I Walk New York

Architizer News

I Walk New York

June 28, 2011

In the good old days, Manhattan’s grid system ensured an ordered economy for the city’s inevitable expanse northward, limiting city blocks into an even distribution of property that has since rarely been seen.

The omnipresent grid was indifferent and featureless, suffering little of the island’s native topography, and was itself a manifesto of neutral, nondescript building which prefigured the projects of Superstudio and Archizoom. But in a city without landmarks, nodes, or Kevin Lynch, how does one get around exactly?

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New York, of course, evolved in the only way it could: higher. At the beginning of the last century, the featureless cityscape rapidly gave way to the Manhattan skyline that we all know today, where landmarks abound. But we’ve since been distanced from the navigation know-how of former Manhattanites, who managed to find the cardinal points without the aid of an app. Now, the city is planning a new system of street signage meant to efficiently get people from point A to B.

As The New York Times reports, the city’s Transportation Department is trying to encourage pedestrianism (I “walk” New York). There are many positives to having more New Yorkers and tourists walk to their destinations rather than invade the subways and taxis, namely, boosting activity and retail in areas where they are lacking.

With the increased pavement activity, the signage could also aid in increasing the safety of the city’s streets, particularly in the way pedestrians navigate them. As we reported a couple weeks back (with video!), New York’s streets aren’t very safe, with an astonishing 12,370 intersections where 74% of the city’s traffic collisions occur. It’s apparent that many tourists and seasoned New Yorkers either willingly or unwittingly put themselves in danger of all types of collisions as they make their way about town. The city hopes that the measures being taken will be sufficient to diffuse confusion as to the logic of West 4th crossing over West 10th and many other anomalies throughout the city, where the grid didn’t quite fit and went unused.

The proposed signage has yet to be designed. There’s a prototype, a simple marker with address and site-specific map. But the city should take advantage of incorporating many more features into design of the markers, such as mapping Wi-Fi hotspots in the area or linking to apps that will tell you where to find the best pizza around.

[via The New York Times]