Fighting climate change in New York City, block by block

Traffic congestion, a lack of walkable spaces, noise, ozone alerts, asthma attacks, flooding and heat waves: these are byproducts of living in a large waterfront city as dense as New York. The stubborn creep of climate change coupled with the city’s rapid growth only makes these problems worse. New Yorkers love their neighborhoods. We could learn from some cities across the globe that are figuring out ways to find solutions for these problems by solving them from the ground-up – starting with the neighborhood and block level.

Cities like Barcelona are introducing “superblocks” to improve air quality and social bonds in neighborhoods, reduce noise and improve transportation networks. Superblocks overlay new traffic patterns over a neighborhood’s street grid to make open space and livability in the neighborhood a focal point, rewarding mostly carbon-free transportation like bicycles and pedestrians with access into the core of the superblock, while preserving the perimeter for other vehicles.

Barcelona city officials cite America’s own neighborhood champion Jane Jacobs as an inspiration for their system “to win streets back for the people.” City and neighborhoods work together to coordinate and design, with an eye toward pedestrians walking no more than a few hundred yards to access public transportation. The superblock idea is proving so popular that neighborhoods are asking they be added to the list. Projected benefits include reducing traffic by 21 percent, reducing the 3,500 annual deaths from respiratory illnesses, improving safety and enhancing neighborly connections.

Here’s how superblocks could work in New York City.

A superblock ideally is shaped more or less as a square, with the main park or plaza in the middle. As New York blocks tend to be rectangular, streets more than avenues would need to make up the squared area. If we were to use a similar proportion to Barcelona, a superblock in the city could be about five Manhattan street-side blocks to about two or three avenue blocks, or roughly one-quarter mile on each side, depending on the neighborhood. In Manhattan, the the theater district area and Rockefeller Center come to mind as good candidates, as does Washington Square. The streets encircling the perimeter of the district would allow the usual vehicles and trucks at the current speed limit. In contrast, traffic patterns today alternate one-way traffic flows on streets, allowing vehicles to weave and circle endlessly, mostly stuck in traffic.

The interior of the superblock would be restricted in several ways. The new traffic pattern would set up one-way, U-shaped loops several blocks long from the perimeter streets into the center. You could not circle the center in a vehicle. Speed limits would drop to 5 mph, slightly less than the average traffic speed in Midtown Manhattan today of about 8 mph. Aside from small trucks making deliveries to local businesses, vehicles would be restricted. Otherwise, travel lanes would be reserved for low carbon transportation – public buses, bicycles and people. An added benefit is that the decreased traffic would lead to quieter neighborhoods, and noise is the biggest livability complaint for New Yorkers.

Several neighborhoods could be prime candidates for a trial, though there may be others: Midtown Manhattan, Greenwich Village, downtown Brooklyn and Hunts Point. These areas have some of the worst air quality in New York City, so there would be immediate health benefits to the people who live and work there. They have iconic open spaces. They have also experienced great growth in traffic and density, and are already served by public transportation. Parts of these neighborhoods were also designed before cars became commonplace, and lend themselves to foot traffic and shared transportation, which are crucially important to the efficacy of superblocks.

Implementing this idea would not be easy at first. It would require input from City Council members, residents, business owners and delivery services. It would be best to start small – to measure the difference in air quality, the congestion, the effect on local businesses, and safety as well as whether the opened up streets and plazas work as they were intended to. And then, as we learn what works and what doesn’t, the input of local residents, businesses, workers and leaders can help improve the system.

Climate change is real, and so is the impact it has on our communities. Yet too often the discussion revolves solely around the charts, graphs and maps that project temperatures and flooding decades from now – a mighty narrow scope. Urban sustainability must include New Yorkers in the here and now, limiting their exposure to health impacts, improving the livability of neighborhoods and allowing them to move around more easily. New York has one of the richest collections of architectural treasures and parks, best seen by looking up and around. Accessible open areas allow people to interact without walls, to stroll, and as they say in the musical “Hamilton,” – “Look around, look around.”

The more we open streets up so that neighbors and coworkers can see each other outside of the glass, steel and brick that encloses them for so much of the week, the better. The time is ripe to try out superblocks in New York City, and search for other neighborhood-based ideas to improve livability and health for the here and now as well as combat climate change for the future.

Nilda Mesa is the director of the Urban Sustainability and Equity Planning Program as well as adjunct senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Urban Design Lab in the Earth Institute, and an adjunct professor with the School of International and Public Affairs. Until August, she was director of the NYC Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.