These streets are made for walkin'

Five years ago, New York City began counting the number of pedestrians at 50 of the city's biggest intersections. The latest results available show that the sidewalks keep getting busier.

Or as Sam Roberts puts it in The New York Times, "New Yorkers not only talk the talk—they walk the walk."

Since 2006, the volume of pedestrians has risen by 13 percent, judging by a count made last May. Surveyors used hand-held counters to determine how many people were walking in places like Times Square (350,000 a day); West 14th Street between Hudson Street and Eighth Avenue in Manhattan (11,000 a day); and Main Street, Flushing, Queens (97,000 a day). 

"Pedestrian volume has increased 12 percent in Times Square since vehicular traffic on parts of Broadway was curbed," The Times reports.

The city's Transportation Department has been widening sidewalks where possible, and the city has an ambitious program Plaza Program—subject of an article in the December New Urban News—that creates new public plazas. Many of the plazas have been developed at locations where one street grid collides with another.

Walking is good for health, good for the environment (as compared to driving), and good for the urban fabric, since it supports blocks of continuous shops, rather than shopping centers sitting behind parking lots. It may also be good for safety. New York traffic fatalities involving pedestrians have dropped by 21 percent in the past decade, The Times says.

Gehl Architects, an international urban design and research firm headed by Danish architect Jan Gehl, is a consultant to the Transportation Department. Gehl's most recent book, Cities for People, was reviewed in the March 2011 New Urban News. 

In the book, Gehl wrote that the biggest mistake in creating public spaces is to make them too large. Concentration makes for a more lively environment. But the Times article suggests that there are limits to that line of thinking when it comes to sidewalks. Some sidewalks, such as those in Flushing's Main Street, have become oversaturated.

Still, that's a problem that many urban business districts would love to have.

For more in-depth coverage on this topic: 

• Subscribe to New Urban News to read all of the articles (print+online) on implementation of greener, stronger, cities and towns.

• See the September 2011 issue of New Urban News. Topics: Walk Score, sprawl retrofit, livability grants, Katrina Cottages, how to get a transit village built, parking garages, the shrinking Wal-Mart, Complete Streets legislation, an urban capital fund, and much more.

• Get New Urbanism: Best Practices Guide, packed with more than 800 informative photos, plans, tables, and other illustrations, this book is the best single guide to implementing better cities and towns.

• See the July-August 2011 issue of New Urban News. Downtown makeover, agrarian urbanism, bike sharing, bike-ped issues, TIGER III livability grants, unlocking remnant land value, selling the neighborhood, Landscape Urbanism vs. New Urbanism, new urban resort, granny flats, The Great Reset.

• See the June 2011 issue of New Urban News. Mid-rise living, elevated walkways, Jane Jacobs and observational urbanism, affordable transit-oriented development, the coming housing calamity, rental and TOD to dominate market, New Town in bankruptcy, regional approach for high-speed rail, the civic costs of sprawl, redevelopment of mall 

• See the April-May 2011 issue of New Urban News. Transit-oriented development, “Cycle tracks,” gentrification versus revitalization, HUD grants, economic silver linings, light rail development, pocket neighborhoods, close-in Maryland housing less expensive, transit outperforms green buildings, Charter Awards, shift to smaller stores