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John Petro

Reclaiming our Public Space for People, Not Cars: Elitist or Egalitarian?

New York Magazine profiled the city’s visionary Transportation Commissioner, Janette Sadik-Kahn. Under Sadik-Kahn’s direction, the city is reexamining the way that it views its streets.

As the automobile gained dominance in American society, city streets were redesigned to accommodate the free flow of automobile traffic. Sidewalks were narrowed, streets widened, and parking garages and lots were built to store these automobiles. When considering their roads, city planners had only one thing in mind: getting as many cars through a given space as possible.

Sadik-Kahn, appointed in 2007, approached her job from a different perspective. If so few people in New York City drive, why are we bending over backwards to facilitate automobile traffic? Nowhere does this question become more pertinent than in Times Square. Eighty-nine percent of the space in Times Square is devoted to roadway, while only 11 percent is for pedestrians. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you that this is an inappropriate way to allocate space in the crowded square; the vast majority of people get around by foot or public transportation, not by car.

The potential impact of changing the way we look at our public streets is huge. Over a quarter of the land in New York City is devoted to roads, and if anything is in short supply in New York it is space. That’s why the recent changes to Madison Square, where unnecessary travel lanes were reclaimed for a pedestrian plaza, are so important. If you start to critically examine the way we allocate space to automobiles, you will start to see all kinds of wasteful uses. If you start to deemphasize auto-mobility and instead emphasize all kinds of mobility, you will find that you can accommodate many more people if you reclaim space for walking, biking, and transit.

This kind of transportation reform is about fairness.

For too long, our cities have allowed suburban commuter interests to transform our urban centers from pedestrian friendly environments to those that facilitate the flow of automobiles in and out of the city. Cities have given up sidewalk space (street trees or street parking?), have allowed parking garages and lots to suck the vitality out of city centers, and have even given up entire neighborhoods to freeway construction, all for the sake of auto-mobility. These measures have hurt cities overall, turning city neighborhoods into uninviting and unsafe environments (walking down a city street that is dominated by parking garages can be a scary experience while a lively city street with businesses and restaurants is quite safe).

Of course city residents drive their cars on these streets as well–though most likely they drive far less often and for much shorter trips. And a city that does not accommodate cars and trucks at all will not be very viable. But Sadik-Kahn’s approach to transportation is important because she is working against decades of thinking that prioritized auto-mobility above all else. Her efforts aim to make the city a more pleasant place to be, replacing auto exhaust and diesel engines with public plazas and bicycle lanes.

That’s why it is frustrating that these reforms are viewed by some to be elitist.

But why does transportation reform have to feel so elitist? Related issues like obesity and pollution hit minorities and low-income residents hardest. Poor New Yorkers rely disproportionately on mass transit, and public space is all the more precious to those who live in cramped apartments.

Part of the problem is the movement itself. Like environmentalist groups nationwide, the city’s transportation-reform community is rooted in its affluent, white residents.

Elitism is tied with the idea that certain groups deserve preferential treatment based on a perceived notion of superiority. But when public space is being taken away from a relative few in order to benefit a larger group of people, it is the exact opposite of elitism, it is egalitarianism. These reforms are not made to benefit the few, but the many. Transportation reform is about making the whole city a better place, by reducing auto-related emissions, cutting down on the amount of car traffic (and thereby exhaust fumes, horn honking, and abrasive diesel engine noise), and increasing the amount of public space that is available for all to enjoy. This is a vision that all New Yorkers, and city residents across the country, should be able to embrace.

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Posted at 5:36 PM, May 22, 2009 in Transportation | Urban Affairs
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