The Omnibus is all about ideas. From the beginning, Urban Omnibus has been a showcase of good ideas for the future of cities, conceived in the public interest and tried and tested in the five boroughs of New York. So, we have decided to surface some of the ideas that have appeared on Urban Omnibus over the past two years and broadcast them around the city.
Starting in late April, look out for a series of Idea Posters on fences, scaffolds and storefronts from Jamaica, Queens to the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and many places in between. With this poster campaign, we want to turn the tactics of ubiquitous marketing — in which every bus, taxi or construction barrier is a canvas for advertising anything and everything — upside down by using a similar language to share examples of creativity and innovation in the urban realm. We want to spread these ideas to the whole city. And we want to hear your new ideas too.
Below you will find 50 ideas for New York already explored on Urban Omnibus and a space for you to share your own. For each idea listed, click through to see a related Urban Omnibus feature that describes a specific project or perspective. We hope, in some small way, we can help re-enchant the urban environment as a landscape of possibility, a realm of action and intention, and a place that represents — and deserves — a long and evolving history of creative ideas.
Destroy all cars.
Replace the subways with a conveyor belt.
Make more places to sit outside and enjoy the city for free.
SUPPORT URBAN INDUSTRY BOTH SMALL AND LARGE SCALE – FROM FOOD TO FASHION – BOATS TO BICYCLES – FILMS TO FARMS.
Share resources–from bikes to vacuums–to relieve the burden of ownership.
Make it easy for people to take advantage & create their own projects on vacant sites
More plants. Have rooftop gardens- plants growing from planters on building sides. Hanging plants from lampposts. Gardens on medium strips. Flowers on street corners. Fruit trees in places where people can come to pick a piece to eat and share. We need more beauty. More plants.
Let it be like the old city. Stop building new infrastructure for cars and let the natural innovations and demands of the human beings in it start to rebuild.
Taxshift to Land Value Taxation and phase out taxes on productivity
Close the Gaps in the Manhattan Greenway for safer, more enjoyable, biking
Use agency and pension money to fund a State Bank, making loans to New Yorkers, not investments for Wall Street (to lose)
no tax for small shops and activities at street level in monofunctional neighboorhoods / with low activity rate
My own favorite idea for ALL cities, is that they include at least one (or more) fully operating farm and dairy, for the benefit of the populace, i.e. food, milk, and wisdom. A wonderful adjunct to life, to the education system, to wider realities. It would certainly tie in with #11 and #22.
harness energy from cardio machines at gyms! why does it have to take energy for people to burn off energy?
let’s use EVERY rooftop.
I love the city, but I also love nature. Let’s make it easier to take a day trip!
bigger sidewalks, smaller streets.
Public art and opportunities for everyone to engage culturally. Grassroots artists expand the realm of possibilities for all of society.
Destroy all cities
People First
Integrate buildings with vertical agriculture and green roofs.
Support the following:
1) Urban Marketing as a permanent substitute for banners and advertisements.
e.g. Make non electrical stairs at train stations fun to use by adapting them to be functional piano keys. thefuntheroy.com
2) programs that provide wireless internet as a public service. Starting on public transportation systems and public spaces like trains and bus stops.
3) Let Sunday mornings be times in which certain streets in the city become pedestrian only. Extend to other weekdays.
Enable a good middle class environment to help reduce class disparity in urban areas by ensuring better schools and good, affordable housing.
Have a space within 1 minute from each persons home that is greenspace – enough for each one to feel the earth and practice yoga each morning.
SEE MANHATTAN’S RIM AT 3 M.P.H.
WALK THROUGH 20 WATERFRONT PARKS IN ONE DAY
COME ON THE GREAT SAUNTER OF 2011
SAT. MAY 7TH.
CREATE THE GREEN BIKE RING
A DEDICATED, 30 MILES LONG CAR-FREE BIKE RING,
BY TRANSFORMING ONE OF ROBERT MOSES’ SIX CAR LANES AROUND MANHATTAN
INTO A DEDICATED BIKE LANE:
BRING TRUE BATTERY-POWERED BUSES TO NYC.
ASSEMBLE THEM IN NYC -WE HAVE THE TALENT.
USE NON-POLLUTING BUSES
INSTEAD OF THE SMELLY MTA HYBRIDS WHICH NEVER SHUT THEIR DIESELS OFF.
