New York Gets Decent Street Furniture
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 05.30.07
Apartment Therapy notes that new bus stops and news stands are popping up all over New York. Cemusa, a Spanish outdoor firm, is installing the first of 3500 bus shelters, 330 news stands, and 20 public toilets in a billion dollar contract that is the culmination of a process that started in 2002. They are designed by Nicholas Grimshaw Architects, made from "95% recyclable materials" and are not yet scratchittied into eyesores like Toronto's,.
Well designed amenities like bus stops and news stands make the public spaces more comfortable (certainly a clean public washroom does) and public services like transit easier to use. Too bad the price is always more advertising in the public realm.
Grimshaw even makes a public toilet look good. They are the jazzy new kind that are self cleaning:
"These state-of-the-art facilities offer comfort, hygiene, accessibility, and security to the public, within a modern design. Designed to self-sanitize after each use, the APTs will also be serviced twice a day for inspection and system maintenance, affording the people of New York a safe and valuable convenience." ::Apartment Therapy
Read how Toronto screwed it up on ::Spacing Wire
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a small solar panel on the bus stop roof could provide nighttime lighting...then again, what part of NYC is dark at night?
Weird, that last pic is Queens County courthouse Grand Jury wing... Spent a month there last August locking my bike up to that bus' sign pole.
It looks like steel to me. Apples new store looks sexier than this ;)
Ah! New York City - Urban Capital of the World - second only to Montreal!
:)
Oh how incredibly sterile and boring. Stainless steel and glass. Yawn. Says nothing about NYC at all and looks quite cheap.
beah...steel and glass like business class...i'll get widgets from http://www.widgipedia.com
well, it does liven up the place. Great work, and keep up the good work!