Streetfight

An Urban Revolution For New York And Beyond

Janette Sadik-Khan is one of the world’s foremost authorities on transportation and urban transformation. She served as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner from 2007 to 2013 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, overseeing historic changes to New York City’s streets—closing Broadway to cars in Times Square, building nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, and creating more than 60 plazas citywide. A founding principal with Bloomberg Associates, she works with mayors around the world to reimagine and redesign their cities. She chairs the National Association of Transportation Officials, implementing new people-focused street design standards that have been adopted in 45 cities across the continent. She is also the author of STREETFIGHT: Handbook for an Urban Revolution.

During her time as New York City’s Transportation Commissioner, Sadik-Khan achieved the seemingly impossible, and transformed the streets of one of the world’s toughest cities into dynamic spaces that are safe for pedestrians and bikers. Her methods were dramatic and effective: simply painting or resurfacing a part of the street to make it into a plaza or bus lane not only made the street safer, it also reduced congestion and increased foot traffic, which also improved nearby businesses. Sadik-Khan’s approach confirmed that if we know how to read streets, we can reallocate existing spaces instead of reconstructing them.

In this lecture, Sadik-Khan will elaborate on STREETFIGHT, pulling back the curtain on the battles fought and won, and how the city has greatly benefited from the changes. She will discuss how she achieved the radical overhaul of our streets, offering an empowering road map for rethinking, reinvigorating, and redesigning streets across the country to function better for the people and communities that use them.