Reimagining the city’s streets and reclaiming the pavement

Of all the ways the pandemic reshaped New York City’s streetscape, the most profound example might have been found on Vanderbilt Avenue as it cut through brownstone Brooklyn.

On weekends, jazz bands played on the corners. Friends reunited on the median. Children zigged and zagged on their bikes as diners sat at bistro tables atop asphalt. The faint sound of cars could be heard in the distance.

Just as the early days of the coronavirus forced New Yorkers inside, it eventually pushed them outdoors — for fresh air, for exercise, for eating, for relief — in what became an organic takeover and reimagining of the city’s streets across its five boroughs.

City officials handed over 83 miles of roadway to cyclists, runners and walkers, allowed nearly 11,000 restaurants to stretch onto sidewalks and streets and let retailers expand their storefronts beyond their front doors. People reclaimed the pavement and are, by and large, unwilling to give it back.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has heralded the programs — known separately as Open Streets, Open Restaurants and Open Storefronts — as a bright spot in an otherwise dark moment for the city. Once a skeptic, de Blasio believes that some of these pandemic-era experiments will be woven permanently into the fabric of New York.

But how exactly will the city look?

The New York Times asked people who have taken advantage of Open Streets what they want to see endure. The Times also asked a noted urban planner and architect, Claire Weisz of WXY Studio, to explore what would be realistic but also to offer a more ambitious vision and share what has worked elsewhere.

The Times selected three streets that were part of the Open Streets and Open Restaurants programs and that represent possibilities applicable to all parts of the city. While the Open Restaurants program has been made permanent, the city has said less about the future of Open Streets, most of which recently ended because of colder weather, beyond that the mayor wants to see it stay in some form.

There is Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights, a grand mixed-use, European-style boulevard. There is 34th Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens, a wide street lined with apartment buildings and townhouses. And there is Avenue B on the Lower East Side, which, like other Manhattan residential neighborhoods, is anchored by a park.

THE EUROPEAN BOULEVARD

Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn

Vanderbilt Avenue could become a destination for the surrounding areas by taking advantage of the existing median, expanding it with curves that force drivers to slow down and building a performance stage.

What New Yorkers Think

On Halloween morning, Dayna Rosen stood in the middle of the major thoroughfare connecting Fort Greene to the north and Prospect Park to the south, snapping photos of Monty, her Boston terrier mix. Monty wore a jean jacket and a magenta mohawk.

Rosen, 40, felt for a moment as if she had been whisked away to another continent.

“It reminds me of all the squares in Europe,” she said.

Until Thanksgiving, Vanderbilt Avenue — which stretches 60 feet curb to curb — was transformed into a central hub in the Prospect Heights neighborhood. Restaurants stretched into the street. One block of the avenue has a concrete median with a few planted trees, a splash of greenery in the middle of the two-way street.

The transformation started on Saturday mornings with volunteers moving blue barricades onto the avenue, blocking all cars except emergency vehicles.

“Since we live right on this block, we are able to bring our chairs,” Molly Marcotte said as she carried a barricade.

When we asked people who have flocked to Vanderbilt what it needs most, almost everyone mentioned more benches and tables. The existing bike lane should be more clearly marked and improved to try to separate faster cyclists from others, especially children, who are traveling more slowly.

Above all, local residents said they wanted to be able to dictate the future of Vanderbilt and not cede decision making to City Hall.

Jaykuan Marrero, who has cut hair at two barbershops on the street, said he would love to see Vanderbilt converted into an ambitious events space, with a stage for musical and theatrical performances.

Andy Bachman, a rabbi who was getting his hair cut by Marrero, agreed.

“This is a borough of writers, painters and poets,” Bachman said.

What’s Practical

The future of a road like Vanderbilt, Weisz said, begins with the median — a 10-foot-wide by 300-foot-long elevated concrete block broken up by nine Japanese zelkova trees.

On many city streets, the median is “purely a kind of visual safety barrier and nothing else,” she said.

Weisz said Vanderbilt’s median could be extended along additional blocks and expanded outward, becoming a small park.

The islands in the middle of Vanderbilt, she said, could also provide something sorely needed across the entire city: public bathrooms, which make places more welcoming and allow people to linger longer.

In some countries, users of public bathrooms pay a small fee — 25 cents in U.S. currency, for instance — with the proceeds used to hire workers to keep bathrooms clean and stocked with supplies. (The city has five public, climate-controlled restrooms that cost 25 cents to use for 15 minutes.)

Medians could also be used as loading and unloading zones for deliveries. New kinds of bike lanes — one dedicated to fast bicyclists, commuters and delivery workers — could be added next to the median. There could be a separate lane for leisurely riders.

