Where is Charlie Brown?
It seemed great when the book “Tactical Urbanism” was published in in 2015. Here were a bunch of placemaking ideas that were easy to understand and implement. The first chapter was a promising summary of the principles of placemaking developed over the prior three decades. The rest of the book felt kind of skimpy – the case studies it described weren’t terribly impressive or interesting, but they were certainly a step in the right direction. And then tactical urbanism came to my block.
During COVID, New York City’s Open Streets program arrived on 103rd Street between Central Park and Riverside Park. Two metal barricades appeared at the end of each block each morning with signs noting that no through traffic was allowed, and that the speed limit was five miles an hour. 103rd came to a T intersection at each park – limiting its utility to through traffic. While no one was using the street bed to hang out in, and the street closing complicated bringing a Zipcar around from my local parking garage to my front door, I did enjoy the additional open space for walking the dog. I noticed over the years an occasional lame event advertised for the street being put on by “Park to Park 103/Open Streets.
The Plan