« U.S. Supreme Court Threatens Campaign Finance Reform in NYC | Main | The demise of the New York Times's once-routine Forest City Ratner disclosure (as mandated by the Public Editor), and another reason why it's meaningful »
June 27, 2011
Despite nearness to major transit hub, Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Center mall shows contrast with European counterparts transit hub
Atlantic Yards Report
There's still too much parking around the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street transit hub, right?
From a New York Times article today--the lead story in the both the national and New York edition--headlined Europe Stifles Drivers in Favor of Alternatives (and in print, more pungently, as "Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy"):
Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy [ITDP] in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.
...It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe,” said Mr. Kodransky, whose recent report “Europe’s Parking U-Turn” surveys the shift.
Sihl City, a new Zurich mall, is three times the size of Brooklyn’s Atlantic Mall but has only half the number of parking spaces, and as a result, 70 percent of visitors get there by public transport, Mr. Kodransky said.
That should have been reported as the Atlantic Center Mall, Kodransky confirms with me, as it derives from a 3/17/11 blog post. (Forest City Ratner also operates the Atlantic Terminal Mall, and sometimes conflates the two under the Atlantic Terminal rubric.)
These issues, of course, also apply to Atlantic Yards, which includes a planned 1100 spaces for the arena and additional 2500 or so spots for the announced housing.
NoLandGrab: A less auto-centric newspaper might have headlined the story "Europe Prioritizes Pedestrians" or "For Europe, Urban Future is Now."
Posted by eric at June 27, 2011 11:11 AM