CREATE
THE HARLEM RIVER VALLEY RECREATION AREA
BY COORDINATING AND CONNECTING THE DOZEN PARKS AND HISTORIC SITES
ALONG THE HARLEM RIVER TO CREATE A PARK AREA
BIGGER AND MORE VARIED THAN CENTRAL PARK.
BUILD”
THE CENTRAL PARK TOLL TUNNEL
FROM 125TH STREET TO MIDTOWN UNDER CENTRAL PARK
TO RID THE PARK OF CARS AND SPEED BUS TRAFFIC.
THE CPTT WOULD PAY FOR ITSELF.
CREATE
THREE-R ISLAND
13 MILES OFFSHORE IN THE NEW YORK BIGHT.
3-R ISLAND WOULD RECYCLE NYC’S SOLID WASTE. AND CONVERT IT TO ELECTRICITY.
3-R ISLAND WOULD HANDLE INDUSTRIES NO ONE WANTS IN THEIR BACK YARD
DEDICATE
THE GREAT SAUNTER FOOT PATH
A 32-MILE WALKING TRAIL, FREE FROM BIKES CREATED BY THE SHOREWALKERS
ALONG THE ROUTE OF THE GREAT SAUNTER- .
THE GSFP GOES THROUGH OVER 20 WATERFRONT PARKS AND PROMENADES
STRAIGHTEN OUT THE M-96 BUS ROUTE
BY CHANGING THE FOUR RIGHT- ANGLE TURNS AT BROADWAY AND 96TH STREET INTO ONE U TURN
ON THE UNUSED TRAFFIC ISLAND AT THE WEST END OF 96TH STREET.
SAVE TIME AND MONEY AND REDUCE POLLUTIONN.
FESTOON MANHATTAN’S RIM.
HANG HIGH A SILVER CORD AROUND THE 32 MILES OF MANHATTAN’S WATERFRONT.
ON THE CORD DISPLAY FLAGS AND BANNERS FROM ALL 50 STATES,
AND FROM ALL THE NATIONS OF THE WORLD.
DEDICATE AND MAINTAIN
THE ROBERT MOSES FOOT PATH
A TWO MILE DESIRE PATH CREATED BY WALKERS AND JOGGERS
IN RIVERSIDE PARK RUNNING FROM ~80TH TO 129TH STREET.
THE ROBERT MOSES FOOT PATH RUNS MAINLY ON TOP OF THE CONCRETE-STEEL PLATFORM
BUILT BY MOSES IN THE 1930′S.
DESIGN ALL CITY BOLLARDS
SO THAT WALKERS CAN RELAX AND SIT ON THEM.
PUBLIC-SCHOOL PARENT-SERVICE. PS-PS
PARENTS ARE THE PRIME TEACHERS OF CHILDREN.
PARENTS OF PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHERS WILL BE ASKED
TO SPEND TWO WEEKS PER TERM AT THEIR CHILD’S SCHOOL
TO HELP THE SCHOOL FUNCTION AND TO LEARN HOW TO HELP THEIR CHILD.
THE PARENTS WOULD BE PAID TO HELP THE SCHOOL
AS JURORS ARE NOW PAID TO HELP THE LEGAL SYSTEM.
DEDICATE
THE BATT TO BEAR TRAIL,
THE 56-MILE FOOT PATH FROM THE BATTERY IN MANHATTAN
TO BEAR MOUNTAIN.
HAVE THE GOVERNORS OF NY AND NJ MEET ON THE G.W. BRIDGE,
BUILD THE VOID
Deeply link human activities with the regeneration of living systems for a mutual coevolution towards greater health
Free busking everywhere.
free hotdogs.
Wood-seated light rail on city streets and accurate signs telling when the trains are coming (Switzerland).
make the city much greener.
Run a Gondola up the West side from Battery Park to the Seventies — right over tenth avenue? Run one across 34th Street. And maybe 42nd Street. And maybe right down Fifth Avenue.
Put some stations/stops on the street, and some in buildings. Go through some buildings. (They did it with trains – look at the high line.)
Its clean, its cheap, its fun, and it may even be really good looking.
Provide accessible, exceptional health care to all residents, especially vulnerable populations.
you clean your own shit, you get your own water. let the cities be creative, let us search, not as a hobby but as a necessity. expect less, do more.
