A bold plan to redesign the streetscape of Downtown Brooklyn developed by the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, architecture and urban design firms WXY and Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) has been revealed.
The preliminary plan seeks to reinvent the whole pedestrian-unfriendly neighborhood:
- The first phase of the plan would link those pedestrian oases via shared streets where curbs would be eliminated to make room for landscaping and street furniture.
- The second phase would extend the shared streets through much of the neighborhood, expand sidewalks along Fulton and Livingston Streets and Boerum Place, and add improved pedestrian crossings along Flatbush Avenue.
- The plan calls for 950 new trees to add to the existing 1,500 in the neighborhood.
- Cyclists would get new protected lanes along Boerum Place, Schermerhorn Street, and Fulton Street. To make room for bike lanes and expanded sidewalks on the Fulton Mall—a corridor that sees higher peak-hour pedestrian traffic than Wall Street—eastbound buses would be diverted one block south to Livingston Street.
- Revamping of Columbus Park next to Borough Hall and University Place.
