On Sunday, March 22, some 40 members of the community spent the morning at Congregation Beth Elohim to take part in the Civic Council’s community workshop on livable streets. This livable streets workshop, the first since 2009, focused on four areas relating to the streets in our community. Judy Willig, Executive Director of Heights and Hills and Joan Peters, Executive Director of the Brooklyn Center for Independence of the Disabled, led the discussion on Aging in Place and Independence of the Disabled. Abby Subak, Director of Arts Gowanus, led the Public Art discussion. Adam White, longtime Park Slope safe streets activist and principal in the Law Office of Vaccaro & White, led the discussion on Streets/Sidewalks/Curbsides/Streetscape.
The workshop was not a “blue sky” visioning session or a gripe session. Out of it came many concrete proposals and the Civic Council will work with the workshop participants to move at lease some of these forward. The complete report of this workshop and the 2009 workshop are attached.
The purpose of this workshop was to stake out a new direction for the Livable Streets Committee and the Civic Council’s role in fostering livable streets in the community. The sense of the Civic Council is that the workshop was a great success in that respect. Another purpose was to discern future leadership for the Livable Streets Committee. We encourage anyone who attended the workshop and others to step up and help move Civic Council’s livable streets initiatives in great new directions.