Taking It to the Streets: Part 2 of 2

**Guest Post by Bushwick Sunrise**

Livable Streets

Experiencing the hard knock life of poverty and ghetto living, I grew up aware of the issues facing urban areas from the perspective of the man on the ground. Eventually as I became more educated, I started looking into how public policy, city planning and other top-down influences were affecting the conditions of my community. That led me to discover advocates for livable streets who have swarmed the blogosphere.

To understand their philosophy, one would first have to understand the effects cars have had on our cities. All the dense urban cities in the U.S. were originally designed before cars were widely owned or available. In the early 20th century, Henry Ford invented a way to build cars cheaply so that any middle class family could afford them. Americans started to move out to the suburbs in droves to get away from the dirty, dangerous living conditions of the city at the time. That eventually led to today, when people residing in suburban-style areas outnumber people residing in dense, urban areas, even though modern technology has now made it sanitary to live in cities.

Once cars became cheap and widely owned, politicians and city planners decided to reconfigure our dense cities to accommodate them. In NYC, Robert Moses notoriously destroyed neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs to build highways so that suburban residents from Long Island and Westchester could drive their cars to their jobs in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. All of the city roads, which were once dominated by pedestrians, bicyclists, streetcars, fruit stands and children famously playing stickball, were paved over for car traffic.

Advocates for livable streets fight for a fairer distribution of street space in urban areas. Rather than give the vast majority of the space to cars like we mostly do today, more space should be allocated to pedestrians, bicyclists, mass transit and other forms of lively, physically active street activity. This environment dramatically increases one’s exposure to new people, creates more opportunities for at least subtle spontaneous interactions and promotes a more socially and physically active lifestyle.

NYC has been a leading city in the livable streets movement. Over the past four years, there has been a spike in red bus lanes, green bike paths and pedestrian plazas. By far the most famous improvement in the city and the entire country has been the conversion of Broadway in Times Square into a pedestrian mall. Before the transformation, Times Square used to get so crowded that pedestrians had to literally walk on the roads dangerously close to moving car traffic. It had one of the highest rates of pedestrian injuries and fatalities in the city. After the transformation, the atmosphere has become a lot livelier with visitors freely moving around and utilizing the safe space.

TimeBank

I first heard of the innovative concept that is TimeBanking a year ago. After several failed attempts to land a private sector job (the 2008 financial meltdown was harsh to me), I jumped at the opportunity to join Mayor Bloomberg’s inaugural Civic Corps. This program distributed AmeriCorps volunteers around nonprofits and government agencies throughout NYC with a mission to increase volunteerism. To my good fortune, I was placed in the Visiting Nurse Service of NY to work on a novel program called the Community Connections TimeBank.

When I first learned about TimeBank, I loved it because it fit my ideals. The way it works is that members (who typically live in the same neighborhood) exchange services with one another. The services range from necessary chores, such as cooking and housekeeping, to fun pastimes, such as music lessons and sports. For every hour of service a member contributes, he or she banks a time credit, which he or she can eventually use for services in return. The result is neighbors helping neighbors. No matter how poor, uneducated or what age you are, anyone who can make time, has a skill, and a good heart, can contribute.

This was a ray through the cracks. As someone from around the way, I knew people from the inner-city have skills, talents, smarts… a variety of capabilities that with the right guidance, can help elevate each other out of the ghetto’s ubiquitous despair. But working at the TimeBank, I came to realize the true benefits are besides the services members get. What is truly forward moving is the sense of community the program is fostering. By helping one another, participants living within walking distance of each other are meeting and developing relationships. In a city where many don’t know the people living in their own building, much less their own block, TimeBank gives them a reason to casually engage with members of their community.

This is best seen in their monthly potluck gatherings. Here members get the opportunity to bring in a dish to share with others, participate in a group activity and interact with members they haven’t met yet. The idea behind these gatherings is that the more members meet, the more they trust, the more they trust, the more they exchange. This creates an environment where neighbors become friends and are continuously building their social network with others living close by. Therefore, for people willing to participate in this program, which is free and open to anyone who can pass the screening process, the TimeBank is offering the spontaneous interactions I would like to see seep into American culture.

**Editor’s Note: check out this insightful lecture on Time Banking delivered by co-founder Edgar Cahn, as well as an open letter to the non-profit community written by Mr. Cahn.  We highly recommend both of them.**

Conclusion

Livable Streets and TimeBank represent unique ideas that begin to address the concerns and visions I laid out in part 1. By physically designing our streets to better accommodate street life and by giving people positive reasons to meet and interact with their neighbors, our dense and diverse urban areas can breed a new American culture where people are community-oriented, physically active and constantly building their social networks through unplanned, spontaneous social interactions.

The vibrant, spontaneous lifestyle Americans associate with college life won’t be limited to four years. Our inner-cities can transform from blighted, crime-ridden wastelands to exciting, magnetic standard bearers of American life. This transformation can’t happen overnight, but I see the changes in motion. I encourage people to participate in street life and embrace the changes that have been coming.

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