Walka o ulice. Jak odzyskać miasto dla ludzi

by Janette Sadik-Khan, Seth Solomonow, Weronika Mincer (Translator)

Janette Sadik-Khan udało się zrealizować to, co wydawało się niemożliwe. Jako komisarz ds. transportu, podczas kadencji burmistrza Michaela Bloomberga, w latach 2007–2013 przeprowadziła w Nowym Jorku urbanistyczną rewolucję. Jej najważniejsze i najodważniejsze projekty to oddanie pieszym ogromnych przestrzeni wcześniej zajmowanych przez ruch samochodowy, budowa setek kilometrów dróg dla rowerów, uruchomienie szybkich linii autobusowych SBS i roweru publicznego. Zmagania o miasto dla ludzi opisała wraz ze swoim współpracownikiem Sethem Solomonowem w prezentowanej książce. Ostatecznie, dzięki determinacji Janette Sadik-Khan i jej zespołu, Nowy Jork stał się miastem bardziej przyjaznym dla pieszych, rowerzystów i komunikacji miejskiej, a jednocześnie pełnym zieleni i mniej zakorkowanym. Niewątpliwy sukces zespołu Janette Sadik-Khan jest ogromną inspiracją dla wszystkich, którym bliska jest idea „miasta szczęśliwego”. We wstępie i na zakończenie autorka trawestuje słowa Franka Sinatry: „Jeśli coś można zrobić w Nowym Jorku, to da się to zrobić wszędzie.” – to wystarczająca zachęta także dla polskiego czytelnika. Książka stanowi kontynuację wątków poruszonych przez Charlesa Montgomery’ego w Mieście szczęśliwym. Autorzy Walki o ulice pokazują od strony praktycznej, jak wcielić w życie opisane przez niego idee.

Genres: Urban Planning, Urbanism, Nonfiction, Cities, Urban Studies, Urban, Design

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[ambyr · Rating 2 out of 5]

Someday, someone will write a book about Sadik-Khan's innovative approach to urban planning that provides a detailed and balanced assessment of both her process and policies. Unfortunately, Sadik-Khan herself isn't interested in writing that book. I fundamentally agree with her philosophy and still found the self-congratulatory tone of this extended "hire me as a consultant!" advertisement grating and the cherry-picked scraps of data this book provides unconvincing. I can't imagine it changing the mind of anyone not already on the side of the urbanists, bicyclists, and pedestrians, and I don't have much patience for books that preach to the choir.

[Erok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spending most of my adult life working on the cultural and infrastructure change of our transportation system in Pittsburgh, this book was validating to say the least.

NYC streets, under her reign, changed so dramatically and gave advocates across the country a new way to think and talk about what our cities can be, almost creating a new language. Needless to say her work made everyone else's job much easier by mainstreaming the idea that built environments are meant to be altered and change with the times, and that the default car-centric design is not the best use of space or the best we can do. I've personally seen how the things that happened in NYC have changed Pittsburgher's minds and gave people outside of the "advocates" a toolkit that they never new they had.

The book itself is a quick read, part memoir, part treatise on why cities need to be focusing on making everything but the car as safe, comfortable and convenient as possible. I appreciate how quotable the book is, filled with one line zingers that will no doubt be showing up for years on blogs and newspaper comments sections. You get a sense of her personality as the book changes directions on the drop of a dime, going form one subject to the next, sometimes without any reason. It makes me imagine that this is fairly similar to what she's like in real life, and a bit of what it might have been like to work under her.

As a memoir, I geeked out about the behind the scenes decision making of a Transportation Commissioner in New York City. The concept of this department having its own PR team is itself incredible. This is one of those things (among many other things like traffic engineers) that smaller cities simply don't have, so her argument that "any city can do this - simple" kind of falls flat. I'm not saying that cities shouldn't try, it's just that it's a heavier lift when you don't have a PR team or advocacy group (or teams of planners and engineers) to have your back.

It was difficult to not recognize that she may also be using the book to solidify her legacy and have the last word on her controversial stint. But that's OK, that's why people write books, and honestly, the book was inspiring and interesting enough for a general audience that it might just help other places outside of NYC and SF drink the Kool Aid. However, I'm still grappling with her top-down approach, doing what's best for the community, despite what the community may want, or think they want. While I appreciate a good-guy strong-arm now and again, it's easy to see why her tactics can be compared to the tactics of Robert Moses, who's projects she claims to be reversing.

[Patricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book in advance of an Urban Milwaukee book club discussion taking place this month. It's a feisty memoir by a NYC transportation commissioner (2007-2013) who led a resurgence of urban street life in NYC by taking anachronistic traffic areas and creating urban plazas and protected bike lanes and by rethinking traffic patterns. She has a lot of interesting things to say about transit and infrastructure too. I am going to be looking at Milwaukee with new eyes after reading this book, trying to imagine creative and dynamic ways to use the streets to create a better environment. The great thing about the changes she oversaw in New York is not just that they improved the environment for pedestrians and bikers, but that businesses did better and traffic issues improved. These types of changes are a win-win for all concerned.

[jasmine sun · Rating 4 out of 5]

solid overview of sadik-khan’s transportation initiatives in nyc. the depth of analysis is pretty urban planning 101 and it’s certainly not a balanced take on the transit controversies, but main value def came from reading it while actually in the city / being able to observe the projects irl. (going to start power broker next, though this is a feat of its own)

[avocet · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think this book is probably more revelatory if youre not steeped in these issues every day

[Matt Zar-Lieberman · Rating 4 out of 5]

While his mayoral reign was by no means perfect, Michael Bloomberg did some cool things over his three terms as Mayor of New York City. Many of these aforementioned low-temperature initiatives made lives easier for pedestrians (car-free plazas and curb islands in busy intersections), bikers (tons of designated bike lanes and a huge bike-sharing program) and even bus riders (select bus service). Janette Sadik-Khan, commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation from 2007 to 2013, was the major architect behind such projects. In her (and co-author Seth Solomonow's) new book Streetfight, Sadik-Khan chronicles her tenure in the Bloomberg administration and offers a practical guide to implementing her sustainable and human-scale planning initiatives in other cities.

Streetfight is equal parts memoir and overview of major topics in planning. The book is structured thematically, with each chapter touching upon an aspect of transportation planning, including bike lanes, bike-sharing, and infrastructure maintenance. It begins with some background on transportation planning in New York City and a primer on the theories of urban planners such as Jane Jacobs. Streetfight draws its ideas from around the world, looking at innovative programs in other cities and countries and including a passage on how New York's Summer Streets program was inspired by a similar program in Colombian cities. Sadik-Khan is remarkably fair in her analysis throughout, which is refreshing given that some urban planning books exhibit a decent amount of intellectual inflexibility. Streetfight has no agenda to ban all cars from the island of Manhattan or lead some kind of cycler/pedestrian uprising. The book's assertions are largely driven by data, and she shares some fascinating studies from New York City and the rest of the world, including research from London showing that shoppers arriving from non-car modes of transportation considerably outspend those coming by automobile. At the same time, she understands that regardless of what the data and academics say that these ideas need to be politically appetizing in order to succeed. A considerable portion of Streetfight details how Sadik-Khan brokered political compromises such as removing portions of a bike lane in a Hasidic part of Brooklyn to help win a new larger path on a major thoroughfare and the book also recounts the endless public hearings around her policy proposals. Such political concessions are vital to getting policy wins in today's governing environment, and sometimes even public support isn't enough, as was the case with Sadik-Khan's ill-fated congestion charge proposal for parts of Manhattan.

The strongest parts of Streetfight are when Sadik-Khan goes into detail on methods she used to improve biker/rider/walker and yes, even driver (some of her fixes improved traffic flow and/or got other cars off the road and onto other modes of transportation) welfare. Streetfight is filled with diagrams and pictures illustrating concepts and some jarring before-and-afters of how the city brought about some substantial changes with little more than a can of paint and some chairs. The authors are able to present these concepts in a coherent fashion an clearly outline how solutions such as how pedestrian curb refuges function and help calm car traffic. Moreover, while the book offers practical solutions, it is geared towards a general audience and anyone interested on the general subject can take away a lot from reading it.

