PublishedViking, February 2016 |
ISBN9780525429845 |
FormatHardcover, 368 pages |
Dimensions23.1cm × 16cm × 3.2cm |
As New York City's transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan managed the seemingly impossible and transformed the streets of one of the world's greatest, toughest cities into dynamic spaces safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her approach was dramatic and effective- Simply painting and reshaping part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom lines of businesses.
These efforts helped spark a revolution in how cities are conceived and how streets can be organized in a rapidly urbanizing world.
Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates, with step-by-step visuals, how to rewrite the underlying 'source code' of a street, with pointers on how to add protected bike paths, improve crosswalk space, and provide visual cues to reduce speeding. New strategies for collecting data and measuring streets' performance can change our understanding of how they work, and who they serve, with dramatic results seen in real time. This new vision for reading our streets has already made its way around the world, from pocket parks in Mexico City and Los Angeles to more pedestrian-friendly streets in Auckland and Buenos Aires to innovative bike lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco.
Achieving such a radical overhaul wasn't easy, and Streetfight pulls back the curtain on the battles Sadik-Khan won to make her approach work. Empowering and enlightening, Streetfight deconstructs, reassembles, and reinvents the street, inviting readers to see it in ways they never imagined.
