Street Cleaning Vol 3: Auld Lang Syne
An end-of-year newsletter of bits and pieces.
First, I’m congratulating myself
Street Stack recently turned one. 49 posts, and ~1,000 subscribers later and this is one of the best decisions I’ve made. If I learned something from 8 years in corporate America and a couple years in planning it’s that rarely will someone pay you to use your brain the way you really want to use it. Going back to grad school as a 28-year-old reminded me of the pure pleasure of learning and trying to produce an idea. I rediscovered that the space between my ears still works, and Street Stack turned out to be a great way to extend that feeling once the formality of writing papers and doing research for school was over.
Big thanks to all of you for reading, sharing, and engaging. A special thanks to the 30 or so of you who actually PAY me for the writing I provide even though you don’t have to. I use your $5 a month to supplement my meager salary as a bureaucrat and pay down my crushing student debt (I actually use it for coffee and slices of pizza). Also a special thanks to my Substack big sisters
and who gave this substack an early boost and are why I’m probably the only urban planning newsletter that has a 18% audience overlap with The Cereal Aisle.These are the 6 favorite things I wrote after one year of Street Stack
A lot of you are newish, so you might have missed these.
I love narrow streets, and science says there’s a reason for that.
There is definitely a morbid streak to this newsletter… and I think this discussion of London’s COVID memorial is the best of it. It’s also the only time I sort of proposed my own plan for something - which I’d like to do more of.
This piece on congestion pricing (which is maybe coming back!) is the longest thing I wrote, and the closest I got to the mix of themes I’m trying to provide with Street Stack - part policy explainer, part story, part me getting something off my chest.
The only time I sat down and wrote something in an hour. It has the least to do with actual urban planning, but for a long time was my most viewed post (I hope those two things aren’t related… they probably are).
The most actual research I’ve ever done for a post and the only time I devoted an entire post to transportation, which is kind of funny for someone who works for the Dept of Transportation.
I’d love to apply a planning lens to more pop culture and current events, and this attempt was pretty popular.
What’s coming up
The NYC mayoral race is going to heat up soon - I will have thoughts.
I’ve been promising for some time to talk about a project I worked on in London and I swear to God one day soon I actually will.
I need your help for a post: Please send me your favorite specialty retail districts in the world. Is there a street somewhere that just sells pianos? A neighborhood of flower shops? Let me know, bonus points if they’re weird.
Enough about me, here are 3 things I read recently that tickled my interest.
Stores in the City: For the nerds, the Center for an Urban Future put out an excellent report on the state of retail chains in NYC. The incredible thing is that an awful period for chain stores has actually been a pretty good time for retail overall. Will our cities finally be freed from the Duane Reade, Chase Bank, T-Mobile, hegemony? If reports aren’t your thing you can get the gist from Gothamist.
It is really hard to create a new public service, but it can be done and we should remember that: New York Magazine has a really interesting history of the implementation of universal Pre-K in NYC under Mayor Bill de Blasio. This was easily the last “big thing” NYC did of any consequence to improve the lives of people in one fell swoop. One thing that jumped out — Pre-K never ranked at the top of people’s concerns in polling, it was simply something the administration knew would be good to do and they did it — and it turned out to be hugely popular with voters. That should be a reminder to our current crop of politicians.
Weird regional sports! Data! Storytelling, this has it all. I was really into this project from CUNY Hunter student Isabel Ozkan Jordan about handball courts in NYC. I love the photography and the blend of spatial analysis and qualitative research. I took these courts for granted growing up and it wasn’t until I traveled that I realized they’re not everywhere.
Happy New Year. Pick up a piece of trash from the park near you. Hug your neighbor.
Congratulations on this fantastic blog. I say this as a born-and-raised New York City person who has lived variously in Brunswick, Maine; Portland, Oregon; Cambridge, Massachusetts; Princeton, New Jersey; Santa Cruz, California; and Swarthmore, Pa., and lucky enough to travel to many cities in the US and Europe (and a few in Australia). Your observations and reflections are without fail illuminating and edifying. Looking forward to more!
HI Matt, a belated comment on your New Year's post. Bravo and congratulations on your 1st Anniversary. Love what you said about learning! as a near 70 year old, I heartily endorse life-long learning. I feel now more than ever, there is so much to learn and explore. Your posts are keeping the space between my ears active, engaged. You are teaching me how. to observe the world both near and far in new ways. Your observations are funny, illuminating and are teachng me how to observe spaces and structures, paths and roads, and how theyl influence how we are in community with others. Thank you!