Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution

by Janette Sadik-Khan, Seth Solomonow Narrated by Suzie Althens

Overview

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 a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, but it also lessened congestion and increased foot traffic, which improved the bottom line of businesses. Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that's already there.



Breaking the street into its component parts, Streetfight demonstrates 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. 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. She includes examples of how this new way to read the 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, and innovative bike-lane designs and plazas in Austin, Indianapolis, and San Francisco.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"No one has done more in less time to rewrite the future of New York’s streets."—Reclaim

“An inspiring read… The sort of book that should be read by every officeholder…But it is also a read for the rest of us. Anyone whose memory is longer than a New York minute who can remember when New York wasn't the pedestrian and bike friendly envy of cities the world over.”
—The Huffington Post

“Janette Sadik-Khan is like the child that Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs never had: an urban visionary determined to reshape the streets of New York, but with an abiding concern for the health of neighborhoods and the safety of their residents. If you care about the future of cities, read Streetfight.”
—Michael Bloomberg, former New York City Mayor

“Cities are where innovation, creativity and the unexpected happens, and Janette has helped make ours, New York City, safer, more livable and more profitable all at once. I watched these exciting changes happen, but the really interesting part is how she managed to implement these changes quickly and cheaply. That’s where other cities can use this as a manual for change on issues like health reform, education and the arts. This, then, is not just a book about transportation.”
—David Byrne, musician, artist

“This book is an urban epic as audacious as the changes Janette Sadik-Khan made to the map of New York City. She is a superhero for cities and an inspiration that streets built to human scale aren’t impossible, but merely awaiting those who dare.”
—Jan Gehl, Urbanist, architect, author

“To create safe and inclusive cities, being a visionary is not enough. You must also be an advocate, a communicator, a doer and, perhaps most importantly, a street fighter. Janette is that person and this is a book that provides the proof of the possible for citizens and their elected leaders everywhere.”
—Enrique Peñalosa, Mayor of Bogota

"Sadik-Khan's work will serve as a guidebook to city planners and traffic engineers everywhere, and motivate disenchanted urban dwellers to urge local politicians to make their cities more liveable."
—Booklist

“[A] bicycle visionary.”
—Frank Bruni, The New York Times

“Sadik-Khan manages to be equal parts Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses.”
—New York Magazine

“If [Robert] Moses had owned a pink fingernail of [Sadik-Khan’s] beguilement, he might have scored a bridge across the Atlantic.”
—Esquire

“[Sadik-Khan is] an urban visionary who cuts through the gridlock.”
—Slate

“This is a feel-great read for those of us who love cities, especially as pedestrians and bicyclists. Along with local efforts, the book contains wonderful examples of national and global reclamation projects. The good news comes in daily as examples of successful street rebalancing projects continue to mount from all over the world, and advocacy groups that push for these changes grow and strengthen. . . . Fortunately for all of us, [Sadik-Khan] was wildly successful.”
—UrbDeZine San Francisco

Library Journal

10/15/2015
New York City's transportation commissioner from 2007 to 2013, Sadik-Khan enhanced pedestrian space in Times Square and along Broadway, initiated the nation's largest bike-share program, added nearly 400 miles of bicycle lanes, and installed more than 60 plazas citywide. Great for us Gotham dwellers, but what about everyone else? Here, Sadik-Khan (with her chief media strategist Solomonow) gives inspiration to municipalities large and small by offering examples of revitalized street life worldwide.

Kirkus Reviews

2016-01-02
A former New York City transportation commissioner maps out her adroit street design blueprint for alleviating traffic congestion and improving urban aesthetics. With the assistance of her former chief media strategist Solomonow, Sadik-Khan chronicles her role in the urban transformation of Manhattan streets and how the architectural improvements she drafted eased gridlock and boosted urban sociability. "Every city resident is a pedestrian at some point in the day," she writes. Sadik-Khan's infrastructure redesign plan for New York centered on the encouragement of walking and street social life with an eye on the safety of both bicycle riders and pedestrians. She distressingly presents Manhattan as a bustling metropolis, mired by overcrowding and bound by a grid network of narrow streets and ineffective bisections. After years with the NYC Department of Transportation, her creative work as commissioner began in 2007 with the appropriation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's green, congestion-busting, sustainability-driven urban plan PlaNYC, which, under Sadik-Khan's leadership, became a citywide rebalancing effort transforming clogged streetscapes from "a place where people wanted to park into a place where people wanted to be." She writes passionately about these projects, including the massive reinvention of Times Square, which was so successful it became a design model for other cities. The author includes pages of photographs effectively illustrating traffic-calming intersection designs and pocket plazas, which transformed "a car-clogged street into inviting shared space" and was just one part of the new street improvement plan for New York. Not always a smooth road, Sadik-Khan's efforts were often fraught with friction from businesses and community groups opposing many of her urban renewal proposals, including the addition of a bike lane along Prospect Park West. Unfortunately, she notes, even as her tenure as commissioner ended in 2013, the battle for and discontent over public space and its use continues unabated to this day, regardless of the positive progress made. An impressive tactical look back at an urban redevelopment pioneer who changed the look and manageability of countless New York City streets.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175988490
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	11/09/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	516,120

Read an Excerpt

My six-year, seven-month, eighteen-day tenure as New York City transportation commissioner began with a meeting at City Hall, at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, in early spring 2007.
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Streetfight"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Janette Sadik-Khan.
Excerpted by permission of Penguin Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos