A presentation by Streetsblog Founder and MIT Visiting Scholar Aaron Naparstek. Congress for New Urbanism Colorado March 19th, 2013 4-6pm. Tattered Cover LoDo 1628 16th St, Denver, CO

1. Streets are for People
Building a Livable Streets Movement in Denver
Aaron Naparstek CNU Colorado
@Naparstek Tuesday, March 19, 2013
adn@mit.edu Tattered Cover, Denver

2. Let's start with the French Revolution...
"I promise to fight, with
all the means at my
disposal, against the
harmful, ever-increasing
and unacceptable
hegemony of the
automobile."
-- Mayor Bertrand Delanoë,
2001.

3. Paris:
The Mobilien bus rapid transit system.
Local merchants hanged the mayor in effigy before deciding they loved it.

4. Paris:
The Vélib' bike-sharing system.

5. London:
Make motorists pay a fee to drive into Central London.
And use the funds to improve mass transit, biking and walking.

6. London:
Removed motor vehicles from Trafalgar Square
Before:
After:

7. London:
Car-free holiday shopping day on Oxford and Regent Streets

8. London:
Turning Exhibition Road into a "Shared Space."
Before After

9. Copenhagen:
More than forty percent of commuters travel by bicycle.

10. Seoul:
Removal of an elevated expressway
Before After

11. Bogotá, Colombia:
Bus Rapid Transit

12. Bogotá, Colombia
Ciclovia: Car-free streets every Sunday.
Essentially transforming the entire city into a park.

13. New York City transportation policy was stuck in gridlock
"We like traffic, it means economic activity, it means
people coming here."
-- Mayor Michael Bloomberg, August 2, 2006

14. The result of 80 years of car-oriented planning, design and engineering
Estimated $13 billion per year in lost productivity in NYC, 2007.
And misery.
Source: Partnership for New York City

15. I launched Streetsblog in 2006.

16. The New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign

17. NYCSR invited influential thinkers and leaders to NYC.
Enrique Penalosa
Mayor of Bogota
Donald Shoup
UCLA parking guru
Jan Gehl
Danish urban designer

18. The campaign put forward a new vision for NYC streets
What if we
thought of our
streets as public
spaces
rather than
transportation
corridors?

19. City streets weren't always just for cars
Mulberry Street, Manhattan’s Lower East Side, circa 1900.
Source: Library of Congress Photocrom Collection

20. Park Avenue was once…
Looking north from E. 50th Street circa 1996.

21. … a park!
Looking north from E. 50th Street circa 1922.

22. Streets were once vibrant, mixed-use public spaces
Today, kids often have to be driven to their play areas.

23. 1913
2005
"Erosion of cities by automobiles entails so familiar
a series of events that they hardly need describing.
The erosion proceeds as a kind of nibbling."
-- Jane Jacobs

24. Plan your city for cars and traffic…
…You'll probably get cars and traffic.

25. Plan your city for great places filled with people…
…You'll probably get great places filled with people.
The Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark.

26. 1. Cover a daily beat around sustainable transport
and livable streets issues.
2. Watchdog and reform the New York City
Department of Transportation.
3. Show and spread new ideas for NYC’s streets.
4. Create a community forum for high-quality
discussion.

27. Daily headlines.
Headline round-ups are a great way to define your beat
and provide valuable service to readers.

28. Bring new ideas and best practices to your community
Streetfilms (and web video, in general) is a great tool for this.

29. This Streetfilm helped to change policy in multiple cities.
Streetfilms' Bogota Ciclovia video

30. Hold government officials accountable
Put them on notice: We are watching what you say and do.

31. Hold the local media accountable
"A Second Avenue bike lane is
next to the Israeli consulate,
leaving many wondering what
would happen if a man on a bike
were a terrorist!"
Local media often suffers from "windshield perspective."

32. Do rapid-response fact-checking.
In fact, the exact opposite of that New York Times story is true.

33. Try to make wonky, complex policy issues more accessible.

34. Make stars out of your local activists…
The annual Streetsie Awards: Activists of the Year

35. Celebrate the innovators
Chicago's new DOT Commissioner Gabe Klein

36. Don't be afraid to point out the villains
Remember you're telling stories.

37. Have fun! Try to be entertaining.
All blog posts about Mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner
must include a photo of the Oscar Mayer weinermobile

38. One of my first examples of the power of Streetsblog
Brooklyn's Fifth Avenue.

39. In April 2007 Streetsblog got a hold of this secret plan.
NYC DOT planned to convert 5th Avenue to one-way operation.

40. Streetsblog put a face and a name on these car-oriented policies
No one had ever paid much attention to NYC's Chief Traffic Engineer

41. Streetsblog mobilized an unprecedented response
700 people
showed up to a
local meeting
that normally
would have
attracted 35.