Transportation policy may no sound like the sexiest topic in the world (and admittedly it isn't), but Streetfight is a remarkably readable volume that manages to provide practical transportation solutions for cities as well as a peek inside the data-heavy and orthodoxy-eschewing Bloomberg administration. There is some repetition and occasionally the largely triumphalist tone (albeit mostly deserved) got grating, but these are both small nits. Overall, Streetfight is an informative and illuminating look at major street transportation-related developments in New York City over the last several years and any reader looking to learn more about how cities work should give Streetfight a look, regardless of whether they are New Yorkers or not.

8 / 10

[رَشَد الأرحيم · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about the work of New York city’s Department of Transport between 2007 and 2013 under the leadership of Janette Sadik-Khan. Sadik-Khan is very focused in her work, which is why I believe she succeeded as a leader. This book is mainly about her work during her time as commissioner and focuses on how she improved New York’s streets– whether by creating bike and bus lanes, bike stations, or opening streets and creating plazas.

All in all this is an ‘okay’ book. It’s hard to follow at times because it lacks structure. Also I’m not sure there’s anything here that you wouldn’t be able to read in the the NYC street guide manual (https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloa...). I agree with one of the reviewers, Sadik-Khan was clearly uninterested in writing this book.

It’s unfortunate through because I felt that a clear instructive (more academic) writing would have enhanced the discussion. I would have really liked to know how the DOT implemented their community outreach program.

[William Cline · Rating 1 out of 5]

A light history of the author’s tenure as NYC’s traffic commissioner, plus a little bit of “getting the last word in.” Considering the fallacious outcry she received as thanks for making New York’s streets more functional and humane, I can’t fault Sadik-Khan for wanting to set the record straight. However, despite the subtitle’s promise to serve as a “handbook” for other cities, there’s very little in here that you wouldn't get from reading Streetsblog or the like.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somehow, Janette Sadik-Khan got me very excited about optimizing urban traffic patterns. I'll never look at an eight lane intersection the same way again.

[Sterling Hardaway · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.8/5. A little dry but a good overview of what transportation policy and change looks like with NYC in the Bloomberg era as the main case study.

[tosiap · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF 15 %
Mega mocne

[Katie Frederick · Rating 4 out of 5]

JSK is an icon.

[Art · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There are new expectations for streets,” writes Janette Sadik-Khan. “Changing the streets is a blood sport. Projects that alter streetscapes upset the people who cling to stability, even if it is unsafe or inefficient.” Change becomes the new norm. And that’s how the author concludes her exciting book.

Ostensibly, this is a book describing how New York City revitalized its streets. Sadik-Khan, however, applies the lessons learned to other cities. After all, many of the ideas used in New York drew inspiration from cities around the world. Cities inspire one another and adapt ideas in bold, new ways. This book deconstructs then reinvents city streets.

Street designs that protect bikers reinforce the variety of uses, reversing a century of poor autocentric planning. When drivers share the road, they slow down and look around, which protects bikers and walkers. Bike ideas also protect pedestrians by altering the behavior of drivers.

Pedestrians also need infrastructure. New York City adapted London’s successful wayfinding. Sleek, eight-foot monoliths and heads-up orientation in the direction that the pedestrian faces include radial marks to indicate how much time it takes to walk here or there.

In the last fifteen years, a new generation began rethinking its relationship with cars and infrastructure. As one example, over two hundred cities around the world are rebuilding themselves with rapid bus networks, which take months, not years, to get up and running compared with rail to serve the same corridor.

Buses in the twenty-first century transformed to become as fast and reliable as trains. Bus Rapid Transit exploded in popularity since the seventies. The practical, low-cost BRT technology came from less economically developed countries with fewer resources and more incentive for planners to design efficient networks.

Rebalancing the street for the most efficient way to travel results in transit equity. For example, designated lanes for buses put transit riders at the center of modern street designs, displacing cars, often known as SOVs, single-occupant vehicles. Cities around the world are reaping benefits that come with streets that give buses priority, writes Sadik-Khan.

One bus can take forty cars off the road. Quicker boarding happens when riders pay before getting on the bus. Then they can enter in the front or rear doors. For traditional buses, a quarter of the transit time comes from people paying their fares at the front door.

Thinking also changed in recent years about the greenest places to live. Environmentalist now advocate smart and compact urban growth as part of an anti-sprawl strategy. Compact cities friendly to walking and transit are the most efficient places to live.

