Daniel Trubman

And playgrounds! And benches! And beer gardens!

Of course we need open green space + more trees in urban parks, but efforts to move to a more "natural" state focusing on "re-wilding" likely leads to less park usage by local residents and visitors vs. having more amenities that everyone loves.

Marcus Garvey Park always has a decent number of visitors when the weather is pleasant, but I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone spending much time on the big empty lawn. Maybe a few dog owners?

Unshaded grass fields are just not a particularly useful urban park amenity.

There are a lot of legitimate criticisms of the free bus — it costs a lot, it doesn't get people out of cars, the induced trips were walked, picking up formerly walked drips slows down service more than the dwell savings from ditching the farebox, etc. — and Cuomo has somehow landed on none of them

Most of these below grade mini-courtyards aren't used for anything but storing some trash & recycling cans, so it's always nice when someone decorates it for the holidays.

At least someone is hanging out here now, even if they're witches and ghouls 👻

Yes, better service to UES would be so nice for a couple of neighborhoods

What did Northern Manhattan look like?

Tram cities are especially cool looking on rainy days 🚊☔

The pencil towers always serve as such an interesting background when you're looking out Central Park.

There are other pockets of the park where you can really feel a bit in the woods, which can be very serene. But I also love these parts where the city itself is part of the view.

The commuter rail network that serves the politically important suburban counties around Philly is approaching collapse and it seems like it's having absolutely no negative impact on the presidential prospects of Governor Shapiro.

What a black pill moment for transit advocates.

Yeah, I was taking the piss a little bit there. My commentary was more about recognizing how even publicly owned firms have self-interest (which aren't always driven by broader environmental goals).

Spinning those commuter rail operations off would've worked out a lot better if it led to real integration with the local transit systems.

But generally that didn't really happen.

Let's see how they like Entryism

The number of anti-Israel posters & graffiti in Central Harlem has really increased recently.

I would love more Jewish neighbors, but I doubt the folks putting these fliers up would be excited if tens of thousands of Israelis returned to this historically Jewish neighborhood.

American police get out of their giant SUVs to walk a beat instead of driving on a narrow pedestrian path challenge (impossible)

How many families could be housed on this 6 thousand square foot publicly owned parcel just off the subway?

Instead it's a community garden with ZERO open hours during the week for the local community (and only 10 on the weekends).

Are we in a housing emergency or not??

Someone should ask Mamdani if he thinks growing eggplants is a better use of publicly owned land than affordable housing.

Nobody is getting displaced from NYC by lack of affordable 🍆

PS: @greenthumbnyc.bsky.social website claims this park is currently open, but multiple locks disagree 😥

Why is free storage for cars, trucks, and even RVs allowed on NYC streets, but setting up a temporary sukkah for Sukkot isn't?

Community and shared holiday meals are better for city life than private vehicle storage.

The cost of eliminating transit fares on NYC buses is a couple hundred million dollars more than the ENTIRE Department of Parks and Recreation budget.

Let's not kid ourselves: eliminating bus fares would require devastating cuts for a City budget already facing a structural deficit.

I honestly think many monolingual Spanish speakers in NYC aren't aware that blasting tiktoks without headphones isn't allowed on the subway.

Maybe some announcements and signs in Spanish (and other languages) would only make a marginal difference, but I want to see the MTA at least TRY something.

I'd worry a wider path would just invite more e-motorbikes

The New York City Housing Authority only charging 27 cents a day for Manhattan parking spaces is unfortunately a strong argument against publicly owned social housing 😥

If Mamadi is serious about the housing crisis, he'll rezone and redevelop every single NYCHA parking lot into housing.

If current tenants balk at losing subsidized asphalt, new residents—who desperately need a home more than a $8 a month parking spot—will gladly move in.

A lot of progressives YIMBYs are bending over backwards to convince themselves Mamdani will actually support new housing construction once in office, but his cowardice over the charter amendments is a lot more revealing than some non-committal answers on a podcast.

So bad for the future of the game that kids have no shot of staying up to watch so many playoff games

Pedestrian-only spaces are not just for Central Park. They are the secret ingredient to great walkability and a fundamental element of livable cities. Let's stop treating them as a park luxury and start making this low-stress living a standard feature of our streets.

"The residents of Harlem can't be trusted to hang out in public parks, so we need fence them out most of the time" is not an argument progressives should endorse, but it's the implicit premise of all the @greenthumbnyc.bsky.social "community gardens" scattered around the neighborhood.

The Harlem Rose Garden seems like a nice place to read a book for anyone that has the day off today, but sadly this community garden has ZERO open hours during the week.

In fact it's only open 10 hours a week, half the legal requirement. Doesn't Harlem deserve real parks?!

"Our publicly owned rail passenger company forced a different publicly owned railroad to kill electric freight" doesn't give me a lot of confidence replacing our current system with socialism will fix our environmental challenges.

This is what happens when transit policy prioritizes protectionism (Buy American/Buy America) over riders. SEPTA is relying on ancient cars, and the system is suffering. Time for Dems to scrap these outdated rules and prioritize modern transit.

I've been thinking about it for a while now, and I've decided "On High" from Alexander Liberman in New Haven is a cool piece of public art.

Would look cooler without those cars mucking up the view though. Unfortunately that's true for most urban public art in American cities.