The Post-COVID, Driver, and Emissions Street

NYC Street with outdoor dining in response to COVID restrictions and procedures34

Looking at the impacts of COVID on the street collide with two larger overarching transformation in street use that are waiting in the near future.

During the response to COVID streets were rapidly retooled in cities from being used to assuage traffic to being a place themselves to exist. Semi-permanent and permanent structures cropped up and blocked streets and surprisingly the cities didn't burn to the ground. Pedestrian friendly side streets don't actually need car access all the time.36

Further, the street's function as a place to park vehicles may not be necessary in the near future as autonomous vehicles can move from one customer to the next adapting to a moving and evolving set of demand. Finally, the electrification of vehicles negates the need for separation between traffic that emits carbon monoxideand places people can inhabit and breath. In a consumation of the Modernist dream of light and air for all, we will soon no longer have to worry about traffic depleting the streets of air.

These unprecedented changes will totally reposition how we think about many kinds of streets. Just think of the strange street hybrids in shopping malls, void of cars for the two reasons that you have to park them somewhere (often the several acres directly outside of the shopping mall) and two people don't like breathing fumes indoors shopping, eating, doing yoga, or in really any situation.

"A new design genre was born last month..."

-Pete Wells in an article titled, Outdoor Dining Offers Fresh Air and Fantasy to a City that Needs Both.37

1

THE PROLIFERATION OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES

2

THE MASS ADOPTION OF DRIVERLESS VEHICLES

1 Electric vehicles will soon not just be prolific, but the rule rather than the exception.38 2 Autonomous vehicles will soon be the dominant form of transportation in cities removing the need and hassle for private car ownership.39

TRANSFERABLE DEVELOPMENT RIGHTS

= OUR THESIS?

Electric vehicles will soon not just be prolific, but the rule rather than the exception.41

Roominating on the above image, it is fascinating to see this diagram in the New York City Manual of Planning. To begin concieving of the sidewalk as a room itself opens many doors, but also puts up many walls. Here the parsing and discretization of space is called into question. To put it simply, how and where do we divide space in the city? Finally, what is the end game? Do we value a diversity of spaces? Is there merit in the equity produced in the homogeneity of form? Is a visual hierarchy good if it is stripped of its classist undertones? These are all key provocations that will inevitably inform how we go about developing our thesis into an urban speculation or proposal.

If we call into question the movement and parking of cars, would this document draw the boundaries of the room in the same place? So as we develop new types of urbanism in the city, what new set of spatial politics are we designing with that?

2001. https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii8/articles/peter-wollen-situationists-and-architecture. 20 Ewan Morrison et al., “The Stunning Art Inspired by the Real-Life Dystopian Cityscape of Kowloon Walled City: The Ungoverned 'Fortress', Built by Refugees & Squatters in Hong Kong. Run by Triad Gangs, It Was Demolished in 1994. Artists: K.Perelli, S.Morrell, Leganerd. Final Image - the Real Location Pic. twitter.com/s3dofx7n7K,” Twitter (Twitter, January 18, 2019), https://twitter.com/mrewanmorrison/status/1086235486446931969?lang=ar-x-fm. 21 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 22 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 23 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 24 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 25 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 26 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 27 James Crawford, “The Strange Saga of Kowloon Walled City,” Atlas Obscura (Atlas Obscura, July 7, 2021), https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/kowloon-walled-city. 28 Marian Kleineberg, “Marian42/WAVEFUNCTIONCOLLAPSE: Walk through an Infinite, Procedurally Generated City,” GitHub, March 27, 2021, https://github.com/marian42/wavefunctioncollapse. 29 Kiser, Kirsten. “Quartier Schützenstrasse.” DAC, August 16, 2022. https://dac.dk/en/knowledgebase/architecture/quartier-schuetzenstrasse/. 30 Camillo Sitte, The Art of Building Cities City Building According to Its Artistic Fundamentals, trans. Charles T. Stewart (New York, NY: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 2013). 31 Koolhaas, Rem. Delirious New York : a Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York :Monacelli Press, 1994. 32 Britton Shepard, “Desire Paths: Part 1,” Britton Shepard (Britton Shepard, March 2, 2016), https://www. seattlelandscaping.com/landscapearchitectureblog/2016/3/1/desire-paths. 33 Keir, “City Map Generator,” City Map Generator, accessed August 20, 2022, https://maps.probabletrain. com/#/algorithmoverview. 34 Karsten Moran for The New York Times,Wells, Pete, and Karsten Moran. “Outdoor Dining Offers Fresh Air and Fantasy to a City That Needs Both.” The New York Times. The New York Times, July 9, 2020. https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/dining/outdoor-dining-design-nyc-coronavirus.html. 35 Karsten Moran for The New York Times,Wells, Pete, and Karsten Moran. “Outdoor Dining Offers Fresh Air and Fantasy to a City That Needs Both.” The New York Times. The New York Times, July 9, 2020. https:// www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/dining/outdoor-dining-design-nyc-coronavirus.html. 36 Samuel I. Schwartz, Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars (New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2015). 37 Wells, Pete, and Karsten Moran. “Outdoor Dining Offers Fresh Air and Fantasy to a City That Needs Both.” The New York Times. The New York Times, July 9, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/dining/ outdoor-dining-design-nyc-coronavirus.html. 38 Iea. “Electric Vehicles – Analysis.” IEA, November 1, 2021. https://www.iea.org/reports/electric-vehicles. 39 Marshall, Aarian. “As Waymo v. Uber Ends, Robocars Enter the Era of Reality.” Wired. Conde Nast, February 9, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-trial-settlement-self-driving-cars/. 40 Transferable Development Rights.” Transferable Development Rights - DCP, 2015. https://www1.nyc. gov/site/planning/plans/transferable-development-rights/transferable-development-rights.page. 41 Active Design: Shaping the Sidewalk Experience. New York: City of New York, 2013.