At the sixth annual Fit City conference, held at the Center for Architecture yesterday, David Burney, the commissioner of the NYC Department of Design and Construction, declared it is time to bring back the staircase! Pretty sure we hike up plenty of stairs each day emerging from the subway, but more specifically, Burney said:
"Bringing back the staircase is probably one of the biggest design opportunities since the invention of the elevator, because the elevator effectively killed the staircase. It became this horrible dingy place, in the back of the building. So we’d like to bring that back. It becomes a programmed space, it becomes a social space."
According to Capital, there were plenty of big name city commissioners at the day-long event, which had them talking about getting physical through design. The overall hope is that equal importance will be put into a building's staircase design as it is the elevator design, which would promote stair use, which in turn would make us a more fit city.
Other hot topics included bike lanes, pedestrian plazas, bike sharing, pop-up cafes, more benches, swimming lessons, and night lighting for NYC's new favorite sport: cricket. Benepe pointed out that "in New York we have a mayor and City Council that thinks that parks are important, that they’re not just something to do at the end of the day when you have a little bit of money left over... [it's] unparalleled in the modern history of the city. You’d have to go back to the WPA days to have that kind of expenditure on parks.” But let's get back to those stairs, after all, if you climb enough (or add snow0 you can burn calories to put towards that Shake Shack 'shroom burger.
