New York: City Streets

Dates
Duration
AICP Credits
The Program

New York City is at the forefront of transforming its streets for people.

Learning objectives
  • Analyze New York City’s approach to redesigning streets as public spaces that prioritize people over cars.
  • Examine successful projects such as Broadway’s plazas and Times Square’s pedestrian transformation.
  • Understand how community groups, advocacy organizations, and local businesses shape street-level change.
  • Discover how pandemic-era open streets and outdoor dining sheds have become permanent city-run programs.
  • Explore community-driven initiatives like the 34th Avenue Open Street and Corona Plaza’s vendor program in Queens.
  • Learn from initiatives such as the Brooklyn Greenway and Citibike (the largest bike-share in the country) to understand how bike infrastructure can be both community-led and region-wide.
  • In a city where the majority of people do not own cars, explore how congestion pricing is providing funding for public transit and how models like the 14th Street Busway are informing improved bus service city-wide.
  • Gain insights from leaders in transportation advocacy, urban planning, policy, and design about the challenges and successes of transforming streets.
  • Learn about the environmental challenges New York City faces and how streets are a part of becoming climate-resilient while creating greater equity.  
Schedule
  • Discover the history of New York’s street transformation, learning how pilot projects and iterative design have informed change.
  • Experience the 14th Street Busway to understand it as a model for improved bus service throughout the five boroughs as congestion pricing funds New York’s public transit system. 
  • Walk Broadway from Union Square to Times Square, led by NYC planners and designers.
  • Engage with civic leaders and designers to learn about tactical urbanism and public spaces.
  • Walk Williamsburg’s Berry Street and meet the community organizers who have transformed this open street from a pandemic response into a permanent neighborhood open space. 
  • Ride the Brooklyn Greenway to learn about how it fits into plans to create a Five Borough Bikeway.
  • Discover how Citibike (the largest bike-share system in the United States) has been expanded through community-led initiatives
  • Walk the 34th Avenue Open Street and learn about how the street is a venue for community-led programming seven days a week.
  • Visit Corona Plaza and learn about advocacy for street vendors and public plazas.
  • Discover the Queensway project and its integration into the regional bike network.
  • Celebrate the experiences of this immersive class and reflect on what you hope to take back to your own city and professional life
Pre-Registration
Includes
  • 4 nights accommodation at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan
  • Meals: Breakfast and two group meals
  • Exclusive meetings with key officials, advocacy leaders, and community groups who have led New York’s transformation
  • Walking/biking tours and site visits
  • Access to New York CitiBikes (Bike-share) and public transit
Accomodation & Logistics

(Video: STREETFILMS®)

Curator

Alison Sant

Lead curator

Alison Sant is an urban designer, author, and teacher. She co-founded the Studio for Urban Projects, an interdisciplinary design collaborative that has worked for nearly 20 years at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, art, and social activism. The Studio focuses on public programming, urban prototyping, and civic dialog that aims to bring social justice and sustainability to the design of cities. In her role as partner, Alison has been a design captain for the Market Street Prototyping Festival, a designer-in-residence at the Exploratorium’s Bay Observatory, and a member of the Bionic team for the Bay Area Resilient By Design Challenge. In 2016, the Studio for Urban Projects was honored for contributing to its field by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts as a member of the YBCA100.

Alison is the author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities, named among the best books of 2022 by the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) and Planetizen. She is currently working on a new book entitled Streetlife (Island Press). Sant’s writing has been featured in U.S. News and World Report, Streetsblog, Earth Island Magazine, New Cities, City Lab, Planetizen, and Fast Company. She has taught at the College of Environmental Design, the University of California Berkeley, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the California College of Art. Alison currently teaches at Harvard Extension School’s Sustainability & Environment Program.

