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Why turning old city bridges into new urban parks is such a great idea
Our cities are filled with historical infrastructure long past its first usage. New ways of thinking about urban planning though can turn them into much needed green spaces.
theconversation.com
https://www.pps.org/article/new-yorks-most-exciting-new-public-space-is-a-street-in-queens
AUG 5, 2022
Editor's Note: At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Project for Public Spaces put out a call to embrace streets as places that can accommodate much-needed uses far beyond just outdoor dining. Since then, we've watched with excitement as the 34th Avenue Open Street has taken up that call right in our backyard, becoming one of the most quietly ambitious public spaces in New York City. Particularly as other American cities dismantle their pandemic open streets programs, this hard-working street in Queens offers an inspiring alternative vision of how we could build back better.
—
The 34th Avenue Open Street, in Jackson Heights, Queens, officially starts at 7am, but the barricades start to appear just after 6am. That’s to account for not only the number of people who are already in the street then—walking, cycling, running, or just being—as well as the sheer length of it: nearly 30 blocks, from 69th Street to Junction Boulevard.
But as the morning gets going, this stretch of 34th Ave comes alive.
The 34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens. Credit: Elena Madison
As a neighborhood, Jackson Heights holds a plethora of titles. It’s one of the densest in the city, with about 40,000 people per square mile. It’s often referred to as the most diverse zip code in America—if not the world—with about 167 languages spoken. And all of those urban dynamics unfold in an area with some of the lowest access to open space in the city. For years, unless your building had a private courtyard, two-acre Travers Park was your backyard. In 2020, when Jackson Heights became 'the epicenter of the epicenter’ of the Covid-19 crisis, the Open Street changed that.
New York City’s Open Streets program renders corridors into part-time spaces for programming, dining, or mobility. When COVID-19 hit, cities around the world had to create space fast, and streets were looked to as a solution. While few Open Streets efforts around the U.S. have stuck—including 63 miles of lost Open Streets in New York City—34th Avenue has bucked the trend. It still stands out as the longest of the city's permanent Open Streets at 1.3 miles.
“We want to make sure that this works right for everyone,” says Jim Burke, a rambunctious resident and safe streets advocate who helped create the 34th Avenue Open Street Coalition, the volunteer group that started it all. As we walked and talked one morning, people chatted nearby at newly added tables and chairs, and a dance class drew crowds.
People celebrating a birthday party on the planted median of the 34th Avenue Open Street. Credit: Elena Madison
“As Covid cases go back up, you’ll see more people celebrating their birthdays out here, playing their radio, ball playing,” Burke explains. He points in another direction, painting a visual map for me. “Right down there is a Nepalese soccer game.”
The creation of this Open Street has depended on a groundswell of local involvement. Local advocates have long called for more open space in the area, but a string of car crashes on 34th Avenue and nearby thoroughfares in the years leading up to the pandemic—one of which left a nine-year-old dead—ignited a strong push for improvements. Even the most ardent opponents of the Open Street, who cite concerns over accessibility and parking, have agreed that the roads around schools and parks should be safer. More recently, Mayor Adams visited 34th Avenue alongside the NYCDOT commissioner just two months into his tenure.
But the latest vision for 34th Avenue take the idea of an Open Street even further. While other Open Streets are evolving into “bike boulevards” or bike-priority lanes, car-free plazas, or “shared” streets with a pedestrian and cyclist focus, 34th Avenue Open Street is a step in a wholly different direction. It embeds the Open Street into its surroundings, making the street appear more like a linear park than, well, a street.
“It’s the first superblock in New York City,” says Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who represents the Jackson Heights area.
The first fully pedestrianized piece of 34th Avenue Open Street creates a traffic filter on the street. Credit: John Surico
The next block is a hybrid: one lane is “shared,” the street marked with light beige paint and incongruent traffic markings to slow down drivers, who are still allowed to slowly enter and park. (The Dutch fietsstraat, where “drivers are a guest,” comes to mind.) Outsized curb extensions, equipped with planters, and soon granite blocks, act as 24/7 gateways, while the other lane is pedestrianized. The next block is a mirror image of the same design, further discouraging continuous travel by car.
