Now that the Times Square pedestrian plazas are a permanent fixture, the Department of Transportation has selected a temporary installation for Broadway before the site gets a major makeover in 2012. Molly Dilworth, a Brooklyn-based artist known by many for her rooftop paintings, was chosen… 
Calling all architects, designers and artists! Now that the city has made the Times Square pedestrian plazas permanent, the Department of Transportation is launching a design competition to “refresh” the existing temporary treatments while the longer, separate process begins to design the permanent plazas and undergo a capital street reconstruction… 
Midtown loungers and lunchers rejoice! Despite rumors last week that the Broadway pedestrian plazas had not met expectations, this week city officials announced that the partial closure of seven city blocks to autos will be permanent. Traffic congestion goals were only met partially, with 7% overall… 
App-lovers take note: the NYC Economic Development Corporation has presented the winners of its NYC BigApps contest. The winners, who received cash prizes ranging from $500 to $5,000, include the grand prize-winning WayFinder NYC, an augmented reality application that helps users find… 
Approximately one million people trample through Times Square everyday – some incessantly pausing to snap pictures of all the chaos while others beeline without ever looking up. On November 11 at 2pm on the corner of 46th and Broadway, Tony Conrad, clad in a neon green T-shirt, used a power drill to open a wooden box half his size that featured a wooden lever, a doorbell, and a sound hole. 
While it’s exciting that Broadway’s redesign is busy shouting to New York City what was whispered to Kevin Costner’s character in Field of Dreams: “If you build it, they will come,” what’s more thrilling from a transportation perspective is that the redesign might also be convincing people of the inverse: If you take it away… 
New York City’s plan to close Times Square to vehicles looks like a triumph. The chaise-lounges [or chaises-longues, depending on whom you ask - Ed.] the city dropped at the Crossroads of the World on May 24th have stayed popular throughout the week, like day-glo brigadiers… 
