Times Square Broadway Closure

The closure of part of Broadway near Times Square to cars has been a topic of much debate recently, much of it a bit misguided. I will try to shed some light on this issue.

First of all, though this is billed as a "pilot program", you will never see the NYC DOT determine that a "pilot program" was a failure - this closure to cars/pedestrianization of Broadway will be a permanent change. The "pilot program" thing is just for PR reasons to make it seem like they "tested" their plans. I think this is actually a good M.O. because when real tests are conducted and endless committees, groups, etc. have to approve or have a say in plans, nothing gets done. We are much better off with many experiments than with maintaining the status quo simply because it is too hard to make changes.

And this specific change, closing Broadway to cars and opening it to pedestrians, strikes me as a good one. There are tens of thousands of pedestrians in Times Square, and there is at present not nearly enough sidewalk space to accomodate them all. Moreover, Times Square is not simply a place pedestrians walk through to get elsewhere, it is a destination and spectacle in and of itself. There is currently a triangle of public space on the north end of Times Square that accomodates people waiting or watching and has tables and chairs (TKTS Booth), but that space is inadequate to handle the crush of tourists and office workers in Times Square every day.

In terms of cars, this plan claims to increase traffic speeds on 7th Avenue because there is no longer an awkard intersection between Broadway and 7th Avenue that slows downtown traffic. I would venture to guess that this is true, but it certainly was not the purpose of the plan- it is an added bonus. The plan was hatched as a pedestrianization scheme and then this speeding up of traffic was found to be an additional benefit. Though to be fair, the choice of closing the diagonal Broadway that interferes with the rectangular grid of Manhattan makes a lot of sense for traffic flow reasons. Ultimately, because Times Square is more valuable to pedestrians than to cars, this plan would be a good idea even if it slowed cars a bit (though perhaps not if it made it extremely slow for cars to move through this area). In any case, traffic predictions are a bit difficult to make because there is a sort of natural equilibrium where drivers, seeing there is traffic somewhere, either take another route or choose public transit- it's not like there will now be twice as many cars on 7th Avenue now that Broadway is closed in this section.

As for the specifics of the new, pedestrianized Broadway at Times Square, see Tom's TwitPic below for a glimpse of what it currently looks like.














Now this is patently not a well-designed public space. It's some chairs haphazardly thrown onto a concrete roadway. So critics will charge that this project is doomed to failure. But this is an unfair criticism because this is just a temporary treatment - once the permanent change is made, DOT will likely cover the space with a brown gravelly surface and put up chairs and tables as it has done at other pedestrian plazas, as at Madison Square:















If designed properly, this has the potential to be a great public space. I would include space for street performers (they already perform there so give them a more formal space) and street vendors to make the space more lively - just tables and chairs can be pleasant but is not that dynamic. But specifically, this is a great space because the way Times Square is laid out is such that there is a section in the middle from which one can observe the spectacular buildings on the perimeter. Prior to this street closure, there was only a small island from which to observe the buildings, but now there will be a larger area. Most great public spaces - the plazas of Rome, the pleins of Amsterdam, even NYC's own Washington Square - are organized as interior courtyards that look out onto wonderful surrounding buildings. Times Square could be even better if traffic were closed on 7th Avenue, creating a fully pedestrian "middle," but perhaps that would be too drastic in terms of traffic (I am not certain either way). This space will never be as charming as say, a Savannah Square or a Roman plaza- the buildings are too tall and garish, the area is dirty, etc. - but it can be an interesting, dynamic space and I applaud the DOT for making this change.


One final note- the DOT also closed Broadway to cars just south of Times Square (42nd- 36th Street), and this has been something of a failure despite nice tables and chairs being put there. First of all, there is no reason for pedestrians to be walking along that stretch of Broadway, let alone sitting down there - as opposed to the natural pedestrian draw of Times Square. Second, there is nothing interesting to look at along this stretch and the space is not really oriented toward anything or oriented at all, it's just a strip. Because it makes the street more walkable and attractive, and makes crossing the street easier and more pleasant, I am narrowly in favor of the sub-42nd Street closure, but just barely and I can certainly see the arguments against it. It's not an open-and-shut case, and the street closure program should be targeted more at places where plazas that pedestrians will actually use can be created (Herald Square, for instance). I'm not an anti-car zealot!

