Through diligence and innovation, New York has been able to make the city's streets the safest of any big city in America. This month, it published a guide to help livable streets supporters anywhere replicate its success.
"Earlier this month, NYC DOT put out a major new report, Making Safer Streets [PDF], that collects before-and-after data from dozens of street redesigns and distills five key principles to reduce traffic injuries," reports Ben Fried. "It’s an accessible guide to how DOT approaches the task of re-engineering streets for greater safety."
"The DOT team hopes the report will serve as a reference not only for planners and engineers, but for any city resident who cares about street safety and wants to evaluate how streets are functioning and what would make them better," he adds. "It’s written in accessible language and comes in at under 30 pages, with a raft of graphics and photos doing much of the communication."
NYC DOT has organized its recommendations around five key principles:
- Make the street easy to use
- Create safety in numbers
- Make the invisible visible
- Choose quality over quantity
- Look beyond the (immediate) problem
FULL STORY: NYC DOT Shares Its Five Principles for Designing Safer Streets

Alabama: Trump Terminates Settlements for Black Communities Harmed By Raw Sewage
Trump deemed the landmark civil rights agreement “illegal DEI and environmental justice policy.”

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

The 120 Year Old Tiny Home Villages That Sheltered San Francisco’s Earthquake Refugees
More than a century ago, San Francisco mobilized to house thousands of residents displaced by the 1906 earthquake. Could their strategy offer a model for the present?

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Report: Zoning Reforms Should Complement Nashville’s Ambitious Transit Plan
Without reform, restrictive zoning codes will limit the impact of the city’s planned transit expansion and could exclude some of the residents who depend on transit the most.

Judge Orders Release of Frozen IRA, IIJA Funding
The decision is a victory for environmental groups who charged that freezing funds for critical infrastructure and disaster response programs caused “real and irreparable harm” to communities.
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