June 2016
• • •
I N T R O D U C T I O N
To New York, I am no stranger. And, to urbanism, and all streams of urban design, I am a good friend. I am young enough to think cities and walkability are the answer to human fulfillment, but wise enough to remember what we’ve left behind in the wake of modernism. The street was a means to an end, a way to drive a car at over fifty miles an hour, and the reason why Robert Moses proposed and implemented the FDR Drive on the uttermost East side of Manhattan. The future of the street is one of humans, rather than cars. It’s a pedestrian thoroughfare, for the happenstance of event space, and the possibilities of a cultural urban renewal. However, the street is not the only subject for a changing world…one between the milestones of the grandeur of skyscrapers, the desperation of suburbia, and now the speed of interactive mass media. For streets alone do not hold the simple answer to human transport, but simply play a piece, as part of a greater whole. Within that greater whole, we find the novelty of cars that drive themselves, and infrastructure that must respond to greater than just human needs, but a world in the wake of constant environmental shifts. Overall in regards to transportation, the only true answer, is to go onward.
O N W A R D + O U T W A R D
Transportation is altering the sense of the human landscape altogether. More important than the capabilities streets have to offer, is the typology of vehicle that is driving the true change. Transit systems, not looked at for their easy accessibility, is however, a maximum investment for cities and towns. Among the largest transit systems in the country, is the Subway system in New York City, which is not only a centralized system for the city itself, but network of connections to the airports, Long Island Railroad, the PATH, and trains entering and exiting Penn and Grand Central Station. Rather than re-investing in the same infamous system that has made New York both an infamous and iconic city, there should be a negotiation between the furthering of a master plan megalopolis, and implementing more of a human scale and dimension. Autonomous cars are already projected to do such heavy lifting, which are proposed by several think tanks to alleviate traffic by up to 90%, and replace just as many cars on the road. With a freedom of traffic due to the implementation of what has become necessary technology for the blossoming of smart cities, there is also a simple way of life that should be upheld. In order to enhance such human streets, street trees and landscape are significantly important for their cleanliness of the polluted city environment, and to soften the harsh orthogonal edges of a concrete jungle. By enriching street with more playful and interactive design, adding a layer of greenery, and furthering a more nostalgic and ideal city street, rather than constantly investing in billion-dollar infrastructure, it can be a simpler piece to a large citywide living condition. Only with massive growth, should New York City continue its subway lines, with the promise of high densities, but not overcrowding. The only promise made to New Yorkers should be the implementation of bicycle infrastructure. How could Portland beat New York in that regard? But it has, on a few urban strategies involving bicycles and pedestrian priority. By allowing for strictly bicycle riding zones, it allows for sport and business to become one…a way for someone to deliver goods and get to work, while being able to have fun while doing it. Once again, to summarize the suggested attitude about costly transportation networks, in contrast to smaller urban, and more human interventions, famous New York architectural critic, Ada Louise Huxtable once said…
“Nothing was more up-to-date when it was built, or is more obsolete today, than a railroad station.”
©AlexiaVirue 2016
