Taming Times Square

Bloomberg announces plans to make portions of broadway at Times Square more pedestrian friendly by closing off the traffic and installing new public spaces.

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What is it that makes a public space "friendlier"? And what sort of models are out there comparable to the likes of Times Square? What is the experience of Times Square...what are the infrastructures, systems...schedules? And what is the user experience without the cars?

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Times

Traces of Transportation

A web of electric bus lines in downtown San Francisco.
Traces of mobility woven above the streetscape. Visual reminders of paths, networks and vital infrastructures. Like the determined paths of subways and skytrains, the bus lines become determined, not limitless like the urban grid it floats upon. Visual cues alert travelers of crossing the path of a moving object...follow the line to find the next stop.

How can these visual cues disclose path type (color, shape, coded). How can they inform schedule, time table or final destinations? What other functions can this web bring to the city?

Street Signs

Pedestrian street signs...
know where you are - without needing to be in a car.

Street corners have the street names stamped into the concrete, allowing for the pedestrian (already simi-conscious of what is before them) to be a little bit more aware of their location
San Francisco, California

Unparking

Car parked on side of street. Such a common scene that its hard to image any other scenario. Programmatically, the car is waiting, sitting - perhaps even idling. On one hand it provides a buffer for the traffic along with street with the pedestrians along the sidewalk. But how can the temporarily abandoned vehicle participate within the urban condition? Power gathering? Information? Public offerings?

Scales of car to sidewalk, street to person have become sadly distorted due to the automobile. What does the scale of the occupant bring back to the city? What does it take away from the automobile? What aspect of urban living is enhanced when the automoble is considered a public asset?

Below is a "speed table." Or should it be a "pedestrian table"