Embracing the Future of City Streets

Justin Davidson waxes poetic about the importance of streets to the city of New York:

The most essential designed component of New York is not a skyscraper or a station, but the street. That basic workhorse of public space carries people, freight, and vehicles on its surface; water, sewage, power, gas, steam, and data below. It is a complex but archaic machine — improvised, mistreated, and endlessly patched up. It needs an overhaul, and it needs one now.

This long-read article riffs on numerous themes to make one simple case: the street needs a new set of decisions and designs. "The street of the future should look nothing like today’s." Davidson's rhetorical flourishes are set in the context of New York, but the ideas apply to cities everywhere.