The Oil Drum

We will miss you Jane and we will keep fighting for your unique vision of better cities. You helped us realize all the little things that were right in front of us that makes cities great. Your work will be continued by organizations like Transportation Alternatives, Municipal Arts Society, NYC Street Renaissance, Open Plans, and many, many others. Your legacy is found not in what you built, but in what you taught us to preserve. Long after the buildings and highways that Robert Moses built have crumbled, your ideas will still be discussed, talked about and embraced by future generations.

None of these ideas are new, indeed many point out that this is just going back to the pre-1920s organic urban development that was in place before the automobile obsession of the last 85 years. Cities did pretty much as much they could to open themselves up to the automobile, but issues of traffic congestion, pollution, pedestrian/cyclist deaths and noise/honking have persisted and worsened over time. The tide is now shifting against the automobile in the urban environment. Not because drivers are finally willing to sacrifice their automobile for the public good, but because the public is finally realizing that they have been sacrificing their lives and the quality of their lives for an illusory economic benefit.

A new report released in February at the Urban Center (Madison and 51st Street) gives hard data to support this shift. It showed that passenger automobiles serve little to no economic function in the Manhattan Central Business District (Manhattan CBD = South of 60th Street). Key Findings below: