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
There’s No Such Thing as “Free Parking”
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Free parking, it turns out, isn’t free. A new study by transportation guru Bruce Schaller finds that free parking in Manhattan’s Central Business district is responsible for a significant amount of New York City’s staggering traffic congestion. Schaller’s new study, Congested Streets: The Skewed Economic Incentives to Drive Into Manhattan (PDF), finds that free parking […]
No Parking Slope
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The B67 bus veers around a double-parked van blocking a car parked in front of a fire hydrant as a Bugaboo-pushing nanny strolls by Councilmember David Yassky and Transportation Alternatives director Paul Steely White calling for more sensible parking policy this afternoon in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Every drivers knows that it can be nearly impossible […]
Gridlock Sam: Avert Climate Catastrophe, Ride a Vespa®
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While Parisians are starting to complain that "an invasion of noisy scooters and motorcycles and a rise in accidents involving pedestrian and motorcyclists" is one of the "unintended consequences" of Mayor Bertrand Delanoe’s traffic reduction policies, "Gridlock" Sam Schwartz’s consulting firm just issued a report claiming that New York City could better meet its […]
Streetfilms: “A City Is a Means to a Way of Life”
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Manhattan on the Move ConferenceEdited by Nick Whitaker Running time: 6 minutes 52 seconds At last October’s Manhattan Transportation Policy Conference, convened by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, people from every neighborhood in Manhattan gathered to discuss a vision for the future of transportation in New York. In his keynote address, Enrique Peñalosa, the former […]
New York City 2030. London Today.
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On Thursday, as New York City’s highest ranking transportation officials argued before City Council that the city’s increasing traffic congestion and automobile dependence is "an indication of the vitality and the growth of the city of New York," London’s Mayor Ken Livingstone was in Davos, Switzerland announcing that he aims "to make London the world’s […]
Launching the Campaign for Carbon Taxes
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Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff, along with Daniel Rosenblum, today announce the foundation of their new organization, the Carbon Tax Center. The Center’s mission is "to educate and inform policymakers, opinion leaders and the public, including grassroots organizations, about the benefits of and critical need for significant, rising and equitable taxes on carbon emissions from fossil […]
PLANYC 2030 Community Leader Meetings
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Mayor Bloomberg’s Office of Long-Term Planning & Sustainability is running a series of meetings with community groups. Though the meeting times are posted publicly on the PLANYC 2030 web site, no locations are listed and word has it these borough-wide "Community Leader" meetings are going to be pretty strictly invitation-only. Presentation to New York New Visions […]
Uncool New York: NYC Lags in Combatting Climate Change
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Chris Smith has an outstanding story in this week’s New York Magazine pointing out that New York City has fallen behind other world cities in addressing climate change and challenging the Bloomberg Administration to do more. An excerpt: Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been cruising through his second term. At this point, with a gaudy approval […]
Making Hell’s Kitchen Less Hellish
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StreetFilms Ninth Avenue Renaissance Town Hall Meeting Running time: 3:35 Monday night was the first meeting of the Ninth Avenue Renaissance project. About 130 neighborhood stakeholders filled the gym at the Holy Cross School in Midtown to begin a process to transform Ninth Avenue from a dysfunctional, traffic-choked, polluted highway into, what organizer Christine Berthet […]
New German Community Models Car-Free Living
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The Vauban Department of Transportation gets to work. Schritt Tempo: Walking Speed. Freiburg, Germany is a place you need to know about if you are interested in models for reducing automobile dependence. Here is a great story by Isabelle de Pommereau from Wednesday’s Christian Science Monitor: FREIBURG, GERMANY: It’s pickup time at the Vauban kindergarten here at the edge […]
Did a Blogger’s Big Scoop Stall “Atlantic Yards?”
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NY1 is reporting a rumor that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will not vote to approve Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards development project at tomorrow’s three-men-in-a-room meeting of the Public Authorities Control Board. (Amazingly, this one meeting constitutes the only legislative "debate" and vote that this massive project will ever see). NY1 reports: According to a […]
Streetfilms: Curbing Cars in Soho
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You’ve got to hand it to Clarence Eckerson. The producer of Streetfilms managed to turn around a video of this morning’s press conference announcing the new Bruce Schaller study of Soho streets (PDF) in less than four hours and it’s a really nice piece of work. My only gripe is that he edited out the […]