Misplaced and Misguided Priorities in our Cities

I want to share two (trimmed-down) excerpts from the brilliant little book 20 Minutes in Manhattan (highly recommended to anyone interested in... any thing related to cities, architecture, or New York).

Excerpt 1: Re-iterating a previously introduced concept.

Excerpt 2: A clever way of looking at it.

Excerpt 1:

In general, the planning and transportation establishment tends to advocate the enlargement of vehicular space, frequently at the expense of that available to pedestrians.

The difficulty [accomplishing an alternative] is exacerbated by the great grail of traffic engineering and of the fictions that support it. The ideal of traffic planners is a smooth and ever increasing flow of vehicles, moving at as high speed as practical, achieved by the removal of impediments (via synchronization of traffic lights, discipline of pedestrians, elimination of slower vehicles, like bikes), and by the continual increase in the space available for vehicular movement. Protagonists offer this naively simple formula: the more space we provide for vehicles, the faster and more smoothly they will flow.

This has proven not to be the case, and not just on city streets. Studies demonstrate that building and enlarging highways not only does not abate the congestion it is designed to relieve, it invariably exacerbates it. Increased supply generates increased demand. Yet, despite the evidence, the road-building mentality persists. Every attempt [that] favors pedestrians... is met with the same howl of protests from authorities: this will increase congestion because... [a]ny reduction in volume in one place in the city will inevitably be accompanied by a rise in traffic somewhere else.

This claim is fallacious: the true corollary is that opposite. In case after case, a reduction of space available for vehicular traffic has simply resulted in the reduction of traffic overall. 

Excerpt 2 (keep in mind this is in reference to a -- relatively -- very pedestrian-friendly neighbourhood):

On our block [in Greenwich Village], the street is 60 feet wide (including the parking lanes), while the combined width of the sidewalks on either side is about 20 feet. We tend to treat these dimensions as reasonable in proportion and as logically ordained and efficient...

Of the four lanes reserved for vehicular traffic, two are parking lanes. On our block -- as with most blocks in New York -- there are no meters and parking is available on a first come, first served basis. The city, in effect, provides half the area of the public space on my block for the storage of private cars and approximately 40 will fit when spaces are occupied. This diversion of public space -- some of the most valuable real estate on the planet -- to the private interests of the least efficient and most dangerous and dirty means of movement in the city is a fundamental affront to the real needs and habits of New York's citizens, the majority of whom do not own automobiles.