Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign captured the attention of voters by promising to address the city\u2019s affordability crisis and by connecting with New Yorkers on our streets.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t have to look hard to find city streets in just about every image of his campaign. He walked the length of Manhattan four nights before the primary. His streetside interviews with New Yorkers across the five boroughs circulated widely on social media. He had 50,000 New Yorkers pounding the pavement to share his vision for a more affordable New York.<\/p>\n
Our streets and public spaces are the easiest places for New Yorkers to see our city becoming a better place to live, work, and raise a family. New trees, clean sidewalks, safe intersections, bustling plazas, bright lighting, local art and performances, and active commercial corridors make us healthier and happier.<\/p>\n
Our public spaces can exemplify the joys of city life or signal its demise. Only\u00a0one in three New Yorkers<\/a>\u00a0rate our quality of life here as good or excellent \u2014 and the quality of public spaces plays an outsized role.\u00a0Recent surveys<\/a>\u00a0convey New Yorkers\u2019 sense that the city does not feel safe,\u00a0causing them to spend less time outdoors and on public transit<\/a>. We have work to do to make our public space worthy of this world class city.<\/p>\n The pandemic sparked enormous creativity on our streets. A central goal was to prevent restaurants and small businesses from shuttering, but New Yorkers also leaned into their love of outdoor dining, stoop life, mutual aid distribution, and sidewalk thrifting. We realized how much we need adequate space for block parties, protests, and festivals.<\/p>\n Since then, red tape, costly permits, and eliminated programs have eroded many of our gains. The quality of our streets and public spaces is vastly uneven. Wealthy neighborhoods have business-led organizations that improve public spaces and champion capital investment, while the rest of the city is left to volunteers and underresourced organizations. The solution for equitable public space must be driven by city government \u2014 not private partnerships alone.<\/p>\n We have found answers to these challenges through our experience funding and leading the\u00a0Local Center<\/a>. The Local Center connected community organizations and design professionals to bring public spaces to life in eight neighborhoods across the five boroughs.<\/p>\n Long-rooted community organizations and 5,000 neighbors defined new visions for public space in their neighborhoods and launched projects that celebrated each community\u2019s history and future. Community leaders transformed parking lots, parks, and plazas into performance venues, markets, classrooms, and organizing spaces.<\/p>\n Surveys showed the Local Center\u2019s projects\u00a0cultivated community connection, safety, and liveliness in public spaces.<\/a>\u00a0Residents reported spending more time there as a result. We know many more neighborhoods are eager for this kind of catalytic support because 90 communities applied to participate.<\/p>\n A mayor committed to bringing our streets back to life in a courageous way should expand the Local Center\u2019s effort, launching a comprehensive public space plan for New York starting with our plazas and streets.<\/p>\n Imagine bringing 100 new \u201ctown squares\u201d to neighborhoods where public space investment has been minimal. Imagine an Open Streets initiative that operates in every neighborhood, giving community organizations and small businesses who steward them enough support to create connected, safe, and thriving corridors.<\/p>\n This is about making public space for us, resourcing community organizations to lead the change in their neighborhoods, rather than imposing the same old street or plaza template. We\u2019re not talking about just steel barriers and temporary seating \u2014 but spaces to safely gather, dine, play, and perform, similar to improvements in the Meatpacking District and the plan for Paseo Park underway on Queens\u2019 34th Ave.<\/p>\n This could be accomplished with an investment of $50 million annually, bringing new open space, street safety, and commercial vitality to every community where existing programs have been least successful, most prominently in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.<\/p>\n We need a focused effort driven by City Hall to give every neighborhood a plaza or open street shaped by local organizations and residents. Vibrant \u201ctown squares\u201d throughout the city would be home to year-round programming, including markets, festivals, and public art projects that reflect the culture, history, and interests of the local neighborhood.<\/p>\n Decades of research show how residents benefit when public space is better: more safety<\/a>,\u00a0more successful small businesses<\/a>, better\u00a0physical<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0mental health\u00a0<\/a>outcomes,\u00a0stronger local economies<\/a>,\u00a0increased sense of community<\/a>, and\u00a0higher trust and participation in government<\/a>.<\/p>\n Will the next mayor pave the way?<\/p>\n McPhee is executive director of the Urban Design Forum<\/a>. King is senior program officer at the Charles H. Revson Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zohran Mamdani\u2019s campaign captured the attention of voters by promising to address the city\u2019s affordability crisis and by…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":171712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-171711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-opinion","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115083828564478687","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=171711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/171711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/171712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=171711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=171711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}