Voters were drawn to Zohran Mamdani’s campaign because it promised to solve the city’s affordability crisis and made a connection with New Yorkers on the streets.
City streets may be found in almost all of his campaign’s images without much effort. Four nights prior to the primary, he strolled the whole length of Manhattan. On social media, his streetside interviews with residents of the five boroughs of New York went viral. For his vision of a more affordable New York, 50,000 New Yorkers were pounding the pavement.
The simplest places for New Yorkers to witness our city’s transformation into a better place to live, work, and raise a family are our streets and public areas. We are healthier and happier when we have new trees, clean sidewalks, safe intersections, lively plazas, brilliant lighting, local performances and art, and busy business corridors.
Our public areas have the power to either portray the positive aspects of city life or its decline. The quality of public areas is a major factor, with only one in three New Yorkers rating our quality of life here as good or excellent.According to recent surveys, New Yorkers feel unsafe in the city, which makes them spend less time outside and on public transportation. To make our public area worthy of this elite metropolis, we still have work to do.
On our streets, the pandemic inspired a great deal of creativity. New Yorkers drew on their passion for outdoor dining, stoop life, mutual assistance distribution, and sidewalk thrifting, but they also made preventing the closure of eateries and small businesses a top priority. We came to see how important it is to have enough space for festivals, protests, and block parties.
Since then, many of our accomplishments have been undermined by bureaucratic red tape, expensive permits, and discontinued programs. Our streets and public areas are of wildly disparate quality. While volunteers and underfunded organizations run the rest of the city, business-led organizations in wealthy districts enhance public areas and promote capital investment. The city government, not just private partnerships, must lead the charge to create an equal public environment.
Through our experience in funding and managing the Local Center, we have discovered solutions to these problems. For the purpose of revitalizing public areas in eight neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, the Local Center brought together local organizations and designers.
5,000 neighbors and long-standing community organizations created fresh ideas for neighborhood public space and started initiatives that honored the past and future of each town. Parking lots, parks, and plazas were converted by local leaders into markets, gathering places, classrooms, and performance spaces.
According to surveys, the Local Center’s initiatives promoted safety, vibrancy, and community connectedness in public areas.As a result, locals said they spent more time there. Because 90 areas applied to be included, we know that many more neighborhoods are yearning for this type of catalytic support.
A mayor who is dedicated to boldly revitalizing our streets ought to build on the Local Center’s work and begin a comprehensive plan for public spaces in New York, beginning with our streets and plazas.
Consider establishing 100 new town squares in areas with little investment in public space. Imagine an Open Streets program that runs in every area, providing sufficient assistance to small businesses and community organizations who manage them to build safe, prosperous, and connected corridors.
Instead than imposing the same old street or plaza pattern, this is about creating public space for us and giving community organizations the resources they need to spearhead the transformation in their neighborhoods. We’re not just talking about temporary benches and steel barriers; we’re also talking about areas where people can congregate, eat, play, and perform in a safe manner, much like the Meatpacking District upgrades and the Paseo Park concept currently under construction on Queens 34th Ave.
An annual investment of $50 million could do this, giving fresh open space, street safety, and commercial life to every community where current programs have failed, most notably Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx.
To provide each area with a plaza or open roadway influenced by neighborhood associations and citizens, City Hall must make a concerted effort. Year-round programming, such as markets, festivals, and public art initiatives that represent the local community’s culture, history, and interests, would take place in lively town squares across the city.
Better public spaces benefit locals in a number of ways, including enhanced safety, more prosperous small businesses, better physical and mental health outcomes, stronger local economies, a stronger feeling of community, and increased trust and engagement in government, according to decades of study.
Will the incoming mayor clear the path?
McPhee is the Urban Design Forum’s executive director. King is the Charles H. Revson Foundation’s senior program officer.