This first phase near Travers Park is what’s known as the “public realm core” of the evolving 34th Avenue Open Street. The design encourages drivers to avoid it; car access is possible, but more of a trip. The next phases will see a similar redesign at the east end of the Open Street, where green space access and household incomes trend lower. Later, another will come at the other end.
By the end of the redesign, there will be six touch points along the 1.3 mile stretch that will either become a plaza or shared street by the end of 2023. The completion of these six people-focused spaces is ultimately what will lead to this Open Street evolving into a true superblock.
The new layout of 34th Avenue Open Street’s public realm core. Credit: NYCDOT
Another important reason for the success of the 34th Avenue is the way the street interacts with nearby schools. There are five schools directly along 34th Avenue Open Street, not counting the ones just off of it. During the school year and summer camp, the morning and afternoon bell sees hordes of families empty out onto 34th Ave. Graduation ceremonies, plays, drop-offs, and pickups have made schools some of the most active users of the space.
“It’s making schools safer. It’s creating more space for children to play, despite the overcrowded nature of schools. It’s great for children’s health, with exercise,” said Council Member Krishnan, who was elected on a platform that made the Open Street a focal point. “From an education, public health, and climate standpoint, these are all things that are crucial.”
34th Avenue Open Street combines and iterates on the existing street design toolkit of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT). Curb extensions, “shared streets,” plastic delineators, and street furniture are now common currency in New York City’s streetscape. But in terms of typology—residential, not commercial—and different needs—like strong ADA accessibility, schools, and mobility—34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights is unlike anything before it.
New York’s Most Exciting New Public Space is a Street in Queens
JOHN SURICOAUG 5, 2022
Editor's Note: At the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Project for Public Spaces put out a call to embrace streets as places that can accommodate much-needed uses far beyond just outdoor dining. Since then, we've watched with excitement as the 34th Avenue Open Street has taken up that call right in our backyard, becoming one of the most quietly ambitious public spaces in New York City. Particularly as other American cities dismantle their pandemic open streets programs, this hard-working street in Queens offers an inspiring alternative vision of how we could build back better.
—
The 34th Avenue Open Street, in Jackson Heights, Queens, officially starts at 7am, but the barricades start to appear just after 6am. That’s to account for not only the number of people who are already in the street then—walking, cycling, running, or just being—as well as the sheer length of it: nearly 30 blocks, from 69th Street to Junction Boulevard.
But as the morning gets going, this stretch of 34th Ave comes alive.
The 34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights, Queens. Credit: Elena Madison
As a neighborhood, Jackson Heights holds a plethora of titles. It’s one of the densest in the city, with about 40,000 people per square mile. It’s often referred to as the most diverse zip code in America—if not the world—with about 167 languages spoken. And all of those urban dynamics unfold in an area with some of the lowest access to open space in the city. For years, unless your building had a private courtyard, two-acre Travers Park was your backyard. In 2020, when Jackson Heights became 'the epicenter of the epicenter’ of the Covid-19 crisis, the Open Street changed that.
New York City’s Open Streets program renders corridors into part-time spaces for programming, dining, or mobility. When COVID-19 hit, cities around the world had to create space fast, and streets were looked to as a solution. While few Open Streets efforts around the U.S. have stuck—including 63 miles of lost Open Streets in New York City—34th Avenue has bucked the trend. It still stands out as the longest of the city's permanent Open Streets at 1.3 miles.
“We want to make sure that this works right for everyone,” says Jim Burke, a rambunctious resident and safe streets advocate who helped create the 34th Avenue Open Street Coalition, the volunteer group that started it all. As we walked and talked one morning, people chatted nearby at newly added tables and chairs, and a dance class drew crowds.
People celebrating a birthday party on the planted median of the 34th Avenue Open Street. Credit: Elena Madison
“As Covid cases go back up, you’ll see more people celebrating their birthdays out here, playing their radio, ball playing,” Burke explains. He points in another direction, painting a visual map for me. “Right down there is a Nepalese soccer game.”