Meet the Experts

Tiffany-Ann Taylor

Vice President for Transportation, Regional Plan Association

Tiffany-Ann Taylor is the Vice President for Transportation at the Regional Plan Association (RPA). Prior to working at RPA, she served as Deputy Director of Freight Programs, Education and Research for the Freight Mobility unit at the New York City Department of Transportation and as an Assistant Vice President at the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
During her time in New York City Government, Tiffany lead transformative passenger transportation projects, freight policy, and truck safety and compliance initiatives. Prior to her time with the City, Tiffany focused on suburban and regional planning efforts while working for the Suffolk County Department of Economic Development & Planning on Long Island, New York where her primary projects were centered on passenger transportation, open space, and economic development. She holds a B.A in Government from The College of William & Mary and a M.S in City & Regional Planning from Pratt Institute.

Tiffany is a first-generation American, the brainchild of the Hindsight Conference and former President of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association. Tiffany is an alum of the Coro Leadership New York Program, the Urban Design Forum’s Forefront Fellowship Program, the NYU Rudin Center Emerging Leaders in Transportation Fellowship program and is a former mentor of Transit Center’s Women Changing Transportation Mentorship program.

Kathy Park Pierce

Brooklyn Borough Organizer, Transportation Alternatives

Kathy thinks creatively about how to bring communities together around shared goals that make our city a better place to live. She created Garden Train, the volunteer-led public school gardens network, the Korean Americans of Brooklyn group, & the Citizen Squirrel initiative to encourage families with young children to be civically engaged.
Today, Kathy is the Brooklyn Organizer for Transportation Alternatives, the advocacy organization that has led the movement for safe, equitable streets in New York City for almost 50 years. During the de Blasio administration Kathy was selected to be a mayoral appointee to the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP). Whether it's her work for our streets, students, or school and community gardens, Kathy strives to empower neighbors to help shape and improve our city for all.

Danna Dennis

Senior Organizer, Riders Alliance

Danna has been building communities and fighting for positive social change for years. As a college student at SUNY Herkimer, she represented her freshman class in student government and coordinated public relations for the Black Student Union. Danna is a longtime volunteer in the Seventh Day Adventist Church where she has served as a youth leader and planned mission trips and conferences, convening more than eleven hundred people. Before joining the staff of Riders Alliance, Danna worked in the healthcare field and was a volunteer leader at Riders Alliance fighting for better C train services and affordable MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers on the Fair Fares campaign.

Ya-Ting Liu

Chief Public Realm Officer, City of New York

Ya-Ting Liu is the Chief Public Realm Officer for the City of New York. Liu brings over 15 years of policy, community organizing, coalition building, and government affairs experience to the Adams administration. She has dedicated her career to building coalitions and partnerships to deliver projects across a range of issue areas, including transportation, sustainability, and technology. For the last year, she has served as chief strategy officer to Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi, a title she will continue to hold concurrently with chief public realm officer.
Before entering city government, Liu worked as the director of government affairs and policy for the rideshare company Via, as sustainability program director for the New York League of Conservation Voters, as director of transit advocacy for Transportation Alternatives, and in federal advocacy for the Tri-State Transportation Campaign.
Liu earned a Bachelor of Science in Conservation Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mike Lydon

Principal, Street Plans Collaborative and Author of Tactical Urbanism

Mike is an internationally recognized planner, writer, speaker, and advocate for livable cities. NPR, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC News, Bloomberg Cities, Salon, Next City, Wired, and Monocle have featured his work, among many other publications. Having delivered more than 250 keynotes, workshops, trainings, and lectures since 2009, Mike has exerted a global influence on how people think about city transformation. In 2018, Mike was named by Planetizen as one of the top 100 most influential urbanists of all-time.
Mike is the creator of the The Open Streets Project and the globally acclaimed Tactical Urbanism: Short-Term Action, Long-Term Change Vol. 1 – 5. With Tony Garcia, Mike is the recipient of the 2017 Seaside Prize and co-author of Tactical Urbanism (Island Press, 2015), named by Planetizen as one of the top planning books of the past decade. Mike collaborated with Andres Duany and Jeff Speck in writing The Smart Growth Manual (McGraw-Hill, 2009).
A founding member of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, a Board Member for CNU New York, and a steering committee member of the Next Generation of New Urbanists, he remains active in both local and national planning, design, and smart growth advocacy issues. He lectures frequently and leads workshops and trainings on the topics of smart growth, tactical urbanism, public space, and complete streets/active transportation. Before launching the firm in 2009, Mike worked for Smart Growth Vermont, the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition, and Ann Arbor’s GetDowntown Program. From 2006 – 2009 Lydon worked for DPZ CoDesign, an international leader in the practice of smart growth planning, design, and research techniques.
Mike currently serves on Transportation Alternative’s Executive Committee for the New York City Harbor Ring project, and is an advisor to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. Mike received a B.A. in American Cultural Studies from Bates College and a Masters in Urban Planning from the University of Michigan. He encourages you to trade four wheels for two.