Art and infrastructure can cure city eyesores. David Byrne, who lives in New York, designed a dozen custom bike racks that add colorful and practical punctuation marks where they appear.

“Cities can use this as a manual for change on issues like health reform, education and the arts,” Byrne wrote for a blurb on the back cover. “This, then, is not just a book about transportation.”

Many other ideas for reviving New York’s streets came cheap, using low-tech techniques, such as paint, planters and stone, that any city can emulate.

New York City stars in this book about its transformation to safer and more livable streets for pedestrians and bicyclists. Chicago and Washington, DC, meanwhile, star in Start-Up City: Inspiring Private and Public Entrepreneurship, Getting Projects Done, and Having Fun, by Gabe Klein. San Francisco stars in yet another book with a similar title to this one, Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco.

I LIKE these firsthand accounts of big urban projects and how the players got them done quickly.

Thirty-six pages of notes support the book. Sadik-Khan acknowledges many people for support, ideas and inspiration, including Gabe Klein, Ray LaHood, and Jeff Speck, whose five-star book Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time pairs very well with this one.

Janette Sadik-Khan here, and Gabe Klein in his pithy book, bring a street smart passion to their visions of city transportation that moves into the future, thinking beyond the autocentric designs of the last hundred years. For more on that, read Peter Norton’s terrific five-star book, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. Moving forward, Sadik-Khan now refers to the Urban Street Design Guide, published by Island Press, endorsed by forty-five cities.

CLEVELAND AND BOSTON train trips this summer will reacquaint me with good public transit in those two cities.

Cleveland’s HealthLine, a seven-mile bus rapid service from downtown to universities and medical centers, earned recognition as the best BRT in North America. Meanwhile, the Shaker Rapid, as we called it, began as a streetcar in the twenties but morphed into light rail, known now as the Green and Blue lines. I took the rapid often after Dad accepted a position in Cleveland in the sixties.

Boston, of course, enjoys a terrific transit network with a subway older than the one in New York. But I’m more interested in the Green Line, which operates part of its E Branch as a streetcar in mixed traffic from Brigham Circle to Heath Street/Jamaica Plain. Silver Line, meanwhile, operates one of its runs on reserved lanes from Roxbury to Downtown Boston, mostly on Washington Street. Although a reserved lane alone falls far short of BRT, it’s a start with plans to upgrade.

Milwaukee comes late and slow to modern transit but suddenly is making up for lost time. And that’s too bad because Milwaukee’s interurban technologies led the world a hundred years ago.

A traditional bus system serves about seventy-five thousand of us a day. Coming soon, a starter streetcar line will circulate through high-density parts of downtown. It has taken years to get that project going.

But a nine-mile bus rapid transit line from downtown to research park and the regional medical center is on a fast track, proving how quickly we can implement a modern BRT system compared with the excruciatingly long and painful process of the streetcar, as welcome as it will be when it begins service. The streetcar will run from a cultural district on Lake Michigan to the downtown Amtrak station, which serves sixteen trains a day, including the eight hundred thousand passengers of us who go from here to Chicago on the Hiawatha, the busiest Amtrak corridor outside of the Northeast and California. .

HealthLine, http://www.riderta.com/healthline/about

HealthLine, best transit investment, https://www.itdp.org/more-development...

Forbes, BRT more efficient development than rail, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmah...