The creation of this Open Street has depended on a groundswell of local involvement. Local advocates have long called for more open space in the area, but a string of car crashes on 34th Avenue and nearby thoroughfares in the years leading up to the pandemic—one of which left a nine-year-old dead—ignited a strong push for improvements. Even the most ardent opponents of the Open Street, who cite concerns over accessibility and parking, have agreed that the roads around schools and parks should be safer. More recently, Mayor Adams visited 34th Avenue alongside the NYCDOT commissioner just two months into his tenure.
But the latest vision for 34th Avenue take the idea of an Open Street even further. While other Open Streets are evolving into “bike boulevards” or bike-priority lanes, car-free plazas, or “shared” streets with a pedestrian and cyclist focus, 34th Avenue Open Street is a step in a wholly different direction. It embeds the Open Street into its surroundings, making the street appear more like a linear park than, well, a street.
“It’s the first superblock in New York City,” says Council Member Shekar Krishnan, who represents the Jackson Heights area.
Anatomy of an American Superblock
The first phase has fully pedestrianized both lanes of the street adjacent to Travers Park, adding street furniture and a defined cycle lane. The result is what feels like an extension of the park onto the street. The design also intentionally creates a filter for vehicles; in effect, 34th Avenue no longer allows pass-through traffic.
The first fully pedestrianized piece of 34th Avenue Open Street creates a traffic filter on the street. Credit: John Surico
The next block is a hybrid: one lane is “shared,” the street marked with light beige paint and incongruent traffic markings to slow down drivers, who are still allowed to slowly enter and park. (The Dutch fietsstraat, where “drivers are a guest,” comes to mind.) Outsized curb extensions, equipped with planters, and soon granite blocks, act as 24/7 gateways, while the other lane is pedestrianized. The next block is a mirror image of the same design, further discouraging continuous travel by car.
This first phase near Travers Park is what’s known as the “public realm core” of the evolving 34th Avenue Open Street. The design encourages drivers to avoid it; car access is possible, but more of a trip. The next phases will see a similar redesign at the east end of the Open Street, where green space access and household incomes trend lower. Later, another will come at the other end.
By the end of the redesign, there will be six touch points along the 1.3 mile stretch that will either become a plaza or shared street by the end of 2023. The completion of these six people-focused spaces is ultimately what will lead to this Open Street evolving into a true superblock.
The new layout of 34th Avenue Open Street’s public realm core. Credit: NYCDOT
Another important reason for the success of the 34th Avenue is the way the street interacts with nearby schools. There are five schools directly along 34th Avenue Open Street, not counting the ones just off of it. During the school year and summer camp, the morning and afternoon bell sees hordes of families empty out onto 34th Ave. Graduation ceremonies, plays, drop-offs, and pickups have made schools some of the most active users of the space.
“It’s making schools safer. It’s creating more space for children to play, despite the overcrowded nature of schools. It’s great for children’s health, with exercise,” said Council Member Krishnan, who was elected on a platform that made the Open Street a focal point. “From an education, public health, and climate standpoint, these are all things that are crucial.”
34th Avenue Open Street combines and iterates on the existing street design toolkit of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT). Curb extensions, “shared streets,” plastic delineators, and street furniture are now common currency in New York City’s streetscape. But in terms of typology—residential, not commercial—and different needs—like strong ADA accessibility, schools, and mobility—34th Avenue Open Street in Jackson Heights is unlike anything before it.
{continued}
That haste comes, however, after over a year of community engagement. “We did a huge amount of outreach,” said Jessica Cronstein, an urban designer with NYCDOT who has led the 34th Avenue Open Street project. “We did multiple workshops in multiple languages. We also did a survey that was pretty in-depth about how people wanted to use the corridor going forward, both in terms of passive recreation as well as movement and modality.”
