Streets as temporary public spaces

Streets as we know them are not fully public spaces. High priority is given to cars and little to any other potential users, generally in the interest of maximum speed. New York City has taken a page from other cities by giving temporary priority to nonmotorized street use with its first successful Summer Streets event on Saturday.

We posted a poll on the idea of doing a similar event in Savannah a while back, and the highest vote getter (45% of our voters) was right down the middle of the Landmark Historic District — Bull Street north of Forsyth Park. That makes good sense since it is a route already travelled by tourists on foot, in trolleys and horse and buggy, other pedestrians and bicyclists, and very little local car traffic, which tend to use streets without squares to head north and south (Price, Drayton, Whitaker, Montgomery).

We ask again, therefore, why not Savannah?