Founded | 1999 |
---|---|
Founder | Mark Gorton |
Focus | Urbanism and livability |
Location | |
Method | Advocacy |
Website | OpenPlans |
OpenPlans is a non-profit that advocates for making the streets of New York City livable for all residents. Open Plans uses tactical urbanism, grassroots advocacy, policy and targeted journalism to promote structural reforms within city government that support livable streets, neighborhoods and the city-at-large. The organization was founded in 1999 by Mark Gorton, [1] the creator of LimeWire. [2]
The organization has received funding from Google, Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, Knight Foundation, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), SURDNA Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, the World Bank and others. [3]
OpenPlans organizes its activities into a number of divisions or projects.
OpenPlans engages in grassroots and cultural advocacy around issues of safe streets, traffic reduction, public space management, people-centered design, and livability.
Starting in 2018, OpenPlans began researching and writing about the importance of empowering communities to make choices about what their public spaces should look and feel like. Through this work, Open Plans began to see a lack of holistic attention and management to the City's streets and sidewalks. Although streets are invaluable public space in a dense city like New York, the Department of Transportation focuses on optimizing them almost entirely for the movement and storage of private vehicles. This creates issues of safety, walkability, accessibility, and diversity of use - issues that disproportionately harm communities already dealing with structural inequity and racism. Open Plans identified a need to advocate for building and managing public spaces that foster safety, joy, care and connection.
OpenPlans' policy work focuses on reforming city government to be more responsive to the needs of New York's diverse communities. Campaigns include advocating for an Office of Public Space Management, promoting traffic-calming measures and street redesigns that benefit pedestrians (such as a neckdowns), and eliminating parking minimums for new construction of buildings. Open Plans also uses our grassroots advocacy and tactical urbanism projects to learn about city agencies and the areas where they could be improved. The Summer of Play report is a deep dive into improving the process for community-planned street events.
StreetopiaUWS is a division of OpenPlans that focuses on community-driven livability and public space improvements for the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Reunited by their mutual desire for 21st-century transportation infrastructure at the 79th Street Rotunda, volunteers and staff from the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign joined forces in early 2019 to create StreetopiaUWS.
These quality of life changes continue to shift the UWS landscape from one that is dominated by cars and trucks to one that is dominated by beauty, interaction, health and connection. By redefining what the word “neighborhood” really means, StreetopiaUWS’ vision includes streets that are lively, green and healthy places where neighbors meet, kids play and people move efficiently and safely by bike and on foot.
StreetopiaUWS inspires Upper West Siders to see neighborhood streets as public spaces that enhance their quality of life and community and connect them. Outreach, advocacy, and tactical urbanism help accomplish this mission and equip Upper West Siders with the strategies and tools to help create their vision.
The Streetfilms project produces and publishes short films advocating transportation design and public policy. About 400 videos have been produced which have been watched over 4 million times. [4] These films are normally published using a creative commons license. Their most popular videos including a piece about the Ciclovia in Bogota where streets are made into carfree facilities every Sunday. Such events now take place in many places around the world (180,000 views) [5] and on Physically Separated Bike Lanes (111,000 views). [6] In 2010 at a time when New York city was planning to implement 20 mph speed limits Streetfilms produced a short video of the experience of 20 mph speed limits in the UK where 3 million people already live in 20 mph speed limit areas. [7] [8]
Streetfilms was started by Clarence Eckerson [9] in 2004 [10] with support from Mark Gorton. [11]
Streetsblog is a project run by OpenPlans providing a daily news source connecting people to information about sustainable transportation and livable communities. Streetsblog was founded by Aaron Naparestek in 2006 [12] and has 'hundreds of thousands' of regular readers. [13] [ non-primary source needed ]
Streetsblog NYC and Streetsblog USA are currently edited by Gersh Kuntzman.
Streetsblog California covers news on California street and highway improvements and is edited by Melanie Curry and publishes daily except weekends and holidays.
Streetsblog Los Angeles covers the Greater Los Angeles news on street improvements and is edited by Joe Linton and publishes daily except weekends and holidays.
Since March 2013 the Streetsblog runs a "Parking Madness" tournament. 16 downtowns are nominated and a head-to-head contests are run through the month with readers deciding which city has built the most parking in their downtown. The winners are awarded the "Golden Crater."
Year | Golden Crater Winner |
---|---|
2015[ needs update ] | Camden, New Jersey [14] |
2014 | Rochester, New York |
2013 | Tulsa, Oklahoma |
The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) is a non-profit membership organization for preservation in New York City, which aims to encourage thoughtful planning and urban design and inclusive neighborhoods across the city.
The car-free movement is a broad, informal, emergent network of individuals and organizations, including social activists, urban planners, transportation engineers, environmentalists and others, brought together by a shared belief that large and/or high-speed motorized vehicles are too dominant in most modern cities. The goal of the movement is to create places where motorized vehicle use is greatly reduced or eliminated, by converting road and parking space to other public uses and rebuilding compact urban environments where most destinations are within easy reach by other means, including walking, cycling, public transport, personal transporters, and mobility as a service.
A woonerf is a living street, as originally implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders (Belgium). Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits.
A living street is a street designed with the interests of pedestrians and cyclists in mind by providing enriching and experiential spaces. Living streets also act as social spaces, allowing children to play and encouraging social interactions on a human scale, safely and legally. Living streets consider all pedestrians granting equal access to elders and those who are disabled. These roads are still available for use by motor vehicles; however, their design aims to reduce both the speed and dominance of motorized transport. The reduction of motor vehicle dominance creates more opportunities for public transportation.
