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Title details for Streetfight by Janette Sadik-Khan - Available

Streetfight

Handbook for an Urban Revolution

by Janette Sadik-Khan
Seth Solomonow
ebook
1 of 2 copies available
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1 of 2 copies available
Like a modern-day Jane Jacobs, Janette Sadik-Khan transformed New York City's streets to make room for pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and green spaces. Describing the battles she fought to enact change, Streetfight imparts wisdom and practical advice that other cities can follow to make their own streets safer and more vibrant.
As New York City’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world’s greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and cyclists. Her approach was dramatic and effective: Simply painting a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that’s already there.
     Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates, with step-by-step visuals, how to rewrite the underlying “source code” of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn’t easy, and Streetfight pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. She includes examples of how this new way to read the streets has already made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. Many are inspired by the changes taking place in New York City and are based on the same techniques. Streetfight deconstructs, reassembles, and reinvents the street, inviting readers to see it in ways they never imagined.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 8, 2016

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780698409415
      • File size: 68663 KB

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780698409415
      • File size: 68739 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      January 15, 2016
      A former New York City transportation commissioner maps out her adroit street design blueprint for alleviating traffic congestion and improving urban aesthetics. With the assistance of her former chief media strategist Solomonow, Sadik-Khan chronicles her role in the urban transformation of Manhattan streets and how the architectural improvements she drafted eased gridlock and boosted urban sociability. "Every city resident is a pedestrian at some point in the day," she writes. Sadik-Khan's infrastructure redesign plan for New York centered on the encouragement of walking and street social life with an eye on the safety of both bicycle riders and pedestrians. She distressingly presents Manhattan as a bustling metropolis, mired by overcrowding and bound by a grid network of narrow streets and ineffective bisections. After years with the NYC Department of Transportation, her creative work as commissioner began in 2007 with the appropriation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's green, congestion-busting, sustainability-driven urban plan PlaNYC, which, under Sadik-Khan's leadership, became a citywide rebalancing effort transforming clogged streetscapes from "a place where people wanted to park into a place where people wanted to be." She writes passionately about these projects, including the massive reinvention of Times Square, which was so successful it became a design model for other cities. The author includes pages of photographs effectively illustrating traffic-calming intersection designs and pocket plazas, which transformed "a car-clogged street into inviting shared space" and was just one part of the new street improvement plan for New York. Not always a smooth road, Sadik-Khan's efforts were often fraught with friction from businesses and community groups opposing many of her urban renewal proposals, including the addition of a bike lane along Prospect Park West. Unfortunately, she notes, even as her tenure as commissioner ended in 2013, the battle for and discontent over public space and its use continues unabated to this day, regardless of the positive progress made. An impressive tactical look back at an urban redevelopment pioneer who changed the look and manageability of countless New York City streets.

      COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      October 15, 2015

      New York City's transportation commissioner from 2007 to 2013, Sadik-Khan enhanced pedestrian space in Times Square and along Broadway, initiated the nation's largest bike-share program, added nearly 400 miles of bicycle lanes, and installed more than 60 plazas citywide. Great for us Gotham dwellers, but what about everyone else? Here, Sadik-Khan (with her chief media strategist Solomonow) gives inspiration to municipalities large and small by offering examples of revitalized street life worldwide.

      Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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