Picture: Adam Gray/Bloomberg/Getty Images
An “Office of Curb Management” sounds like a parody of bureaucracy, a place that churns out copies of Type 27B/6 and slaps massive fines on homeowners who take extralegal actions to keep their driveways clear. But in a city where constituencies often butt heads around the edges of the streetscape, it’s a potentially great idea, and it has actually simply been created within the Department of Transport, effective “instantly,” by the Zohran Mamdani administration.
Powered automobiles, whether we like it or not, own the center of the roadway; delicate bodies own the sidewalk, or should; the curb is the in-between zone that requires more governance than it gets. As New York has actually noted in many stories, including this comprehensive one by Justin Davidson, it’s where so many of the city’s worlds meet: Pedestrians come across parking lanes, bikes slip between the two, trash accumulate, cabs pull over, sneckdowns appear in snow and disappear in slush, shipment teams established short-lived hubs, wheelchairs and hand trucks browse the cuts at the corners, and parking locations fill and remain filled until the meter runs out or street-sweeping day occurs. Not to point out the outdoor-dining season to come, nevertheless lowered it is from its peak. Thus the thinking of Mayor Mamdani and his consultants, who appear to be paying an inordinate quantity of attention to the stuff we and our fellow students of the streetscape have been blogging about for several years. The office’s specified required is “improving safety, lowering double parking and much better managing contending needs– from shipments and outdoor dining to bike parking and waste containerization.” The success of this administrative shuffle will of course depend on whether its authority is sustainable or gradually recedes, but, a minimum of for now, our Workplace of Curbed Management authorizes.
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