My NYC Biking Story: Bin Feng Zheng from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
Surprise: Big Old New York City Is the Cutting Edge for Urban Transportation and a Vision for a Sustainable Future
Author: Don Hazen
Who would have thought that New York City, the nation’s most populous city, often perceived as lumbering when it comes to change, would be a cutting-edge innovator in transportation and the future of open space? Who would imagine the city could serve as an incubator for the rest of the country for ideas about the future of urban life? At a time when the price of fuel is skyrocketing as its availability decreases and the burst housing bubble turns exurban sprawl into ghost-towns, smart, savvy, creative, environmentally conscious people are returning to the inner city, where a sustainable lifestyle is more feasible.
It’s supposed to be nearly impossible to get anything important accomplished quickly in New York City. With powerful, conflicting political interests, tabloids ready to pounce at every opportunity, and a state legislature arbitrarily lording over the world’s most influential city from its perch in Albany, progress and innovation face an obstacle course of challenges — or, more accurately, a minefield.
But New York City’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan, has turned conventional wisdom on its head. In three years on the job, with her potent combination of smarts, chutzpah and political savvy, Sadik-Khan has made great strides in moving New York City into the 21st century. She has overseen the building of hundreds of miles of innovative bike lanes; she’s turned traffic-clogged streets like parts of Broadway into vibrant public spaces; she has secured huge grants from the Feds to improve bus service, and perhaps most importantly to her boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, she has made the streets safer than they have been in many decades.
Sam Schwartz, first deputy transportation commissioner from 1982-’86, and now a consultant and columnist, says, “She has this remarkable speed. A speed the likes which of is unmatched.” He readily acknowledges that Sadik-Khan has done more in the past few years than anyone “in the past 50.”
Read the full article at http://www.alternet.org/environment/149882/surprise%3A_big_old_new_york_city_is_the_cutting_edge_for_urban_transportation_and_a_
vision_for_a_sustainable_future/
Are New York’s Bike Lanes Working?
As new bicycle lanes appear all over New York City, the opposition to them has become more vocal.
City officials and cycling advocates say that the expanded network has already proved successful, increasing riders’ safety while promoting a greener means of urban transportation. Opponents complain about the loss of parking and unloading space, as well as constricted traffic. They hope the lanes go the way of the ones in the early 1980′s, though former Mayor Edward Koch, who oversaw their brief life back then, said that this time they might succeed because the city is putting far more investment into making them work.
Read the full article at http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/12/21/are-new-yorks-bike-lanes-working
In The News: Cities in Focus | New York City
About this video
New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Department of Transportation are on a mission to make the Big Apple the “greatest, greenest big city in the world” by ramping up bicycle infrastructure across the city, introducing bus rapid transit to the Bronx, and pedestrianizing Times Square, among other bold transportation initiatives.
See original post at http://www.embarq.org/en/video/cities-focus-new-york-city
New York City Names Winners of Apps Contest
Author: Jenna Wortham
The winners of the first NYC BigApps competition, which invited the public to develop applications using raw sets of municipal data, were announced at an event in New York on Thursday evening.
The competition, which the city’s Economic Development Corporation kicked off in June, gave software developers access to more than 170 sets of data from 30 city agencies, including weekly traffic updates, schedules of citywide events, property sales, results of restaurant inspections and mappable data around school and voting districts.
A panel of judges, which included John Borthwick, chief executive of Betaworks, and Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures, selected 10 winners from a pool of more than 100 entries. Cash prizes totaling $20,000 will be shared among the winning teams, and they will also be invited to a dinner with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
The top three winners were:
WayFinder NYC: An application designed for smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system allows users to find the closest subway entrance. It uses an approach known as augmented reality, overlaying subway line symbols on a live view through the phone’s camera.
Read the full article at http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/nyc-announces-winners-of-local-apps-contest/