Street Plans

Street Plans is thrilled to be working with the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation (NCWDC) to help bring Cleveland's North Coast Master Plan to life through creative placemaking and programming. Alongside our local partners at Seventh Hill and Thomas Starinsky Planning + Design, we recently completed our first event to test ideas and begin collaborating with key partners. For one magical night before Halloween, we converted a parking lot along the shore of Lake Erie into a pop-up drive-in movie theater. Clevelanders came from across the city to the North Coast Yard where children and their families silk screened their own trick-or-treat bags with Zygote Press, made slime with the Great Lakes Science Center, and were treated to a movie marathon of Tim Burton classics under the stars. More to come in 2025. Stay tuned!

Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Asphalt Art Initiative, which helps cities use art and community engagement to improve street safety and revitalize public space, began in partnership with Street Plans in 2019. The program has supported 90 projects across the world to date. The current round of the Asphalt Art Initiative grant application is open to cities in Canada, Mexico, and the United States with populations of 50,000 or more. The program will award 10 cities grants of up to $100,000 each, as well as on-call technical assistance from our team at Street Plans and impact evaluation support from Sam Schwartz Consulting. Winning cities are expected to be announced in spring 2025 for projects to be installed in 2025-26. The deadline to apply is January 31, 2025. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/ddnXquE

The Street Plans team had a great time in Senoia, Georgia this week working with the community to define their vision for the town’s future. The emerging plan is a model for how to combine both tactical/incremental approaches with long-term planning. Emerging themes include: - Connecting every resident to a trail within a five-minute walk (both tactical trails and permanent ones) - A greenbelt around the town of agricultural and natural areas - Legalizing, and encouraging, missing middle housing types Street Plans Principal Tony Garcia recently spoke with the Newnan Times-Herald about the effort. “[The City] has experienced a lot of economic development and growth, which is a positive thing,” Garcia said. “The question is how we can leverage that growth in a way that doubles down on the things working about the town, like the beautiful buildings and the compact, walkable environment.”

A recent feature from The Congress for the New Urbanism's Public Square journal highlighted a number of completed and ongoing initiatives supported by Street Plans in City of Jersey City, New Jersey including: - Let’s Ride JC Bicycle Master Plan - Pedestrian Enhancement Plan - Vision Zero Action Plan - Bergen Square Redesign Street Plans principal Mike Lydon, in describing the progress Jersey City has made in a short period of time, said “no other city has applied the Tactical Urbanism methodology at the same scale and with the same speed.” Read more about the projects at the link below.

In a recent article, the Stamford Advocate highlighted the Street Plans-led Stamford Vision Zero Action Plan with quotes from principal Mike Lydon. “About 60 recommendations are in the works, said Mike Lydon, a principal at urban design firm Street Plans, during a Tuesday meeting of Stamford’s Vision Zero Task Force. The goal is for the final action plan to be completed by the end of the year. Lydon said Street Plans and one of its partners, engineering firm Sam Schwartz, have studied a network of intersections and road segments in the city where the most crashes leading to deaths or serious injuries have occurred.” The City of Stamford engaged Street Plans in an effort to eliminate roadway fatalities by 2032. The Vision Zero Action Plan outlines strategies for advancing roadway Quick-Build and capital projects, and other initiatives to reach this goal. To read the rest of the article and learn more about the project, click the link below.

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Public Square journal featured our recent project with City of Jersey City’s Department of Infrastructure to renovate the historic Bergen Square. Bergen Square was the first urban square established in the American colonies and is the oldest continuously-inhabited European settlement in New Jersey. Once the land of the Lenni Lenape, the Dutch pushed in and started the village of Bergen around the public square in 1660. By the 1950s the square’s western quadrants operated as small parking lots, which persisted until 2023. The renewed square includes lot of circulation, safety, and public space elements, including: a road diet, protected bike lanes, parking lots to public space conversion, raised intersections, bus boarding islands and shelters, green infrastructure (rain gardens, new trees, etc.), a variety of new public seating options, a decorative Lenni Lenape ribbon-work pattern around the perimeter honoring the areas original inhabitants, and new delivery and school bus loading zones. Read more about the project at the link below.

In their recent article ”Legacy Report highlights a walkable public realm,” CNU’s Public Square journal highlighted the Camp Washington Legacy Project led by Street Plans, Arup, and Perkins&Will, in collaboration with Camp Washington Urban Revitalization Corporation (CWURC). Each year, The Congress for the New Urbanism pairs pro bono design teams with local municipalities and non-profit organizations in the host city for its annual gathering. This year’s project focused on Cincinnati’s Camp Washington neighborhood, a former industrial area with a vibrant arts and maker culture. Read the entire outline at the link below.

We were thrilled to finally cut the ribbon on a renewed Bergen Square in Jersey City last week, a project Street Plans has been working on since 2018, taking from an initial concept to final design plan informing its construction in 2024. The renewed square includes lot of circulation, safety, and public space elements, including: ✅ Road diet, with protected bike lanes (completed in 2019) ✅ Parking lots to public space conversion ✅ Raised intersection ✅ Bus boarding islands and shelters ✅ Green infrastructure (rain gardens, trees, etc.) ✅ A variety of new public seating options ✅ New delivery and school bus loading zones ✅ A decorative Lenni Lenape ribbonwork pattern around the perimeter honoring the areas original inhabitants Bergen Square was the first urban square established in the American colonies and is the oldest continuously-inhabited European settlement in New Jersey. Once the land of the Lenni Lenape, the Dutch pushed in and started the village of Bergen around the public square in 1660. By the 1950s the square’s western quadrants operated as small parking lots, which persisted until 2023. A special thank you to the leadership of Mayor Steven Fulop, Barkha Patel, and to all of the Department of Infrastructure staff and local advocates for helping make this project a success.

In their recent article on the impact of Tactical Urbanism in Tallinn’s old town, SEI — Stockholm Environment Institute, an international non-profit research and policy organization that tackles environment and development challenges, acknowledged Street Plans principal Mike Lydon’s contributions to establishing the principles of Tactical Urbanism. “Mike Lydon first introduced the concept of tactical urbanism around 2010, defining it as short-term actions designed for long-term change. This approach focuses on small, cost-effective, and rapidly implementable interventions that significantly enhance public spaces, contributing to safer, fairer, healthier and more sustainable communities.” Tallinn used Tactical Urbanism to turn its historic Town Hall Square from a “stone desert” into a “biodiversity oasis.”

Street Plans’ recent #asphaltart #placemaking project in New York City’s Union Square was featured on CBS News. Check out the clip below!