New York: City Streets
The Program
New York City is at the forefront of transforming its streets for people.
Streets are the interface to our homes and communities. They make up our largest public spaces and have become places for people to gather, play, exercise, and connect. Remaking our streets is one of the most significant opportunities to change cities–moving them toward the equitable, humane, carbon-neutral, and climate-resilient places they must become in the decades ahead.
For more than 50 years, New York City has worked to remake its streets for people. What began with a movement to fight expressways in the 1960s was reinforced by placemaking efforts in the 1970s. In the early 2000s, the tools of tactical urbanism created the country’s first protected bikeway and closed Manhattan’s iconic Times Square to cars as a part of the city’s public plaza program. This movement continues today as iterative design continues to transform New York’s streets. These persistent efforts reflect the uniquely healthy ecology of activists, from neighborhood volunteers, advocacy organizations, designers and officials in city hall. Together, they have led the battle for the country’s first congestion pricing program and continue to work to improve public transportation and create safe streets.
In this 3-day program, we will tour projects underway throughout New York City, meeting with the people who have shaped the city’s streets. The session will be led by urbanist Alison Sant, author of From the Ground Up: Local Efforts to Create Resilient Cities (Island Press, 2022) and the forthcoming book Streetlife: Transforming Our Largest Public Spaces into Places 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
Day 1
Manhattan
- 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.
Day 2
Brooklyn
- 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
Day 3
Queens
- 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
Fee & Deposit
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
Rooms at the Ace Hotel in Manhattan have been reserved and are included in the program fee. The hotel provides a central location, close to public transportation, and alongside Broadway, one of the streets we will be visiting.
The program will run from Sunday evening to Wednesday evening. Participants should plan to arrive Sunday afternoon and depart the Ace Hotel Thursday morning.
To reserve a spot in the program, make a deposit of $885 USD. Deposits are fully refundable until March 10th 2025. Full program payment is due April 3rd 2025.
(Video: STREETFILMS®)
Curator
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
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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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