That is a model embraced by Copenhagen, the cycling-friendly city in Denmark, which has nine so-called supercycle highways crisscrossing the city and its metropolitan area.

THE RESIDENTIAL PROMENADE

34th Avenue, Queens

In Queens, 34th Avenue could become a long pedestrian promenade by expanding the existing median, which would allow space for features like a workout area and gardens, and would move the existing bike lane away from traffic.

What New Yorkers Think

Twice a day, Laurie Gold takes her pit bull mix, Shani, on a long walk — more than 2 miles along 34th Avenue. The straight roadway, whose lanes are separated by an elevated median with plants and trees, is full of people day and night, running, walking or biking.

“I love it,” Gold, 29, said about the Open Streets portion, which extends more than a mile from near the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to Junction Boulevard. “I wouldn’t change anything.”

During the pandemic, the avenue has become a family destination. Neighbors stop to chat. Parents push strollers, while children bounce basketballs or zip around on bicycles. Ashley Cedeno, 8, loves playing tag or hide-and-seek.

The street, Ashley said, is “for having fun and playing together.”

A gathering area on the western half is Travers Park, a 2-acre playground and green space surrounded by apartment buildings and schools. While wanting to maintain the avenue’s residential appeal, some people said they would like more commercial activity, like fairs, food trucks and sidewalk vendors.

On some weekends, farmers and winemakers have set up tents to sell goods. Edwin Cordero, who has lost 5 pounds in the past month walking his yellow Labrador retriever, Lucy, said there should be more choices.

“We don’t get street festivals up here at all,” Cordero said.

What’s Practical

A street like 34th Avenue is ripe with opportunities, Weisz said. The roadway stretches about 55 feet across from curb to curb, enough room for the median to be extended to the sidewalk on one side and create a one-way road on the other.

The extended area would create a large section for pedestrians and for more greenery, she said.

While the avenue has a bike lane, it runs between the roadway and parked cars. Weisz said it would be safer to move it next to the sidewalk to prevent drivers from hitting cyclists with the door when they get out of their vehicles.

“It does feel dangerous,” she said.

Travers Park could serve as an anchor, a place to add public bathrooms as well as carve out space for vendors and a workout area.

New York could take inspiration from the Tokyo Toilet, architecturally appealing and wheelchair-accessible restrooms found across Shibuya, a major commercial center in Tokyo.

“You need some sort of public facilities here,” Weisz said.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD SIDE STREET

Avenue B, Manhattan

Avenue B could be made more inviting to pedestrians by converting the road into a one-way strip near Tompkins Square Park, which would lose its fencing but gain public bathrooms.

What New Yorkers Think

Holding a paintbrush lathered in red wood stain, Darrin Arremony knelt on Avenue B on a recent Sunday, applying the first coat on a newly built outdoor dining structure at Barnyard, his wife’s cheese restaurant.

As he spread the stain, Arremony kept an eye on the narrow lanes behind him, watching for traffic. He said it might be safer to convert the open street section of Avenue B, between East Sixth and East 14th streets, into a one-way street.

Today, with parked cars and some restaurants operating on the roadway, there is roughly a 20-foot wide gap on the street for people, bicyclists and some vehicles. Only local car traffic is allowed through.

“We definitely need automobile traffic here,” Arremony said. “The businesses will need the support of deliveries.”

The focal point of the neighborhood is Tompkins Square Park, developed into a landscaped oasis more than 150 years ago on former swampland.

Many residents said the park’s best features — a place to sit or relax amid greenery — should be adopted along Avenue B. Debora Williams, who has lived in the neighborhood for 25 years, said the sidewalks should have more trees and plants.

Converting Avenue B into a permanent open street, she added, would allow schools to use it as a big playground.

“Just more greenery would be great,” Williams said.

What’s Practical

The park is 10.5 acres but most of it is off limits to people. Fences ring its perimeter, except for paved entryways into the park. Benches line the paths but are not surrounded by trees and shrubs, which are protected by more fencing within the park.

Weisz said the fences were a relic of a different era when residents worried about farm animals roaming into the parkland. Then, “it turned into a weird 1970s security thing,” she said. But imagine, she said, what the area would look like without fences.

It would be easy to enter the park with paths weaving amid the trees and landscapes, allowing people to escape in the greenery and stay socially distanced.

A template for Avenue B could be Barcelona, Spain, which has superblocks — islands of car-free streets. The avenue could be made one-way as an open street, while reverting to a two-way elsewhere.

A wider street would also make room for public bathrooms, she said.

Breaking up the flow of traffic would force drivers to slow down, increasing safety. Avenue B would also benefit from bike lanes and discrete areas for deliveries.

“It looks like the perfect shared street,” Weisz said.

© 2020 The New York Times Company