Thursday, February 26, 2009
No Cars Go
Posted by Mark on Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 12:12 PM
Fittingly for a multibillionaire who had term limits repealed, Bloomberg's mayoralty is defined by the grand gesture, the leader-as-visionary. He banned smoking and trans fats for our own good; tried to bring us the Olympics and the West Side Stadium (and Atlantic Yards); did bring the 2004 RNC; and occasionally tried to unilaterally enact really progressive environmental policy like congestion pricing (I will think about actually voting for a third term if that's going to be a priority).
Recently, Bloomberg woke up one morning and was like, you know what, we need to rethink basic assumptions about cars. (He was correct.) So we had some experimental car-free streets during a couple weekends last year. And now, maybe, Broadway will be closed to cars from 42nd to 47th.
This will, say traffic engineers, reduce congestion, and more importantly start the process of getting people to think about city streets as things for people, bikes, and generally useful for a lot of purposes other than driving a car through.
The Gothamist comments thread on this bit of news is less neighborhood-cranky and missing-the-urban-planning-forest-for-the-trees than you might hope. So far, at least.
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Bloomberg's mayoralty is defined by the grand gesture, the leader-as-visionary.
huh? no it's not. he's defined as an efficiency guru or an ideology-free ceo in charge of the city.
How many efficiency gurus have sat for a photo shoot for the cover of Time with Arnold Schwarzenegger? He believes in spectacle as either the means or, if you are uncharitable, the ends, of leadership. "Ideology-free ceo" I like, though.
I don't think he does that sort of thing more than other politicians. And his ideology-free ceo thing is meaningless. Pro-moneyed interests is an ideology, and it's homogenized the city, etc. etc.
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