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Notable work includes a data story on the streets Mamdani should pedestrianize first, a python script that automates a chapter of New York City's CEQR environmental review procedure, data work on the Village Alliance's Public Realm Plan, and NYC elections bivarate mapping with ACS and DOE data. I share work updates on my linkedin frequently.

The 5 Streets Mamdani's Administration Should Pedestrianize First,

Part 1: 5th Avenue, from Central Park to Washington Square Park

I recently visited London and came upon this ad in the tube, which stopped me in my tracks.

As an urban planner and self-professed street lover, I was contractually obligated to look into why the mayor was running an ad campaign for a street redesign.

Coincidentallly, I was staying near Oxford Street and had been blown away by the sheer throngs of holiday season pedestrian crowds. Day and night, the 'everyone' commercial street (think 34th street mall, uniqlo heat tech flying off the shelves) was packed to the brim, as well as dozens of other key streets throughout Zone 1.

London and New York have always influenced each other, sometimes to an annoying extent (London, an early adopter of congestion fees, was living rent free in our heads during the congestion pricing policy detail wars) but the enormous similarities in the sister cities are clear on the ground. These massive centers of professional industry, entertainment, and capital, both face massive housing crises, beleaguered infrastructure and the struggle of rampant neoliberalism, inequality, and service provision.

Like NYC, I was shocked to see how much space London, filled with people spilling out of pubs onto the narrow cobblestone streets that escaped the blitz, still allocates for private cars, especially in comparison to other European capitals.

Yet when I dug into Sadiq Khan's plans to pedestrianize Oxford Street, he touted his plans as a "matter of national importance." I've heard similar rhetoric used for the gateway project and congestion pricing, but it's rare to hear pedestrian streets elevated and denoted as critical infrastructure, even as they generate significant economic, health, and accessibility dividends.

With this in mind, as well as a new administration set on reshaping the city, I've been thinking about the missed opportunities to build a transportation network better aligned with the needs of the post pandemic city. Based on initial signs of momentum and a healthy drive to flex power, I believe Zohran Mamdani's ambitious agenda could reshape the streetscape and influence the world.

Khan even sent a shoutout across the pond, remarking in a report "I want to rejuvenate Oxford Street and establish it as a global leader for shopping, leisure, and outdoor events, competing with the likes of Times Square in New York and the Champs-Élysées in Paris." I would argue Times Square is less of a global retail leader than 5th Avenue could be, but the cultural power of unique, innovative public spaces reaps dividends by generating tourist demand from all around the globe - which is one of the sectors holding together the city's fragile economy.

To deliver on this ambitious goal, in the works for a decade, Khan has to 1) deal with competing, affluent stakeholders, 2) move 16 bus lanes 3) form an entirely new management entity and 4) receive national approval. Yet TFL has the distinct advantage of managing London's regional transit, as opposed to the tri state area's extreme degree of balkanization. Mamdani faces the occasionally competing priorities of the multiple governors, the Port Authority, the Federal Government, the state run MTA and the city's DOT, which itself struggles to overcome the influence of local councilmembers, leaving our transportation system inefficient and riddled with frustrating gaps between payment systems, schedules, and modes.

In the model of Oxford Street, I believe the first street to fully pedestrianize (during daytime hours), is Manhattan's world-famous 5th Avenue, for five glorious miles from Central Park to Washington Sq Park.

While Broadway limps towards excellence with each block's redesign, a dedicated pedestrian-only commercial shopping corridor, with the blocks serving as independent laboratories for public space experimentation, would truly activate the city. Millions are drawn to the experience cities offer to participate in meaningful public life. Pedestrianization would provide 14 acres of new public space as well as increase connectivity between of the city's most notable cultural and civic institutions, including the MOMA, the NYPL Flagship branch, the Empire State Building, and 4 iconic parks.

Nearby Madison Avenue and Park Avenues would serve as a reprieve for bus commuters. While 5th Avenues boasts an impressive 31 bus lines, the inherent flexibility of the grid system and the upcoming Manhattan Bus Network Redesign present opportunities for the city to make a strong stand for commercial pedestrian streets that prioritize an experience, and to adjust the transportation network to work around this strategic asset.

I’ve long been fascinated by Donald Appleyard’s study of streets which produced this graphic, which like many studies, is obvious: on streets with less car traffic, people interact with each other and become friends. The streets we should pedestrianize should become a key component of our public realm's social infrastructure. Building community provides tangible health benefits and savings, especially for groups like seniors, whose care is funded by taxpayers.

Streets are ill-suited for hyper-local control; they move countless people who don’t live nearby and lose out on the political voice homeownership always seems to amplify. Spanning multiple jurisdictions creates the cyclist's nightmare of being ejected from a safe bike lane directly into car-induced chaos, amongst other issues. Many have detailed the punishing effects of auto dependency, but I do think there’s a lot of arguments to be made for the land reform of streets as we waste millions of acres of valuable urban land to the privatization that en masse, has left our society so deeply stratified.

How does this all come together? After years of neglect of our city's biggest untapped resource, it’s time to look outward and allow ourselves to be influenced by municipalities that are doing things in a better way. I hear constantly that “this will never work in New York, it’s too ___” yet our Mayor elect, who was polling at 1% this time last year, is redistributing power as we speak. In the heart of this affordability crisis, I see all these ways in which our collective well being has been sacrificed at the altar of neoliberalism, our public wealth siphoned brick by brick into hoarded, untouchable vaults. I believe streets are both symbolic and material places of a different kind of world.

Instead of the lukewarm 'Future of Fifth' Plan, 5th Avenue should be rapidly remade into a commercial pedestrian street during daytime hours. This corridor should be linked with the other high pedestrian flow destinations into a comprehensive network of uninterrupted Social Streets serving many functions, while ultimately making a walk from Washington Square to Central Park with your friends safe for families, the elderly, children, and a public starved of social infrastructure. Millions who flock to the city crowd onto insufficient sidewalks peeping at holiday displays, and are drawn to the joy a trip to the city’s most bustling hubs create. Culture, creativity, and interactions knit together our patchwork metropolis, which (despite bucketfuls of fearmongering in through America’s shameful legacy of Anti-Urbanism), is still the ultimate trip generator.

Next Up? Brooklyn's Vanderbilt Avenue.

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