Benches! Lots of them! In subway stations and on the sidewalks!
End noise pollution — on the streets and in the subways! Outlaw useless car alarms. Outlaw the pointless “beep” as people leave/approch their cars. End the idiotic “emergency” alarms that sound constantly in the subways as people with strollers and large loads leave. End the idiotic ding-ding-ding that sounds as subway employees try to close the doors while people are still boarding.
Appreciate what you have to consume less.
Close more streets to pedestrians only permanently.
Collect food waste for compost in neighborhoods (not just at farmer’s markets)
Make more outside subways.
Better landlord/tenant’s rights education.
Underground aquaculture — growing plants in abandoned spaces.
1st Floor commercial window boxes with vegetables and flowers.
Less messaging, of any type! I want urban spaces to offer more tranquility. Even non-commercial activity can be oppressive!
Create ONE website gathering information about all of the cities job training and employment programs in one place: help much needed by and for unemployed and new workers!!
An interactive social media site regarding housing, where those looking for housing, landlords and renters can interact, input information and users can get specific custom info on neighborhoods to find housing.
More comfortable, staffed public toilets with corporate sponsors — free to cab drivers with parking spaces.
Weave your plastic — go to facebook: ‘Dancing Weavings’
Make the Brooklyn Bridge Walkway pedestrian only — No bikes!
Way too many cars.
Connect the two ends of long train systems to form a loop, like Tokyo’s!
Plant green roofs on every flat roof and keep the city cool and biodiverse.
You can increase the deposit fee for plastic and canned beverages so that money can made in recycling! Or, just put out 1,000s of recycling bins on the streets.
Put entertainment on subway.
No more Central Park carts using fuel! Make them electric!
Make it easier to start a small business.
Make Landmark Status more flexible! (RIP 35 Cooper Sq)
Give out rain barrels.
Make all car horns as loud inside car as outside car.
Put a premium on plastic water bottles and have portable water fountains like the one here at the Festival of Ideas.
Reduce air conditioning in NYC subways.
Make street art legal, to encourage it, to love it and to respect it. Let the people have creative control over their visual space.
Eliminate plastic bags “we don’t need them except for the garbage can”
More bike paths in Manhattan!
Get more funding for online publication about urbanism in NYC.
Create edible landscaping.
Buses and garbage trucks with flywheel-battery power
enjoyable sidewalks/urban pockets that will make people want to experience a walkable city
SIDEWALKS=ARTWALKS
More public nudity
Utilize rooftops for greenspace.
Create spaces of virtue. Whether it be a park or an office, every space should be designed and created with the intention benefiting the masses.
Great!
Few, vital, logical laws.
Zoning and master planning + free market development.
Decentralized and localize the agriculture system. Agriculture ecosystems utilizing innovative methods and systems, i.e.; green house aquaponics, roof top farms, park farms.
Purpose green space for recreation and for ecological cleansing, flood management and water table replenishing.
Break up major cities into many small dense nearly autonomous communities, to reduce need for transportation and infrastructure, and to provide close knit and diverse communities that are self reliant within the self sustainable city. Eliminate suburbia as we know it, and replace it with dense autonomous communities of garden homes and high density apartment housing within rural communities.
Assist with the refocusing and creation of niche businesses such as major retailers altering their supply chain to utilize locally farmed produce, create business in place of yard care – yard farmers.
Utilize waste and waste disposal energy, human waste-syngas, plastics eating microorganisms-bio fuels, geothermal, etc.
Utilize both ancient wisdom and cutting edge design coupled with state of the art tech to design and construct buildings that require little to no energy.
Cluster blocks together to eliminate space used by infrastructure.
Revitalize education with a developmental approach, designed with the best aspects from all methods. Provide work incentives such as “trade” education programs, so that youth may see the benefits of education at an early age and may become economic contributors at an earlier age, boosting our economy, increasing number of high school and college graduates, reducing the welfare system which will in turn alleviate the tax payers burden and improve the quality of the communities.
talk to your neighbor in the subway ride
balance in quality, not in quantity
Encourage stronger partnerships between New York City’s public schools and community gardens. A high quality learning environment for students. A wider network of patronage for gardeners.
Design everything in the city to be as quiet as possible. Having quiet at night to sleep is important for human health.
NEED MORE TREES