Milwaukee’s BRT plan, http://www.eastwestbrt.com Even now, the corridor carries as much transit traffic as do some busy light rail lines around the country.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really fun read, a rec from a classmate!! Here are some takeaways:
- There are always going to be opponents to bike lanes and changes to streets. It's important to have a data strategy before making the change so you can show the impact of the change. It's also important to provide ample ways for the community to provide feedback. Give the community a menu of options, ask for their goals, instead of just dropping in stop signs/traffic lights. Don't let community feedback paralyze a project, though, sometimes you need to take small initial steps. When a significant, potentially controversial project rolls out, provide info in advance to the press. Back it up with data and documentation of community outreach.
- 12 feet is the standard width for highway lanes to accommodate the widest truck, but that doesn't mean city streets should be that wide -> leads to more dangerous driving. fewer, narrower city streets mean that drivers have to pay more attention to their surroundings and drive safer
- Climate change and Hurricane Sandy contributed to big delays in the Citibike launch, due to water damage and time spent on disaster response.
- The cost of bike lanes, new bus routes, and pedestrian-friendly street changes is wayyy cheaper than new subway lines/trains or maintaining existing automobile infrastructure.
- Taxi data was a good consistent way to see the impact of street changes, especially after converting Times Square, Madison Square, etc. into pedestrian plazas. Taxi drivers felt like they were moving slower but were actually faster.
- Transportation Alternatives confirmed the GOAT. Also didn't realize that the MTA runs the largest bus fleet in North America. So fun to hear about Janette and Jan Gehl collabing
- There were several periods of really harsh negative media, especially before election seasons and after significant delays in the Citibike launch. Despite this, public surveys showed widespread support for the bike lanes, plazas, and improved safety.
- The "Measuring the Street Report": Working with our sister agency, the Department of Finance, which collects taxes and revenue for New York City, we obtained detailed, aggregated retail sales data for the dozens of locally owned storefronts, restaurants, and markets on streets where we introduced bike lanes, bus lanes, and plazas across the city. We compared the results on these streets with boroughwide and citywide retail sales trends as a control group. What we found was astonishing: stores along streets where changes had been made reported increased sales, far outperforming overall businesses across the boroughs. We combined our economic data in a report called “Measuring the Street.” It was the most in-depth look at the economic impact of livable street projects undertaken by any city. At Brooklyn’s Pearl Street, the site of our first place-making project in 2007 in the parking lot below the Manhattan Bridge, we saw a 172 percent increase in retail sales in five years. Sales receipts alone don’t tell the story. Real estate data helped us determine that there were 49 percent fewer commercial vacancies in Union Square where the transformation of Broadway eventually extended in 2011. Meanwhile, back on 14th Street, where protesters in 2010 claimed that unnamed businesses on First and Second avenues were losing “tons and tons” of money, there were 47 percent fewer commercial vacancies. That was in addition to the fact that buses moved up to 18 percent faster, ridership increased 12 percent (despite bus ridership dropping citywide at the time), 177 percent more people biked, car travel times even improved, and there were 37 percent fewer traffic crashes involving injury.

[Cathy Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was very educational for me. Where I live (Madison, WI) there's a lot of pride in being a "platinum level" bike town, one of only five in the US, but what does that even mean? We have nice off-road bike paths, including a lot of recreational routes going out of town. We've also got a few nice programs and events, and a bike share platform that seems to serve mostly tourists.

Street Fight opened my eyes to what we don't have, "complete streets" as they're called, engineered to efficiently handle auto, transit, pedestrian an bike traffic. New York and other cities now put a lot of attention into this kind of infrastructure, and such engineering has the potential to move all traffic faster, more securely, and with far fewer accidents. So while my town's off-road paths are nice, I now realize that our street infrastructure as a whole is dated and inadequate. Our bike lanes, especially, are sad little things: narrow lanes painted years ago that spend a third of the year with snow plowed into them, and that cut out suddenly or get squeezed out for bridges and features like pedestrian islands.

The subtitle is a little misleading; this isn't really a handbook, it's more like the memoir of a proud urban design nerd. I found the whole thing fascinating, and was surprised that the chapter on statistics was one of my favorites! But the "fight" part of the title is very accurate. People can be weird…

One fun detail from my research: The author was told over and over that various things couldn't be done, because "New York is not Amsterdam" or "This isn't Copenhagen." (This gets to be a running joke.) I found out the traffic engineer who designed the streets of Copenhagen heard the same kind of thing when he started: "This isn't Italy"! So if you speak up for better streets where you live, don't let them tell you "This isn't New York."

Reading this, and doing a little research along with reading, did a lot to educate me about modern urban road design. It also got me thinking about what's important, and what isn't. Towns like Madison have a lot of bike-hoopla. I would gladly do without the big annual Naked Bike Ride for ten miles of protected bike lanes, or viable routes to places where ordinary people work and shop.