Children in Jackson Heights now have a safer open space in which to play. Credit: Elena Madison
City officials, including Krishnan, met with groups both for and against the proposal. Volunteers, familiar with the day-to-day operations, put forward suggestions that NYCDOT ultimately incorporated, like leaving some space between the bike lane and the flowery median that runs the length of the avenue, where people like to sit and gardening meetups are held. Accessibility was also considered, especially given that along 34th Avenue is a naturally occurring retirement community (NORC).
“What we’re looking to do to support equity across all of our Open Streets is to balance what partners do best, like organizing, programming and keeping the space relevant,” says Emily Weidenhof, the Director of Public Space at NYCDOT, “to what the city can support, which includes everything from evolving the design to full maintenance services.”
From taking a break to going on a healthy walk, local residents are enjoying the new permanent Open Street along 34th Avenue. Credit: Elena Madison
So in the first year, the 34th Avenue Open Street Coalition, led by Jim Burke and others, handled operations and programming, assigning different stretches to volunteers for barricade setup, check-in, and breakdown at 8pm. They joined a nonprofit and fundraised for stipends, alerting nearby groups that the street was available. Someone taught a Zumba class, another salsa. Races were held for kids, alongside food distribution services. A regular programming schedule with activities almost every day has grown from that seed.
While the Coalition still facilitates that today, it gets help from city-funded activities and The Horticultural Society of New York, whose employees are now charged with a number of Open Street operations. (Although Burke can’t resist correcting a moved barricade along his regular bike rides.) Teenagers from the city’s summer youth employment program are also pitching in. A like-minded group, the Friends of 34th Avenue Linear Park, formed to promote a long-term vision of what the street could be.
“It can’t always be a well-funded, high-capacity partnership,” continues Weidenhof. “We need different partnership models for our public spaces. And we had a strong partner with the 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition.”
With tables and chairs, as well as colorful plants, 34th Avenue Open Street offers locals a place to relax.
Once fully implemented, 34th Avenue Open Street will be evaluated in the fall, said NYCDOT officials, to see what the agency can learn from and improve upon—especially as other Open Streets face similar potential treatments. Volunteers are hoping for more physical barriers to prevent future incidents, and that one day the Open Street will extend further east, serving even more schools and parks. But for now, 34th Avenue Open Street is a remarkable community-led exercise in seeing what’s possible.
“I’ve lived here for two decades, and now meet families I’ve never seen before. We don’t want to lose that,” said Burke, as he greets passersby. “Some neighbors want a space that is quiet and idyllic, like a true park. But we also want this to be a neighborhood that’s alive and thriving after these last two years.”
“We’re all going to get to the same place,” he continued. “We just want to make sure we take everybody with us.”
Partnering with the Community
The speed of implementation has been astonishingly fast, at least by planning standards. The first phase, which began implementation in June of 2022, was up and running in a matter of weeks. Work on the next phase is expected in mid-August, if the not-so-subtle “Do Not Enter” signs hanging on street poles, still wrapped in black plastic, are any indication. But small tweaks—a curb extension here, a planter there—are ongoing.That haste comes, however, after over a year of community engagement. “We did a huge amount of outreach,” said Jessica Cronstein, an urban designer with NYCDOT who has led the 34th Avenue Open Street project. “We did multiple workshops in multiple languages. We also did a survey that was pretty in-depth about how people wanted to use the corridor going forward, both in terms of passive recreation as well as movement and modality.”
Children in Jackson Heights now have a safer open space in which to play. Credit: Elena Madison
City officials, including Krishnan, met with groups both for and against the proposal. Volunteers, familiar with the day-to-day operations, put forward suggestions that NYCDOT ultimately incorporated, like leaving some space between the bike lane and the flowery median that runs the length of the avenue, where people like to sit and gardening meetups are held. Accessibility was also considered, especially given that along 34th Avenue is a naturally occurring retirement community (NORC).
“What we’re looking to do to support equity across all of our Open Streets is to balance what partners do best, like organizing, programming and keeping the space relevant,” says Emily Weidenhof, the Director of Public Space at NYCDOT, “to what the city can support, which includes everything from evolving the design to full maintenance services.”
