envisioning
When organizers applied for an Open Street in Astoria, Queens, at the pandemic’s onset, 31st Ave rose to the top for a few reasons: it wasn’t a major commercial thoroughfare, like its two parallels; it connected several destinations; and it already had a sharrow, or shared lane, for cycling (even if it’s not very good). The city had been eyeing 31st Ave for some time—the community lacked a safe east-west bike lane, and the corridor seemed like the best candidate. And if we’re following the idea that Open Streets programs are basically ‘iterative design’ processes of pilots and quick-builds, then hosting one there certainly helps your cause: we often say the 31st Ave Open Street shows what’s possible every Saturday and Sunday, 12pm to 8pm.
And now, that reality doesn’t feel far-off. In mid-September, the NYC Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) held its first community workshop for a full redesign of 31st Ave, where city officials said exactly that: the Open Street had prompted conversations about the entire corridor, a length of over 30 city blocks. The avenue jumps back and forth between commercial and residential, so city planners are pitching a ‘bike boulevard,’ a design where traffic is diverted elsewhere using one-way street conversions and physical barriers. That allows for both a protected bike lane as well as curb access for different needs.
The workshop, which saw record turnout, felt like the start of a new chapter for us—the closest we’ve gotten to real change since the Open Street began in 2020. (You can read more about the specific happenings in press coverage.) But what stood out me to most was who I didn’t know there: countless faces showed up on a Thursday night to a school gym, some wearing shirts with our logo, to demand that the city act after a spree of local traffic fatalities. Post-it notes on printouts asked if the Open Street could be expanded, everyday, or made permanent, which is our preferred option. NYCDOT will continue to refine the proposal with nothing expected until next year. But it was a nice validation of what we had thought: the people had been shown what’s possible, and wanted more of it.
Bright Side: Block parties 4ever
I think a lot about the block party on my street growing up. As a kid, it was the best day of the year, bar none—a time when you could ride your bike in the street without worry, stay up late with friends, and eat a bunch of good (free!) food from what felt like every neighbor you had. Who, it seemed then, you were meeting for the first time, and otherwise didn’t see much in your day-to-day. But on my block, that all stopped after September 11th, 2001—in a Long Island town where baseball fields are named after residents who perished that day, partying just didn’t feel right. Then, the neighbor who organized them moved, and that was that. No more block parties on Marshall Avenue.
Even though block parties are known to bring people together, we’ve made them really tough to throw. They need a few really energized neighbors with time to gather a lot of signatures and money to pay for things, which not every block has, especially in low-income communities. Then police are often asked to arbitrate, which doesn’t always go well. It’s no surprise, then, that we’ve seen a decline in block parties as years go on: we’ve pinned this pop-up public space experiment down behind barrier after barrier.
That brings me to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Last year, the city tried something different: instead of putting up roadblocks at every crossing, they incentivized residents to apply for block parties by offering $200 stipends, which could be spent on any aspect of planning. Applications tripled. The program did so well, the city is now thinking of other ways it can continue to boost participation. (The City of Boston also worked with CultureHouse, who I’ve written about here, on a block party kit.) People will turn out for block parties—if you just give them the tools to actually throw one.
On the Radar
Discouraging Through Traffic (The Happy Urbanist, on TikTok)
In America, our streets are over-enforced. Now, I don’t mean that in a literal sense: this is a society that goes after people for ‘jay-walking’ more than dangerous drivers. It’s just that the automobile’s rise mirrors that of police power, as driving—or cracking down on driving—turned the police into a much more omnipresent force in our everyday lives. Not only does that often lead to deadly encounters, but also, it allowed for an incredibly broken system, where traffic tickets sometimes make up the bulk of municipal budgets, to take shape.
But what if we’re designing for police intervention, too? When I think of street design, I typically think of the safety benefits from calmer speeds, which offer space for other modes (walking, cycling, etc.) to co-exist. Admittedly, though, I hadn’t ever thought of how enforcement can be encouraged by street design, until I saw the video above on TikTok. Open roads enable high speeds, and we ask drivers to slow down with signs—which police then have to enforce. But if we slowed cars down through the built environment, using proven measures like chicanes or curb extensions, we reduce our reliance on police to intervene. And like traffic cameras, which follow a similar argument, it relies less on human error or work schedules, creating actual long-lasting safety.
(H/t to Katja Holtz and David Shannon for the share.)
Streetbeat Gig Board
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The micromobility giant Lime is looking for someone to expand their footprint in Europe. (London, UK)
Nieman Lab, which does some of the best writing on the media, is hiring two staff writers. (Remote)
play:ground, an organization on a mission to bring more play to urban streets, wants to add three more board members. (New York, NY)
Kita Monthly
A break from regular Kita programming…