Jim Burke

Co-Founder, 34th Ave Open Streets Coalition

Jim Burke is a longtime community resident of Jackson Heights, a well-known LGBTQ activist, safe streets advocate, Volunteer Chair of TA Queens, and co-founder of 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition. Through his advocacy and that of other coalition leaders, 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition created a vibrant open space during the pandemic and beyond, which not only provided important opportunities for socialization and community building, but also brought a wide array of cultural programs and social services to the neighborhood. 34th Avenue has become a micro mobility corridor, community center, and outdoor gym rolled into one.

Clarence Eckerson

Videographer, Streetfilms

Clarence has been documenting advocacy transportation for 20+ years and has produced more than 1,100 videos for Streetfilms. He’s frequently referred to as “the hardest working man in transportation show biz” for his dedication to making difficult, wonky concepts more accessible and entertaining to the general public.
With no formal video training or education in urban planning, Clarence attributes much of his accumulated knowledge to never holding a driver’s license. He shoots 99% of his footage by bike, foot, train, or bus, which gives his filmmaking a unique, see-it-as-it-happens feel. The older he gets, Clarence loves commuting more and more by bicycle since NYC is a much safer place to bike then when he arrived in 1991.
In 2022, Clarence was honored with the World Bicycle Day award by the United Nations, recognizing his lifetime body of work that enlightens the public, journalists and elected officials throughout the world. They've been watched an estimated 50 million times collectively.
He lives in Jackson Heights, Queens just off the world-famous 1.6 mile long 34th Avenue open street.

Emily Weidenhof

Director of Public Space, NYC DOT

Emily Weidenhof is Director of Public Space at NYC DOT working closely with community groups throughout the five boroughs to re-imagine their streets as public space. She’s focused on the role of the public realm in strengthening communities for over a decade, deeply involved in policy, management, legislation, and most recently leading efforts to create Shared and Seasonal Streets in New York City. Emily has worked as an Architect and Urban Designer in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York including at the NYC Department of City Planning. She has researched and edited two publications with The Earth Institute at Columbia University on the potential impacts of natural gas extraction to the Upper Delaware community and on strategies for maintaining sustainable agriculture in the Catskill Region. She has researched and lectured on the importance of open space in the chawls in Dharavi in Mumbai, India and the role of streets and public space in preserving cultural heritage in rapidly developing Asian cities such as Hong Kong. Emily received her B. Arch from the Pennsylvania State University and her M.S. in Arch & Urban Design from Columbia University where she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, teaching with the MSAUD Studio.

Maria Pulido-Velosa

BQE Organizer, El Puente

I am an environmental scientist, an artist, and an enthusiast of nature, global cultures, community service and life. Currently I am a coalition organizer at El Puente. The mission of El Puente is to inspire and nurture leadership for peace and justice, working as a human rights institution in NYC and Puerto Rico with national and international impact. El Puente creates community-led movements of self-determination through a holistic leadership and membership program model, as a high impact youth and community development organization.

Eric W. Sanderson

Author of Manahatta: A Natural History of New York

Eric W. Sanderson, a landscape ecologist and Vice President for Urban Conservation Strategy at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, director of the Mannahatta Project and the author of Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City. In 2013 Sanderson's book Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars, and Suburbs was published.

Sanderson earned his B.A.S. and Ph.D. in ecology from the University of California, Davis. He was Senior Conservation Ecologist at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) where he worked from 1998 to 2023 when he joined the New York Botanical Garden. As part of his work at WCS, Sanderson was the chief author, researcher, and director of the Mannahatta Project.

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