Aaron Naparstek
AARON NAPARSTEK is the founder and former editor-in-chief of Streetsblog. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Naparsteks journalism, advocacy and community organizing work has been instrumental in growing the bicycle network, removing motor vehicles from parks, and developing new public plazas, car-free streets and life-saving traffic-calming measures across all five boroughs. Naparstek is the author of "Honku: The Zen Antidote for Road Rage" (Villard, 2003), a book of humorous haiku poetry inspired by the endless motorist sociopathy observed from his apartment window. Prior to launching Streetsblog, Naparstek worked as an interactive media producer, pioneering some of the Web's first music web sites, online communities, live webcasts and social networking services. Naparstek is currently in Cambridge with his wife and two young sons where he is enjoying a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. He has a master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor's degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Naparstek is a co-founder of the Park Slope Neighbors community group and the Grand Army Plaza Coalition. You can find more of his work here: http://www.naparstek.com.
Recent Posts
David Yassky Supports Congestion Pricing
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City Council Member David Yassky has come out in favor of congestion pricing, with the caveat that "many features of the Mayor’s proposal will need to be reworked." Yassky’s Brooklyn district, it’s worth noting, encompasses three East River bridges, the Battery Tunnel and a seemingly endless number of of honking, spewing, frustrated motorists. Until last […]
Hail the Yassky Cab: All NYC Taxis to be Hybrid by 2012
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The Today Show cast, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Yahoo! executive and Council Member David Yassky stand with a gas-electric hybrid Ford Escape SUV taxi this morning. Though members of my immediate family claim that it is the most mind-numbingly boring of all 500 cable channels available in our home, I’m a big fan of NYCTV […]
John Liu Says He Supports Congestion Pricing
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Some actual news came out of this morning’s congestion pricing forum with London Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron, the one event that Streetsblog’s reporting team decided to skip this week. Queens City Council Member John Liu publicly stated that he supports congestion pricing. New York Times reporter Sewell Chan reports for the EmpireZone blog: Mr. Liu, […]
There Are Certain Facts That We’ve All Got to Face Up To
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Given that it was only a few months ago that Mayor Michael Bloomberg could be heard saying, "We like traffic, it means economic activity, it means people coming here," his pitch for a whole new set of progressive transportation policies at last week’s meeting of the Regional Plan Association was all the more remarkable: There […]
PlaNYC Team Releases Transportation Technical Report
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The PlaNYC team has released the technical report providing the detailed background data for the transportation recommendations made in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s April 22 Long-Term Planning & Sustainability speech. It’s a big download — 25 megabytes and 166 pages — but if you are a New York City transportation policy wonk, it’s totally worth it. […]
Pedi Politics
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On Monday, April 23, the day after Earth Day and the Mayor’s Long-Term Sustainability speech, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn plans to hold a decisive vote on Intro. 331-A, a law limiting and restricting pedicabs. Mayor Bloomberg vetoed the bill but rather than going back and trying to improve the legislation by, say, simply increasing […]
We Must Imagine a Future Without Cars
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From Alternet, the following is an excerpted version of James Howard Kunstler‘s recent speech to the Commonwealth Club of California, well worth reading in its entirety. An audio stream of the speech is also available: Two years ago in my book The Long Emergency I wrote that our nation was sleepwalking into an era of […]
Resolved: More Traffic Congestion & Automobile Dependence
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Brooklyn City Councilmember Lew Fidler and a small group of his outer borough colleagues have put forward Resolution 774 "calling upon the Mayor of New York City to oppose the institution of any form of congestion pricing." The resolution is based on a March 2006 report commissioned by the Queens Chamber of Commerce that was, […]
City Council Fiddles While New York City Chokes on Traffic
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Brooklyn Council member Lew Fidler (above) is circulating an anti-congestion pricing resolution urging Mayor Bloomberg to oppose any form of road pricing. Fidler’s resolution appears to be a shot across the bow in preparation for the mayor’s forthcoming Long-Term Planning and Sustainability speech. Last week, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff hinted that the speech would include […]
Doctoroff Sets Stage for Something Bold, Creative & Expensive
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O Yesterday, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and MTA President Lee Sander delivered a pair of one-two speeches at the annual meeting of the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council. Sadly, the report I wrote up yesterday afternoon was eaten by my blog software. It was really good too. Much more entertaining than this one. What are […]
Defending “The Bailey’s” Right to Kung Pao Chicken and an SUV
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DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall and her husband Senator Charles Schumer enjoy a meal with The Bailey’s. This week’s New Yorker has a Jeffrey Goldberg Talk of the Town piece about Senator Charles Schumer’s new book, Positively American: Winning Back the Middle-Class Majority One Family at a Time. Schumer’s protagonist is an imaginary, average middle-class American […]
PlaNYC 2030 Project “Tearing Things Up” at City Hall
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A tipster tells us of a particularly vigorous screaming match in City Hall last week between Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and a career civil servant who must remain nameless. "You wouldn’t know it from outside appearances," the tipster says, "but the 2030 Project is really tearing things up inside City Hall right now. It’s a […]