42. This is what livable streets advocacy looked like before the Internet

43. The Internet is your competitive advantage.
“Digital networks have acted as a
massive positive supply shock to
the cost and spread of
information, to the ease and range
of public speech by citizens, and
to the speed and scale of group
coordination.”
- NYU Professor Clay Shirky,
author of Here Comes Everybody.

44. Use social media.
The #BikeNYC hashtag on Twitter

45. Social media is incredibly powerful for advocacy
The Prospect Park West bike lane group on Facebook.
1,800+ members!

46. May 2007: Change comes to New York City.
Janette Sadik-Khan takes over NYC DOT.

47. "Sustainable Streets" strategic plan
Janette Sadik-Khan takes over NYC DOT.

48. NYC DOT didn't "study." They implemented. Experimented.
Before After
DUMBO, Brooklyn

49. Busy intersection transformed into a public plaza.
Ninth Avenue at 14th Street, Manhattan.

50. Busy intersection transformed into a public plaza.
Ninth Avenue at 14th Street, Manhattan.

51. Highway-like avenues transformed into "complete streets."
Before
Ninth Avenue,
Manhattan
redesign:
Reduced injuries
to all users by
56%
After

52. Herald Square, Broadway and 34th Street.
Before

53. Herald Square, Broadway and 34th Street.
Before

54. Car-Free Broadway at Times Square
Before

55. Car-Free Broadway at Times Square
Before

56. Projects that had been "impossible" for 40 years…
Broadway at Times Square, Before

57. … started happening
Broadway at Times Square, After

58. Summer Streets
Giving New Yorkers a taste of more humane streets.

59. Summer Streets
Dumpster swimming pool in front of Grand Central Terminal

60. Street yoga
Midtown Manhattan street scene, 2012

61. Livable Streets are also happening in outer borough neighborhoods
Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn. "Williamsburg Walks."

62. Street space is reallocated to more efficient modes of transportation
Dedicated bus lanes, off-board fare collection, signal priority

63. Build-out of the citywide bicycle network
Protected bike path on Prospect Park West in Brooklyn.

64. These wide avenues aren't all that different than Denver's
First Avenue and E. 6th Street, Manhattan.

65. This infrastructure is creating a boom in biking
The new protected bike path or “cycle track”
on Manhattan’s busy 8th Avenue.

66. A 4x increase in bike commuting since 2000

67. Biking is becoming mainstream
Increasingly viewed as "real" transportation.

68. Biking is increasingly seen as fashionable, cool, sexy, freeing.
Being stuck inside a car is the opposite of that.

69. All the cool kids are doing it
Leonardo DiCaprio and Blake Lively
Beyonce

70. "I'm 90-years-old and I ride this thing around everywhere."

71. Families are ditching the minivan.
"My sons would
rather go on a
bike than any
other form of
transportation.”
-- Liev Schreiber
Liev Schreiber, Naomi Watts and their Workcycles Fr8 in NYC

72. Led to the largest increase in ground-floor retail rents in NYC in
2010
21%
Increase in ground-
floor retail rents in
Times Square
4%
Citywide average
Source: Crain's New York

73. Livable Streets are good for business
Source: NYC DOT

74. Livable Streets provide substantial bang-for-the-buck.
Source: NYC DOT

75. Streets with bike lanes are safer, better for business.
Source: NYC DOT

76. New transit-oriented streets are also improving retail sales.
Source: NYC DOT

77. It's not just a New York City phenomenon.
All blogs ≈ 450
High-frequency local blogs ≈ 125
Monthly unique visitors > 390,804
Monthly pageviews > 1,375,909

78. The popular CicLAvia in car-loving Los Angeles

79. Chicago's Dearborn Street redesign
A two-way protected bike plane through the heart of downtown.

80. Chicago's Dearborn Street redesign
A two-way protected bike plane through the heart of downtown.

81. Seattle vs. Chicago
"I expect not only to
take all of [Seattle's]
bikers, but I also
want the jobs that
come with this."
-- Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emmanuel

82. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn's response
"We're updating our Bike Master
Plan with a focus on cycle tracks
and a network of safe neighborhood
greenways.
Amazon will construct a separated
cycle track on 7th Avenue because
that helps them attract employees.
Mayor Rahm Emmanuel said he
wanted our bikers and our tech
jobs. We're going to work to keep
them here."
-- Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn

83. Seattle's Broadway complete street plan

84. Seattle's 7th Avenue protected bike lane plan.

85. Where is Denver in
this conversation!?

86. Five tips
for building
a local
Livable Streets
movement

87. 1. Bring everyone together as one campaign.

88. 2. Get out on the street. Make your presence felt.
350 people rally on a weekday morning to support a bike lane in Brooklyn.
October 21, 2010.

89. 3. Create your own media channels and networks.

90. 4. Don't wait for permission!
Dallas
"Better Block"
project

92. 5. Have fun. It's all about community.

93. Sometimes a city is ready for change
But the city's leadership hasn't gotten the message yet.

94. Who is ready
for a
Denver Streets Renaissance?