[Slavomíra Nemčíková · Rating 3 out of 5]

EN review: Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution (SK BELOW) - Loved what Sadik-Khan had to say about making our cities more _ours_ - as opposed to car-dominated, concrete-laden wastelands. Some of the points she made based on observations, research, and statistics, made me look at my surroundings in the city differently. Like, did you know that reducing the number of lanes actually makes traffic more efficient? Or that jaywalking was made up by car factory owners who wanted the general public to view the street as the place dedicated to cards, as opposed to people? (I think I might have imagined some of this one).
I would give this piece of non-fiction 3,5 stars because it was educational and helped me see the world around me in a different light.
I read the Slovak translation and that one, however, deserves a much harsher review (I know Sadik-Khan has nothing to do with that). Namely, the translation was BAD.

SK: Kniha bola fajn, preklad hrozný. Oceňujem, že táto kniha vyšla na našom trhu, a k tomu vo veľmi príjemnom dizajnovom prevedení. Sama by som to určite lepšie nepreložila, ale nedá mi nepodotknúť, že ma nízka kvalita práce prekladateľky a jej editorky takmer donútila knihu odložiť. Frazeologizmy, metafory, a často aj jednoduché slová, boli preložené často akoby cez translator, bez dôrazu na význam, kultúrne okolnosti, a bez ohľadu na slovenského čitateľa. Veľmi veľa krát ma kostrbatý preklad donútil knihu odložiť, alebo viedol k zmätku a úniku významu. Som za vydávanie dobrej literatúry faktu v slovenčine, ale prosíííím dávajme prácu a podmienky prekladateľom tak, aby to za to stálo.

[Keen Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 Stars!

“New York has 6,300 miles of streets, 12,000 miles of sidewalks, more than 1 million street signs, 12,700 intersections with traffic signals, 315,000 streetlights, 789 bridges, and the Staten Island ferry, which moves 22 million people annually. Streets comprise 25% of the city’s landmasss, making the transportation commissioner the largest real estate developer in the city.”

There is quite a lot in here to get positive and excited about, such as installing more than 300 hundred miles of bike lanes by 2013. More than 20 million trips were made in the first two years without a single rider fatality. Then there's the highly encouraging news about the drop in young Americans getting their driving licenses.

“Governments spend more general tax revenue on highways than on transit, walking and biking combined. So people who walk, bike or take public transit are effectively subsidizing the least efficient transportation mode at the expense of their own way of getting around.”

It’s incredible what can be achieved with just some simple changes to the road geometry. The many ways in so much superfluous road has been reclaimed for the pedestrians, who make up the vast majority. A series of small, yet significant changes all across the city soon amounts to quite a positive and enduring change in so many people’s lives, as well as making them a lot more safe and visually appealing and just nicer to be around.

“Transportation is one the few professions where nearly 33,000 people can lose their lives in one year and no one in a position of responsibility is in losing their job.”

We also learn about the likes of so called, “desire lines”, think of a diagonal path cutting across any grass space you know of and that is a good example. She adds, “Instead of asking why people aren’t following the rules and design of the road, we need to ask ourselves why the rules and design of the road aren’t following the people.”

So this was an accessible and enjoyable read. Sadik-Khan certainly never shies away from self-promotion, which goes with the territory, but doesn't make it less annoying. Whatever your views on her work, the stats and the results really do speak for themselves, above all else, more than 1,000 lives saved. That alone is an incredible achievement.

[Angie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

I agree we can really reimagine how we live in our public spaces. In Iowa City each April- Oct we close down a small street for people to enjoy congregating. I imagine we can do more. We have a Ped Mall but could expand Washington street to be a haven for bikes and buses. So much more we can do to facilitate bike riding.


If building roads resulted in less traffic then after 69 years of road construction we surely would be all cruising at highway speeds. Instead building roads resulted in more lanes, more roads, and no less traffic. evidence shows cities that did not build more roads had no less congestion. Building 8 lanes of road has still resulted in 8 lanes of slow traffic.

Instead of building more roads planners need to build more transportation options planners should build infrastructure to accommodate walkers cyclists and bus riders.

Stores along streets where buses and bike lanes are see growth in sales. Those who drives to shops spend less than those who bike walk to take public transportation. Business that take the parking spot away outside of shop and replace it with seating show 14 percent increase in sales.

[Majo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of our cities. Janette Sadik-Khan, former New York City transportation commissioner, offers a compelling and practical guide to transforming urban spaces for people, not just cars. The book highlights how, for decades, cities have prioritized vehicles over pedestrians, cyclists, and public spaces—shaping not only how we move, but also how we connect with each other and the environment.

