Sunday, October 25, 2015

The Natural Environment of a Park is not enough to attract...

 I was visiting Manhattan's Union Square Park , I talked to a youth there who told me, “there's benches for the seniors  and a playground for the little kids but nothing for us.”  


As it turns out though the seniors and kids are getting some of their needs met, they are being shortchanged too...

 According to the  authors of the book People Places  "The natural environment of a park is not enough to attract some elderly users, but a park with many activity programs can simulate social exchange and create a sense of belonging."



 
As for kids..."Elaborate jungle gyms and twisty slides sure are fun, but they may not give your child the most well-rounded "workout." A recent study of daycare-center playgrounds found that when kids had access to items like balls, hula hoops, and jump ropes, they were more active than when they had only stationary structures to play on. "

Typical playground equipment does help develop certain motor skills, like climbing," says study coauthor Dianne Ward, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "But kids play harder and longer when they have more portable playthings around." link



 Lack of activities offerings diminish park usage  for many segments of our population, especially special needs folks.    Our parks do not have to be this way. 


It doesn't have to be this way. Below are links to several ideas  that would allow Union Square Park and other parks go from nothing for us parks to something for everyone parks.


Partnering Parks and Libraries
Having Fun Without Food in Public Spaces

Friday, October 9, 2015

Elizabeth

In exchange for the Elizabeth Street Garden. Habe NYC turn the neighborhood surrounding Elizabeth sdtreet into a age friendly park

-Passive recreation paklets and seating
active recreation parklets
-community gardens

on EVERY street in the neighborhood that wants them.




On elizabeth street and Mott Street two gardens can replace parking and sidewalk...





Additionally every block in the area that wants an open space on it will get their choice of a

-A community garden parklet  on rheir block
or a active recreation parklet on their block
-or a passive recreation seating parklet on their block.

The area of these new parks and gardens will be made to be at least equal  the size of the current Elizabeth Street garden, but will cover a much larger area, transforming the neighborhood into an Age Friendly Park



Everbody who wants gets a park on their block.


Sidewalks as Public Spaces


Sometimes there are blocks in a neighborhood that are "dead" space, with nothing of interest. Here's one at 77th St and Columbus Ave

















 















The Columbus Ave  BID transformed it into a street park.

 




 Cost $100,000.  link


There are other dead streets throughout the city that could also be made over like this...

  At 36th Street and 10th Avenue this dead street falls in the Hudson Yards/Hells Kitchen Bid territory





18th Street and 7th Avenue dead street


Live streets can become parks too, as thet did at FIT on 27th st between 7th and 8th avenues

 Comfortable seats, soothing greenery and shade can be found in front of various Fashion Institute of Technology halls (W. 27 St., btw. Seventh & Eighth Aves.).

Monday, October 5, 2015

Streets as Public Spaces


To be really well used parks and other public spaces  must be really close to you.   After 3 blocks usage of green spaces decreases drastically

 



That's why even though the Upper East Side is adjacent to Central Park, its residents  complain they don't have enough park space, It is not the lack of park space they are complaining about, it is really the lack of nearby park space.  Here's a Look at this issue from the past, future and present.

The Past

Actually in the past there was no problem to solve. Until sometime in the  20th century our streets were our parks. At that time we didn't need a lot of centralized  park facilities, because  you could just go outside your door and play in the street.  










The Streets were our playgrounds 
-C Edward Coop , Surgeon General US


Dangerous high speed automobiles and the automobile industry ended that era. 


Before the American city could be physically reconstructed to accommodate automobiles, its streets had to be socially reconstructed as places where cars belong. Until then, streets were regarded as public spaces, where practices that endangered or obstructed others (including pedestrians) were disreputable. Motorists' claim to street space was therefore fragile, subject to restrictions that threatened to negate the advantages of car ownership. Epithets—especially joy rider—reflected and reinforced the prevailing social construction of the street. Automotive interest groups (motordom) recognized this obstacle and organized in the teens and 1920s to overcome it. One tool in this effort was jaywalker. Motordom discovered this obscure colloquialism in the teens, reinvented it, and introduced it to the millions. It ridiculed once-respectable street uses and cast doubt on pedestrians' legitimacy in most of the street. Though many pedestrians resented and resisted the term and its connotations, motordom's campaign was a substantial success.  link


The auto industry took over our streets for the essentially exclusive use of cars and parking, with human being use of streets  relegated to crossing at crosswalks. 

