• By
Terreform and Michael Sorkin Studio



Metropolis: What did you hope to accomplish with your design?

Sorkin: What it proposes is to leave the realm of internal combustion engine and automobile and establish in its place  the realm of pedestrianism and public transportation. We don’t need to disgorge large number of cars in Manhattan. 90% of commuters to Lower Manhattan do not use cars. The FDR could be replaced with a surface boulevard that would favor bicycles, bus rapid transit and a smaller number of vehicles, preferably ones with zero emissions.

Up until now, the modern city has essentially  been involved in a game of catch-up with movement technologies that were designed without any thought of what types of cities they would produce. This proposal is about slowing everything down, so people on foot can walk anywhere unimpeded. We should think hard about what would make the city pleasurable. What we’re proposing is vastly more convenient and enjoyable than [a transportation system that relies upon] the private automobile. We have to…think about neighborhoods not like dormitories, but as sites where we conduct most of our affairs. If you live where you shop and eat and play basketball, then the need for mechanical mobility is diminished. How charming is it to ride the cable car or to walk through the streets of Prague of Vienna. No one would say to someone in Venice: this is a ridiculous mode of transportation, to go by vaporetto. But to move around like that is delightful.

M: But aren’t cars and trucks needed for commerce?

S: There are so many ways of mitigating this. Freight would be put in containers in New Jersey and Red Hook, come across on barges, loaded on zero emissions delivery vehicles at odd hours at night so as not to interfere with the use of public streets during the day time. Certain subway stations could be used for freight and they could travel only late at night. Freight would be in standard containers and raised to ground level and the same tugs that could take the freight from the surface level could bring them [the containers] into the subway.

M: How soon could these changes be implemented And wouldn’t they be expensive?

S: New York is uniquely equipped among American cities to make this transition and Lower Manhattan is the lowest hanging fruit in New York City for this type of opportunity. If the mayor makes a decision tomorrow, we could implement this -  or much of it at any rate in a year or less.  Nobody imagined that stretches of Broadway would be closed until they were. One year later they were universally acclaimed.  We’re talking about billions [of dollars] not tens of billions. It’s far more a question of determination than money .