Example1

"It is my very firm point of view that if we take a more systematic approach and take these "cities for people" more seriously we will find that the cities would be considerably more friendly, livable, and lively because people will be in these cities more. We will find that the cities will become more attractive because the scale will be smaller and the pace and noise is lowered. The cities would be dominated by other people, which is the most interesting thing in our lives."

_Jan Gehl

_Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village _aerial and street view

Greenwich village is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is a historic district that embodies the spirit and character of Old New York, as one can see there the major architectural styles of the early City displayed, side by side, ranging from the most naive to the most sophisticated versions.

Jane Jacobs

Greenwich Village  has preserved the quality of urban spaces thanks to Jane Jacobs. She was an urban theorist and and writer who used to live there and when, in the early '60s, there was a plan to put some major highways through Greenwich Village she argued that the car-centred approach to urban planning that Robert Moses was promoting would destroy the culture of New York city. She was a firm believer that citizens should have an active role in the development of their neighborhood, since according to her "cities as integrated systems that had their own logic and dynamism which would change over time according to how they were used".

_Times Square

Times square _The change

On 2009 urban planners noticed that Times Square was actually not a square, since 89% of it was actually roadway. So,on February 26, 2009, it was announced that traffic lanes along Broadway from 42nd Street to 47th Street would be de-mapped and transformed into pedestrian plazas for a trial period. When the pilot project first started it revealed a huge latent demand that people did not even realize existed until that time. So, the Times Square became the center of human activity once more, from snowball fights to flash mobs, the square was finally used again by people and set the example for other cities.