What makes Streetfight especially powerful is its focus on reclaiming public space. By shifting our perspective from car-centric design to people-first streets, we open up new opportunities to explore our cities in healthier, more vibrant, and more sustainable ways. This book is not just for urban planners or policymakers—it’s for anyone who walks, bikes, or drives through a city and dreams of something better.

[Kristian Macías · Rating 5 out of 5]

Street Fight is a great book that narrates the challenges for the design, implementation and monitoring of comprehensive mobility public policies, especially the recovery of public space. In a city gone smug, Sadik Khan comes to the Department of Transportation to do a 180-degree turn and focus on the people.
The greatest value of the book is given in two main themes. The first is how she manages to explain the fundamental issues of mobility, public space and public transport so that the reader really identifies the mobility pyramid as well as the value of retaking our public space for the people. This is essential to understand the background of all the policies implemented: the recovery of the streets, DUMBO, tactical interventions, bike paths, among many other actions with highly beneficial results. The second point is how she manages to involve the reader in the narrative of the main challenges to implement these public policies. This is extremely valuable since there are few occasions that an official explains in such detail the debates, arguments, problems, legal fights, political grids, which directly marked the way in which the policies were planned as well as their implementation.
Sadik-Khan gives us a manual on how to make public policy for people, focused on mobility, public space and building community.
This book is essential for all those who want to transform their city and to build spaces that focus on those who live there, and not on cars.

[Signe · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's rare that a book about roads, buses, rental bikes and backlashes is an interesting read from start to finish but this really was. I am forced to give it five stars, even though I didn't find much that was entirely new to me, because it details pretty much the original fight for a liveable city, which is fascinating, and in addition it is just very well written, clearly structured, good balance between detail and narrative, etc. Thumbs up.

[Olaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read memoir-"urban planing for dummies" hybrid, but...

It's hardly an "urban revolution handbook". Not enough details and ideas how to implement changes. It focuses mostly on what was done in NY.

It probably won't convince anyone who isn't already receptive to the idea that maybe we shouldn't focus so much on cars.

[Camilo Cortes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo compleja de la historia de la construcción de las ciudades y de los actores que participan en su crecimiento y cambio, llevan a este libro a ubicarse en algunas ocasiones en lugares donde peca de mostrar la visión particular una hacedora de política pública.

Por los debates y las críticas que hacia este libro se ven en esta red social solo se puede juzgar las obras de la autora en la ciudad con el tiempo y con el mayor interés por la visión completa y compleja, como la ciudad misma de la que trata.

Es, a mi parecer, un manual de introducción para una persona que, como yo, entra en los temas de los planificadores urbanos. En este caso en el particular debate del espacio en la ciudad y la movilidad dentro de ella.

[Lauryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

As much as I can appreciate that what she was doing in her time was progressive, I really struggle with her self aggrandizing tone. The minutiae of NYC politics and press was also not that interesting to me. But I think she made some great points! And was responsible for a lot of the things I think of when I think of my time living in New York

[Garrett Haas · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an engineer, I love the solutions-focused stories for tackling safety and congestion on our streets. Probably a great book for anyone interested in these solutions to cities' transportation issues that is at least familiar with NYC. As someone who's never been to NYC, I felt like I couldn't connect with the story as well but I didn't want that to impact the overall rating of a good book.

[Kelsey Redding · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a pedestrian, this changed my perspective on public safety, transportation options, and cars authority on the road. It’s a bit redundant as a read, but still fascinating to watch this woman reshape NYC.

[Germaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Que grandioso libro! Abre los ojos de una manera inexplicable. Y yo que pensé que nunca lo leería...
Las calles son para la gente, y merecen serlo. Si te importa tu ciudad y si amas tu ciudad esta es una lectura ESENCIAL.

[Aarti Nair · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best books that I have read on the subject of street transformations. Using the lens of New York, helps us question many believes about what are streets for...and how to transform them

[Vipassana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a fun, informative read on NYC’s politics but I wish there was more of a counterpoint to many of JSK’s policies.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

An engaging pep talk to urban city planners and active citizens.