From taking a break to going on a healthy walk, local residents are enjoying the new permanent Open Street along 34th Avenue. Credit: Elena Madison
So in the first year, the 34th Avenue Open Street Coalition, led by Jim Burke and others, handled operations and programming, assigning different stretches to volunteers for barricade setup, check-in, and breakdown at 8pm. They joined a nonprofit and fundraised for stipends, alerting nearby groups that the street was available. Someone taught a Zumba class, another salsa. Races were held for kids, alongside food distribution services. A regular programming schedule with activities almost every day has grown from that seed.
While the Coalition still facilitates that today, it gets help from city-funded activities and The Horticultural Society of New York, whose employees are now charged with a number of Open Street operations. (Although Burke can’t resist correcting a moved barricade along his regular bike rides.) Teenagers from the city’s summer youth employment program are also pitching in. A like-minded group, the Friends of 34th Avenue Linear Park, formed to promote a long-term vision of what the street could be.
“It can’t always be a well-funded, high-capacity partnership,” continues Weidenhof. “We need different partnership models for our public spaces. And we had a strong partner with the 34th Avenue Open Streets Coalition.”
Learning & Building Momentum
Of course, no change is without its challenges. Shortly after I arrived, a driver slipped through the barricades and planters of the pedestrianized plazas, seemingly unaware of the new configuration. (Once Burke and other neighbors told her, she reversed and drove off.) Further east, a driver had hit the median overnight, the aftermath apparent in a downed sapling and skid marks. And in early July, a pedestrian was struck in a hit-and-run at the corner of Travers Park, right near the redesign.
With tables and chairs, as well as colorful plants, 34th Avenue Open Street offers locals a place to relax.
Once fully implemented, 34th Avenue Open Street will be evaluated in the fall, said NYCDOT officials, to see what the agency can learn from and improve upon—especially as other Open Streets face similar potential treatments. Volunteers are hoping for more physical barriers to prevent future incidents, and that one day the Open Street will extend further east, serving even more schools and parks. But for now, 34th Avenue Open Street is a remarkable community-led exercise in seeing what’s possible.
“I’ve lived here for two decades, and now meet families I’ve never seen before. We don’t want to lose that,” said Burke, as he greets passersby. “Some neighbors want a space that is quiet and idyllic, like a true park. But we also want this to be a neighborhood that’s alive and thriving after these last two years.”
“We’re all going to get to the same place,” he continued. “We just want to make sure we take everybody with us.”
Looks very annoying for drivers. I'd hate it there.
Musical Swings | Daily tous les jours
Daily tous les jours creates collective experiences for public spaces. Since 2010, the art and design studio based in Montreal invites humans to play a critical role in the transformation of their environment.
www.dailytouslesjours.com
New spin on parking spaces during pandemic reaps benefits
Cities are debating the use of acres of urban land as parking after the pandemic shone new light on how those spaces can be used in a more creative and valuable way
www.theglobeandmail.com
New spin on parking spaces during pandemic reaps benefits
OLIVER MOOREURBAN AFFAIRS REPORTER
PUBLISHED OCTOBER 10, 2022
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After Toronto allowed some on-street parking spaces on main roads to be used as patios during the pandemic, an analysis suggested that this generated far more revenue than in their original use.CARLOS OSORIO/THE GLOBE AND MAIL
When the creators of SimCity were designing their virtual world, they realized they couldn’t depict metropolises accurately: There would have to be so many parking lots the game wouldn’t be fun.
In real-life cities, the pandemic shone new light on these acres of urban land, leading many places to start using the space in more valuable ways. Meanwhile, a growing push for sustainability had already prompted fresh thinking around the vast swathes of land dedicated to car storage.
At an arena in Montreal, children now play in an area that had been used for parking. Several parking lots in Winnipeg have been turned into popular beer gardens. A wooden midrise building is being planned to replace a parking lot in downtown Toronto, where space for 37 vehicles is destined to become 100 rental apartments.
But this trend has progressed haltingly at times, where grand goals have fallen victim to local pushback.
