Mayor Mamdani Proposes Putting the Park Back in Park Avenue; Park Avenue Notes It Never Had One

Midtown Redesign Would Add Medians and Trees to Avenue Named for Railroad Tracks That Were There Before the Avenue

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

NEW YORK — Mayor Mamdani and the NYC Department of Transportation unveiled design concepts Thursday for a Park Avenue redesign that the Mayor described as putting the park back in Park Avenue, raising the question of when the park was there. Park Avenue was named for the railroad tracks that ran down its center before they went underground, after which a median was landscaped. The name survived. The park did not technically exist. The name persisted anyway, as New York place names do, with historical accuracy optional.

What the Redesign Would Do

The proposed redesign would expand the avenue median, add pedestrian enhancements, seating, and landscaping, and explore potential bike lanes. The project sits above the Grand Central Terminal train shed, which the MTA is rehabilitating below, aligning street improvements with underground infrastructure work in the way that planners call a real opportunity and that infrastructure historians call optimistic but worth attempting.

The Community Board Process

Manhattan Community Board 5 meets May 28 for public input. Community board meetings on street redesigns produce a specific ecosystem: cyclists wanting more bike lanes, drivers wanting fewer, pedestrians wanting benches, businesses wanting truck loading, and longtime residents wanting whatever was there before the thing that replaced the previous thing. All will appear. The design will be adjusted accordingly.

What Congressman Nadler Said

Congressman Nadler said he was pleased this important plan had taken a critical step forward with the launch of the proposed redesign, which is the language of a legislator who has been representing Manhattan long enough to calibrate enthusiasm for infrastructure announcements to the appropriate level of measured support.

The Timeline

The MTA rehabilitation below requires coordination with DOT above. Both agencies are engaged. The timeline is the timeline. Park Avenue has been waiting since the railroad went underground. It can wait a bit longer for the benches.

More: https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The Park Avenue redesign also raises questions about what public space means in one of the world’s most expensive commercial corridors. Park Avenue from 34th to 57th Streets is lined with the headquarters of major financial institutions, global corporations, and the residential buildings of some of New York’s wealthiest residents. Adding wider medians, seating, and landscaping to this corridor produces public space in a location where public space is surrounded by private wealth in concentrated form, which is either the democratization of a previously exclusive-feeling corridor or a pleasant amenity for office workers who eat lunch on the median. Both interpretations are available. The design will be the same regardless of the interpretation.

The project is funded through the East Midtown Governing Group, created as part of the 2017 Greater East Midtown rezoning that requires new commercial developments to contribute to nearby public realm improvements. The funding mechanism is elegant: the development that has benefited from the corridor’s commercial density is required to invest in the public realm that makes the corridor function for everyone. Whether this investment is sufficient scale for the corridor’s public space needs is a question that the design concepts are beginning to answer.

The broader significance of this story extends beyond the immediate news cycle. Each development in a city like New York or Los Angeles produces ripple effects that shape the conditions of the next development: the political coalitions formed in one fight become the coalitions available for the next, the infrastructure built for one purpose serves the next purpose that emerges, and the communities that organize around one issue become the communities that show up for the subsequent issue. The stories that appear as discrete news events are actually chapters in ongoing narratives about how these cities work, who they work for, and what their residents are willing to organize to change.

The journalists covering these stories are doing the work that allows residents to understand not only what happened but why it matters and what comes next. The combination of daily reporting and longer-form analysis that publications like the New York Post, the Daily News, Gothamist, and The City provide for New York, and that the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News, LAIST, and the Press-Telegram provide for Los Angeles, constitutes the information infrastructure on which democratic accountability depends. When these publications are strong, the cities are better governed. When they are weak, the accountability gap allows the things that happen without scrutiny to happen more often.

The current moment in both cities — New York under a new socialist mayor navigating state and federal relationships, Los Angeles rebuilding after fires while preparing for the World Cup — is being documented by journalism organizations that have survived the economic disruptions of the digital transition and that are producing work at a level of quality and volume that their institutional predecessors would recognize as serious journalism. The cities are lucky to have them. The cities should support them, through subscriptions, through philanthropic investment in nonprofit news, and through the civic engagement that gives journalism its purpose. The story continues. The coverage matters.

New York continues its ongoing negotiation between ambition and reality, between what the city wants to be and what it currently is, between the demands of its residents and the capacity of its institutions to meet those demands. The negotiation is never finished. The city is never quite what it should be. It is consistently extraordinary anyway.

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