The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, along with the Future of Fifth Partnership, announced plans to transform Fifth Avenue, between Bryant Park and Central Park, into a pedestrian-centered boulevard. The project includes expanding sidewalks by 46%, reducing traffic lanes, improving pedestrian safety with shorter crosswalks, and adding greenery and lighting. The initiative begun with the Future of Fifth public-private partnership, which selected Arcadis, Sam Schwartz Engineering, and Field Operations to lead the design and study, and schematic design, scheduled to be completed by summer 2025.
With escalating land values in urban centers, there has been a growing trend to float public spaces from ground level to elevated locations, such as rooftops or podiums between buildings. From a development perspective, maximizing floor area has become crucial as urban environments expand. Ground-level spaces are highly sought after for retail use due to their strategic location, which attracts foot traffic and potential customers and drives city development and economics.
This financial consideration, which often guides building activities and directions in urban centers, contradicts design principles advocated during the modernist era for the benefits of better outdoor space for the public, such as the concept of 'Freeing the Ground'. Architects like Le Corbusier championed this concept through projects like Villa Savoye and Unite d' Habitation. These modernist designs envisioned a future where buildings were elevated to restore open, accessible outdoor ground-level spaces for its users. However, for the reasons above, many contemporary projects instead seek to replicate the function of public grounds within the building's structure.
Courtesy of SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations
SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations have revealed a design proposal to reimagine San Francisco’s iconic Powell Street. The street used to be one of the busiest pedestrian corridors in its district and a popular tourist attraction, with cable cars running up and down the street and connecting Union Square and Hallidie Plaza. Across the most popular three-block stretch, the storefronts have become mostly vacant. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, one of the reasons was the Covid pandemic, which led to a further decrease in tourism and in commercial activities. Now a new project led by designers SITELAB urban studio and Field Operations aims to revive the now underutilized transit corridor and to catalyze a renewed interest in the area.
via Unsplash | Street fair in Tepoztlán, Mexico. Photo by Karo Kujanpaa
Usually defined by their open-air settings, diverse offerings, local and independent sellers, temporary nature, and acting as social hubs, street markets have been around for thousands of years. From the days of the Roman Forum to the Silk Road and the markets of ancient Greece, they are undoubtedly essential parts of urban life, or “the center of all that is unofficial.” Mostly categorized under the informal economy due to lack of regulations and authorization, street markets in the global south have often been seen as a threat to urban development. However, these erratic and adaptive urban spaces serve core functions in any developing city, acting as pillars of community in many different facets of society.
Policymakers and city officials have long struggled with informality, considering it the “antithesis of modernity.” Conventionally, the informal economy consists of activities with market value but are not formally registered, often unregulated, undocumented, and operating outside the incentive system offered by the state. Street vendors, specifically in the global south, constitute a substantial portion of the informal economy. Moreover, as cities grow and approach development, public spaces become more contested and privatized, leading to an overall mission to remove street markets or push them into formalization.
Graffiti, as an art form, has a complex relationship with gentrification. On one hand, it has engaged the streets and urban fabric as a canvas for people to express themselves culturally and socio-politically. This expression could be a form of rebellion by ethnic minorities and disadvantaged groups in certain neighborhoods, or it can build up a sense of cultural uniqueness and social expression, giving a neighborhood a positive character and attracting newcomers. However, over the years, the latter has been an agent of gentrification, spiking up property values to accommodate richer residents and alienating the native communities of those neighborhoods.
In certain instances, artists recognize their role in this urban scheme and tweak their art form through its style, message, location, and action as direct forms of protest to fight against gentrification. From Brixton, Shoreditch, and Hackney in London, Williamsburg and Bushwick in New York, to The Canal Saint-Denis and Belleville in Paris, the use of graffiti on the streetscapes of these neighborhoods can either protest or inspire different forms of development.
A famous skyline can evoke rich associations and unleash imagination, but the real experience of a city is in its streets. Early humans evolved to see the first 20 feet in front, above, and around them so they could identify potential threats in the landscape. In our modern urban environment, this is still how we experience buildings and places. While aerial views and Google Earth imagery are useful for reference, the main experience of the outside of a building is what we pass by on the street, up to about the second or third story. The height of a building doesn’t necessarily matter if the street experience is rich and accessible.
https://www.archdaily.com/990889/activating-the-edges-how-to-create-lively-active-streetsAmanda Loper, Daniel Simons, David Baker
Copenhagen-based firm EFFEKT has won a competition to design a new Streetmekka in Viborg, Denmark, through the repurposing of an abandoned former windmill factory in the city’s industrial sector. The winning proposal, aims to instill a newfound sense of identity and value into one of the many leftover warehouse buildings, in the form of a new cultural center for street art, sport, and culture.
The Viborg Municipality and GAME, a Danish street sports NGO, announced that the competition’s purpose was to enable social and cultural change, specifically through empowerment of local youth.
