Cities, Counties, and Countries

"When I was a visiting professor at Berkeley in the 1980s, I used to come to Fisherman's Wharf and walk around," Danish urban designer Jan Gehl said Wednesday night, to more than 100 San Franciscans at the Pier 39 Theater near Fisherman's Wharf. "Now it's like deja vu; it's exactly like I remember it 25 years ago."

It's a good day in a city's urbanist evolution when Jan Gehl comes to town, and now San Francisco can add itself to the growing list of cities around the world that have embraced his people-first approach to urban design and planning.

San Francisco held its inaugural car-free "Sunday Streets" event last weekend. New Yorker Jen Petersen was there and files this report.

Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick will be on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" this afternoon at 3 p.m. EST. He'll be debating Rob Anderson, the one-man wrecking crew who filed the 2006 environmental impact law suit that stopped San Francisco from building out its citywide bicycle network.

I was pretty sure that New York City had San Francisco beat for this year's Park(ing) Day, what, with the children's reading hour and the on-street gymnasium in Brooklyn; Staten Island and Queens getting in on the act; and German tourists frolicking on the sod in front of the MoMA (all captured by StreetFilms, of course). Then I saw photos of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome admiring Rebar Group's Parkcycle -- literally, a pedal-powered park on wheels -- and I realized that we had been foiled again. Back to the drawing board New York City Park(ing) fans. We've got 12 months to come up with something better than this...

Park(ing) in Park Slope, Brooklyn, May 6, 2006. The sign says, "Public space reclamation in progress."

Here is another clever video from San Francisco; this one chronicles the case of the missing bike lane. I think it is safe to say that gas stations and bike lanes don't mix.

Thanks all for reading and commenting on our non-motorized honeymoon travel series (see parts 1, 2, 3 and 4). Below is a table Susan put together to briefly summarize some of our observations on the cities we visited.