Aaron Naparstek
AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.
Recent Posts
Smith Street Zombie Invasion?
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On a broiling hot day, the McBrooklyn blog spotted a half dozen people standing motionless at the corner of Smith St. and 2nd Pl. in front of a small news stand. Was it performance art? A zombie invasion? A protest over out-of-scale development? Click here to find the solution to the mystery.
French Revolution
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Two lanes in the middle of this Parisian avenue have been set aside for the exclusive use of buses, bikes and taxis. Private automobiles have been squeezed into the margins. Serge Schemman has a great little essay on Parisian transportation and public space policy on the editorial page of today’s New York Times. I was […]
Count SUVs for the Brian Lehrer Show Today
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WNYC’s Brian Lehrer wants to know how many SUV’s there are on your block. You’ve got until next Thursday to do it. It’s an experiment in “crowdsourcing.” Submit your results here. We want you to go outside and count the number of SUVs on your block, as well as the number of regular cars, at […]
Accidents Halved As Street is Stripped of ‘Safety’ Features
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The results are in on one of urban designer and "shared space" proponent Ben Hamilton-Baillie’s London projects. Kensington High Street is twice as safe now that all of the traffic engineering "safety features" are gone. The Standard reports: ACCIDENT levels have almost halved in a London street where "safety" equipment such as guard rails, white […]
NYC Government Office Cracks Down on Indoor Bike Parking
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The seemingly schizoid Bloomberg Administration continues to encourage bicycling with one hand while making it incredibly difficult with the other. Two weeks ago, amidst news of new bike lanes, on-street bike parking, and an impending bike lane media blitz, we heard about a gang of Parks Dept. employees clipping locks and seizing dozens of bicycles […]
Ninth Ave. and 14th Street Redesign Update
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Ben Kabak of Second Avenue Sagas is keeping track of the street redesign currently underway at Ninth Ave. and 14th St. in Manhattan. Here is his Flickr photo set. Lockhart Steele at Curbed has named this project the "Bizarro Meatpacking Plaza."
4:00pm Gridlock at the 86th Street Boundary
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In this StreetFilm, Upper Green Side’s Glenn McAnanama takes viewers on a brief tour of 86th St. and Second Ave., a heavily congested intersection on the northern boundary of Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed congestion pricing zone. It’s 4:00 pm and it’s ugly.
Welcome to Davis, California: A Bicycle Friendly Town
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StreetFilms’ Clarence Eckerson has been in Davis, California the last few days, filming one of the premier bicycling cities in the United States. Clarence has a preliminary report and some photos up on the web site with a StreetFilm yet to come. It’s worth a quick look.
Congestion Pricing Bill, Take 3.
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Liz Benjamin has the latest scoop on congestion pricing legislation in Albany: The third version of a bill dealing with congestion mitigation in the city was introduced yesterday in both houses of the state Legislature. The Assembly and Senate are scheduled to return to Albany Thursday to take up this new bill – and nothing […]
Here is the State Senate’s Congestion Pricing Bill
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Here, at last, is a draft copy of the New York State Senate congestion pricing "compromise" bill. The bill does not yet have a number and was never brought to a vote. It has been circulating since July 19. I still need to read through it and figure out exactly how it differs from what […]
Microbuses and Bike Sharing: The New Parisian Street Scene
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Luc Nadal of the Institute for Transportation Development Policy sends along these photos showing some of the exciting new things happening on Parisian streets these days. We’ve been hearing a lot about Velib, Paris’s new public bike-sharing program. But that is just one of many new transportation and public space programs initiated by Mayor Bertrand […]
Reconnecting Grand Army Plaza
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One of the most ambitious New York City Streets Renaissance projects currently underway is the Grand Army Plaza Coalition’s initiative to re-conceive New York City’s biggest, most chaotic traffic rotary into one of the city’s finest public spaces. A couple of weeks ago GAPco hosted a "Livable Streets" forum at the Brooklyn Public Library to […]