The Failure of the Projects

In walking through a housing project the other day, I reflected on what a failure the projects are on a variety of levels.

Let's begin with urban design/form. The first thing that strikes you about projects is the lack of what we call "street life" or "urban vitality." This is true especially at night, but even during the day you will mostly find people just milling about. What explains this lack of dynamism? The absence of commerce. Think about the neighborhood you live in -- what gives it its vitality is not the "sense of community" or "cool people" or whatever else you may think; it is shops, restaurants and bars. Commerce makes a neighborhood vibrant, even a relatively poor neighborhood- just look at the renaissance of Harlem's 125th Street to see what a difference commercial land uses make in the vitality a neighborhood. Even if you live in a brownstone on a quiet street in Park Slope, chances are you are no more than one block away from a major commercial avenue with restaurants, shops, etc. But projects are organized as mega-blocks in which you might live over two blocks from any commerce. Moreover, the project is organized as a sort of geographical unit, with a store even a block away perceived as a bit of a trek- it is inexcusable that there is little to no commerce within the housing project megablocks.

Another flaw in the urban design of housing projects is the space set aside for parking. Even New York's upper-middle-class residents rarely have cars, and these are the poorest New Yorkers - why waste space on this (not to mention the environmental argument against encouraging car use)?


The only successful, dynamic place in any project is usually the playground/basketball court. Indeed, parks are a good use of space that promote social life, and even in this respect projects do not get high marks. When you look around a project, you will often see a lot of grass; the problem is that the grass is inaccessible and broken into small patches. Contrast the layout of the projects (small patches of grass that are gated off) with the layout of a college courtyard; the courtyard is successful because it is totally open for residents to walk on and it leverages the economies of scale that come from combining small pieces of land to provide a playing space of meaningful size for sunbathers, picnics and even sports.

On a more macro-level, the layout of projects is dreadful. They are physically isolated when the real value people get from being in cities is connectivity. This is the genius of the street grid. Even Mayor Bloomberg's mansion on 79th Street literally just opens out onto the street and he is immediately hooked into the street network to walk or take public transportation anywhere in the city. The projects, by contrast, offer little of the street network's amazing connectivity because they are focused inward, their megablocks are disconnected from and interrupt the normal street pattern, and some are even actually gated off from the rest of the city.

On an even more macro-level, I wonder if projects are a good idea at all. Even when the private market is involved, it is very difficult to master plan a vast area at one time because successful neighborhoods change and evolve organically over time, and master planners simply don't have enough information and can't account for what the future will bring. This is part of why projects look so dated today.

And does it really make sense to have projects on valuable land in Manhattan (say the East Village) when there is no doubt in my mind that every project resident paying $300 to live in the East Village would gladly rent out her apartment for the market rate of $1500 and use the $1200 profit to live somewhere else? When the City of New York could sell the land the projects sit on for billions of dollars and fund a huge housing voucher program for far more low-income residents? It seems to me that the poor would be better off with a voucher program that would give them more options to choose from; competing developers would try to cater to the low-income residents' tastes in order to get vouchers, and low-income residents would be better off. There exists a federal voucher program now but the numbers are low enough that they can be sort of dismissed by landlords. A robust program, however, would create a critical mass of voucher holders that would make developers and landlords interested in serving them.

Ultimately there are a limited number of things the government is good at, and creating and maintaining massive tracts of housing is not one of them. But given that we are perhaps stuck with projects for some time (at least in New York), the City could at least make some of the changes I proposed - adding commercial land uses, ridding the projects of parking lots, and reconfiguring the open space to be larger and more accessible (perhaps using some of those former parking spots...).