Despite the rise in disorder and crime, New York City’s remade public realm still thrives.
Contrary to popular New York City lore, Bloomberg-era transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan did not conjure Times Square’s world-famous pedestrian plazas, inaugurated in summer 2009, out of thin air. Beginning in the John Lindsay mayoralty of a half a century ago, forward-thinking transportation and planning officials had regularly proposed such plazas — only to see powerful interests in media, business and theater nix them, fearful over crime and vagrancy. How, then — as New York City has suffered its first significant, sustained uptick in crime and disorder since that era — has the “Broadway Mall” (as proponents called the Times Square idea back then), as well as older and newer public spaces throughout core Manhattan, fared? Surprisingly resiliently — proving, once again, that good design (and even, in some cases, little design at all) can and does promote civic behavior, even if it will never be a substitute for policing.
Continue reading the entire piece here at Vital City
______________________
Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in Vital City