Image of a card handed to pedestrians in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1921. Reproduced in Street Rivals: Jaywalking and the invention of the Motor Age by Peter Norton, Technology and Culture, Volume 48, Number 2, April 2007
link

In return for the loss of the use of our convenient "street parks" we have been given a system of few and often far between centralized public spaces    that are not anywhere  as convenient as our street parks and playgrounds in front of where we lived were.


Tomorrow
20-30 years from now our streets in front of where we live  will once again become our parks and playgrounds. The impetus for this will be the self driving automobile becoming the dominant form of transportation. 



Every year, 1.2 million people die in car accidents, more than 33,000 of them in the US link


-Self driving vehicles are expected to be much safer. Human error accounts for around 90% of all car accidents.. Insurance rates will drop drastically for self driving vehicles vs driver vehicles making most people switch to using self driving vehicles. Transitions  can occur quite fast....




. Using actual transportation data, our analysis suggests a shared-vehicle mobility solution can meet the personal mobility needs of the entire population with a fleet whose size is approximately 1/3 of the total number of passenger vehicles currently in operation.


If 2/3 of cars disappear , the space now used for car parking will be freed up to become linear parks, and many streets will be essentially closed to thru traffic and become our parks and playgrounds once again.

The cities will probably keep a few parking spaces around for cars that need to pause but most will probably be repurposed as parks or retail locations.  The Atlantic



Today

Here's exceptional examples of today that will become the norm in the future...


32nd Street NYC 6th to 7th Avenue
Vornado Reality removes car parking on north side of 32nd St, replaces  it with a park in the street
 32nd Street Walkway-34th Street Partnership-Extended Sidewalk-Colorful-Penn Station Madison Square Garden-Greeley Square-Herald Square-NYC-002

32nd Street Walkway-34th Street Partnership-Extended Sidewalk-Colorful-Penn Station Madison Square Garden-Greeley Square-Herald Square-NYC-001 




 Boulevard 41

 Bryant Park Corp has been approved to  take all parking from both sides of street and will turn it it into "Parkland"
While Vision42 might not happen soon, Boulevard 41 is more likely. The plan from the Bryant Park Corporation has approvals in hand but needs funding from adjacent property owners. Image: Bryant Park Corporation [PDF]







 
  Transformation of a street into a childrens playground

 Potgieterstraat is situated in inner Amsterdam, in a context of 19th century buildings dating back to the first big enlargement of Amsterdam. The block typology of that time appears to the disadvantage of today’s public life, since the inner courtyards of these blocks are not open to public use and the streets were never designed for today’s traffic. In general there is a lack of public squares and public green. Streets here are dominated by cars and recently introduced bike lanes are a traffic solution, unfortunately claiming the available space from adjacent side walks.
The district as a whole was up to a refreshing new strategy for children and pedestrians to strengthen and vitalize the public realm. Local inhabitants were asked in a political enquiry to agree upon and formulate new guidelines and were also involved in the selection of an architect
.

 Whereas participation is seen as a process with all stakeholders positively involved this wasn’t the situation at all in this particular case. The participative processes could be more characterized by conflict than by cooperation. Conflicts with the city council with an ambitious demand that by written survey 70% of all residents in the housing blocks should agree on the plan, conflicts with residents that didn’t want their acclaimed public parking places to be moved around the corner, the appointment of a new political administration changing plans already agreed on between the residents and the former administration. Conflicts with retailers located on the street, the financial coupling of this small project to a bigger project. Lack of cooperation between the different city departments and the delay of the project in general. All these conflicts resulted in a process where the social bonding was actually already established before the realization of the plans because residents showed perseverance. Therefore the basis of the success of this public domain was a side-product of this design.

   link



Pearl St Triangle 


33rd St Madison Square Garden

33rd Street west of Seventh Avenue will become a temporary pedestrian plaza this summer. The project could be made permanent in the future. Photo: Google Maps

The new terraced seating area. Photo: Stephen Miller
link


Parklet Parsons School



Sports Parklet Los Angeles

 

Community Garden Parklet


This community garden is located at the Fulton Houses  in Chelsea.  By taking out parking and  placing similar structures on NYC streets, it becomes theoretical possible to have a community garden on every street that wants one.