Mark Howard Gorton is the creator of LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Java Platform, and chief executive of the Lime Group. Lime Group, based in New York, owns LimeWire as well as Lime Brokerage LLC, Tower Research Capital LLC, and LimeMedical LLC.
Transportation Alternatives is a non-profit organization in New York City which works to change New York City's transportation priorities to encourage and increase non-polluting, quiet, city-friendly travel and decrease automobile use. TransAlt seeks a transportation system based on a "Green Transportation Hierarchy" giving preference to modes of travel based on their relative benefits and costs to society. To achieve these goals, T.A. works in five areas: Cycling, Walking and Traffic Calming, Car-Free Parks, Safe Streets and Sustainable Transportation. Promotional activities include large group bicycle rides.
The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) is a California 501(c)(4) nonprofit public-benefit corporation established to "transform San Francisco's streets and neighborhoods into more livable and safe places by promoting the bicycle for everyday transportation." Founded in 1971, dormant through much of the 1980s, and re-founded in 1990, the SFBC in 2011 has a dues-paying membership of over 12,000 and is considered to be one of the most influential membership-based advocacy organizations in San Francisco.
Clarence Eckerson, Jr. is a Queens-based videographer and the creator of BikeTV and Streetfilms.org.
Aaron Naparstek, is the founder of Streetsblog, a web site providing daily coverage of transportation, anti-automobile activism, land use and environmental issues in New York City. Since its founding in June 2006, Streetsblog has emerged as an influential forum for New York City's Livable Streets Movement, dedicated to reclaiming cities' public spaces from the automobile and improving conditions for pedestrians, cyclists and transit users. Streetsblog is published by OpenPlans.
Cycling in New York City is associated with mixed cycling conditions that include dense urban proximities, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and streets with heavy pedestrian activity. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; cycling clubs for recreational cyclists; and increasingly commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2018 there were approximately 510,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 daily bike trips in 2005.
Bike East Bay, formerly known as East Bay Bicycle Coalition, is a Californian non-profit organization that worked since 1972 toward "promoting bicycling as an everyday means of transportation and recreation" in Alameda and Contra Costa counties of the California's East Bay.
Cycling in San Francisco has grown in popularity in recent years, aided by improving cycling infrastructure and community support. San Francisco's compact urban form and mild climate enable cyclists to reach work, shopping, and recreational destinations quickly and comfortably. Though San Francisco's famed steep hills can make cycling difficult, many parts of the city are relatively flat, including some of the most densely populated. However, heavy automobile traffic, the lack of bike lanes on many streets, and difficulty in crossing major streets deter most residents from cycling frequently in San Francisco.
Citi Bike is a privately owned public bicycle sharing system serving the New York City boroughs of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, as well as Jersey City and Hoboken, New Jersey. Named after lead sponsor Citigroup, it was operated by Motivate, with former Metropolitan Transportation Authority CEO Jay Walder as chief executive until September 30, 2018, when the company was acquired by Lyft. The system's bikes and stations use technology from Lyft.
A sneckdown is a temporary curb extension caused by snowfall, where snow has built up in the road but not been flattened by traffic, effectively reshaping the curb. Sneckdowns show how the space is being used by vehicle and foot traffic, and may reveal points where a street could be usefully narrowed with neckdowns to slow motor vehicle speeds and shorten pedestrian crossing distances.
McGuinness Boulevard is a boulevard in Greenpoint, a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. It runs between Interstate 278 in the south and the Pulaski Bridge in the north, which connects Greenpoint to Long Island City, Queens and Jackson Avenue. South of Driggs Avenue, it is called McGuinness Boulevard South.
Tactical urbanism, also commonly referred to as guerrilla urbanism, pop-up urbanism, city repair, D.I.Y. urbanism, planning-by-doing, urban acupuncture, and urban prototyping, is a low-cost, temporary change to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places.
Open New York (ONY) is a New York-based non-profit advocacy organization focused on addressing metropolitan New York's housing shortage by increasing the rate of housing production in the city and region. Part of the broader "YIMBY" (Yes In My Back Yard) movement, the group advocates for the lifting of exclusionary zoning restrictions and reforms to zoning regulations to enable more residential homebuilding in what it terms "high-opportunity" areas near job centers and transit with high incomes.
The Expo Bike Path is a 12-mile-long (19 km) rail with trail bicycle path and pedestrian route in Los Angeles County, California that travels roughly parallel to the Los Angeles Metro Rail's E Line between La Cienega/Jefferson and 17th Street/SMC stations. The Expo Bike Path is one of two major bicycle routes in Los Angeles that share dedicated rights-of-way with public transport, the other being the G Line Bikeway in the San Fernando Valley.
Ciclovia in the United States are scheduled open-streets car-free festivals in various American cities. The ciclovía concept originated in Bogotá, Colombia.
Muévete en Bici is an active mobility program in Mexico City. More than 20 million people annually participate in the open-streets events, with between 20,000 and 80,000 people participating weekly as public thoroughfares are closed to motor vehicles and therefore opened to all other travelers. Muévete currently uses 55 kilometres (34 mi) of roads through the center of the city. The program has become a popular way for tourists to take in the historic sites of Mexico City along Paseo de la Reforma.