From Throughway to Public Space: Taking Back the American Street

A new book from David L. Prytherch highlights the rapid changes made to city streets during the Covid-19 pandemic and how cities and public space advocates can build on pandemic-era success to transform American streets from vehicular thoroughfares to vibrant urban spaces. Next City published an excerpt.

Prytherch notes that, during the same time period, Americans became painfully aware of the inequity that makes even ‘open’ streets less accessible and safe for some people than others. “Though immediately focused on policing, this growing conversation encompassed a broader range of equity issues, accelerating an already robust movement for mobility justice looking beyond equity among modes to address social issues beyond the public right-of-way.”

By inviting a diversifying set of people to enter and have a stake in the roadway, and interpreting mobility justice more broadly than simply multimodal access, we come face to face with profound questions. What, exactly, do we mean by mobility justice? What and whom should public streets be for? And how ought they be shared equitably?

Prytherch explains how planners and activists must reconcile intersecting and sometimes conflicting values as they work to reclaim streets from cars and preserve the spaces created during the pandemic. “Planners struggle to balance neighborhood input, which tends to privilege the already privileged, with data-driven spatial justice. Nonetheless, these efforts to reclaim streets better approximate mobility justice than the galling inequities and unsustainability of the car-centered status quo.”