Opinion: How cities built way too much parking – and made housing even more expensive
Vancouver’s plan to charge more to park the most polluting vehicles, part of the city’s response to climate change, failed by a narrow vote at council last October. Regina recently approved yet another downtown parking lot. Calgary announced plans to prevent residents of most large buildings from obtaining on-street parking permits, but has recently backtracked in the face of local opposition and instead will require fees of up to $150 a year. And Toronto appears set to retain most street parking in the redesign of Kensington Market, a downtown neighbourhood that attracts huge numbers of pedestrians.
However, the broader pattern is a gradual dismantling of the decades-long assumption that more parking is inherently better.
In 2020, Edmonton became the first Canadian city to remove minimum parking requirements on developments. These rules, which force developers to include set amounts of parking, are based in pseudo-science rather than rigorous standards, said academic Donald Shoup, author of the seminal book The High Cost of Free Parking.
More than a dozen Canadian cities have followed suit, removing parking minimums in at least part of their area, according to research by the advocacy group Strong Towns.
Perhaps the biggest recent shift in attitudes around parking has been the recognition of just how much value may be forgone by using desirable urban real estate as car storage.
After Toronto allowed some on-street parking spaces on main roads to be used as patios during the pandemic, an analysis suggested that this generated far more revenue than in their original use.
COVID-19 changed public spaces, but many cities have retreated
Researchers for an association of local business improvement areas estimated that customers spent $181-millionin the repurposed parking spaces in the summer of 2021. The same spaces would have generated $3.7-million in parking revenue, according to the local parking authority, and even that modest figure assumed prepandemic levels of demand.
“Curbsides have long been one of the most important spaces in cities, and at the same time in many cities they’ve been somewhat of an afterthought, and there’s been kind of just this default of using them for parking,” said Alex Engel, spokesman for NACTO, an association of urban transportation officials that counts several Canadian cities as members.
Parking in residential areas tends to earn even less.
In Vancouver, only in the city’s west end is the price of a parking permit being allowed to rise to market rate – with current permit holders spared the increase. In other areas, an annual residential parking pass works out to as little as 14 cents a day. And in much of the city, no permit is required.
“New York City is perhaps the poster child for this, with large areas with very high-density, mixed-use land use but free on-street parking,” said Paul Barter, a consultant and founder of the blog and podcast Reinventing Parking.
“People scream blue murder: ‘You’re stealing our precious parking spaces.’ The irony is, those ‘precious spaces’ are free of charge. If they’re so damn precious, why are they free?”
Making public space available for far less than the equivalent real estate cost in expensive cities creates perverse incentives: For most residents it is much cheaper to fill their garage with stuff and leave the car on the street than to rent a storage unit.
And the unrealized value of a parking space can also be measured in less financial ways.
An April council vote in Toronto approving the wooden midrise building’s apartments at that downtown parking lot – more than half of which will be affordable – was part of a broader push to turn parking into entertainment venues, parks and cultural sites.
“Parking continues to play a purpose but not as it did in the 1950s, and so now’s the chance to think about other city-building objectives,” said former councillor Joe Cressy, who represented the area at the time of the vote.
“The core piece here is determining what is the biggest value for the city, in terms of its assets. And affordable housing and sustainability is a bigger value than parking.”
That same evolution of thinking has been playing out in Regina – at least in theory. Restaurants were allowed to put patios in the curb lane to help them weather the pandemic. Minimum parking requirements are waived for development downtown, where the city hopes to encourage density and boost anemic population growth.
But parking remains sacred for many on the Regina council. At the end of last month, the council voted to explore requiring more parking for some types of development. And earlier in September, council approved without debate a bylaw amendment allowing yet another parking lot downtown, where nearly half of the private land is used already as parking.
“It still feels like we’re doing 1950s planning,” said Vanessa Mathews, an associate professor in the department of geography and environmental studies at the University of Regina. “You end up with streets that are made up mostly of parking that don’t add any kind of vibrancy or interest. It’s certainly not sustainable.”
