On October 3, New York City did something very similar to what Toronto did on King Street. It restricted through traffic on 14th Street to only trucks and buses, and turned the street into the city's first "busway."

Under the new rules, cars, vans, and taxis are restricted every day of the week from 6am to 10pm, unless they're dropping off or picking someone up, or entering into a parking garage (i.e. local traffic only). But after this, they need to make the first available right and turn off the street. Again, it's pretty similar to the way things work here on King.

On the first day of the 18-month pilot program, the buses actually had to slow down in order to keep to their schedule. They were moving too quickly. Previously one of the slowest routes in the city, the M14 bus is now expected to increase its average speed by about 25%.

Not surprisingly, a number of people were concerned that this new busway would hurt businesses along the route. This same concern has been an issue in Toronto. But this is New York. We're talking about the US city with the highest percentage of households without a vehicle.

The reality is that we need to get better at moving people around our cities without a car. This is one way to do it and we know it works. My prediction is that the 14th Street pilot will prove to be a success. It will then get replicated in other parts of Manhattan. Probably on other crosstown streets.

From 1899 to 1902, the north side of 42nd Street, between 7th Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan, was occupied by the Pabst Hotel. At the time, this neighborhood was called Longacre Square.

Owned by the Pabst Brewing Company of Milwaukee, the building was part of a growing network of hotels and restaurants that the company used to promote its beer. Note the cool rooftop sign.

The portico you see in the above picture was highly controversial. I guess some things never change. City officials were criticized for allowing such a structure to encroach over a public right-of-way. Curiously, the Times was one of its biggest critics. A judge ultimately ordered for it to be removed in 1901.

The building also came down not long after. The introduction of New York City's first subway -- operated by the private Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Company -- began to spur new investment in the area. The first IRT line ran right through Longacre Square.

Adolph S. Ochs was the owner of the The New York Times during this period and he believed that the new subway line would increase foot traffic in the area. Betting on transit is clearly not a new phenomenon. So in January 1905, the newspaper moved into a new headquarters on the site of the former Pabst Hotel; a building that it developed for itself.

Today this building is known as One Times Square. Here is a photo of it under construction in 1903:

And here is a photo of the completed building in 1919 (at this point, it was no longer occupied by the paper):

At the time of its completion, it was one of the tallest buildings in New York City. And eventually, perhaps as a result of some encouragement on the part of Ochs, Longacre Square was renamed to commemorate this new building and the paper. It became known as Times Square.

By 1913, the Times had outgrown the building and would move down the street. But not before it would introduce a now famous New Year's Eve celebration in the Square. The Times would continue to own the building up until 1961.

The area continued to evolve into an important theater district and transit hub. Everything connected through Times Square. Sadly, the Great Depression was not kind to the area and, either because of it or alongside it, Times Square declined into an area of vice filled with everything from burlesque shows to prostitution. This would come to define the area for almost the balance of the 20th century.

It would take many attempts starting in the 1980s to try and redirect Times Square's now entrenched reputation. In 1982, the Department of City Planning created the Special Midtown Zoning District, which attempted to attract developers with tax breaks and other subsidies. It didn't really work.

The City eventually looked to eminent domain to try and tidy up the area. But property owners -- many of whom owned the adult businesses in the district -- objected via a group known as the Coalition for Free Expression.

It would take a few other mayors, many legal battles, and interim ordinances such as the 60/40 rule -- which allowed adult businesses to continue operating as long as no more than 40% of their floor area were allocated to sex -- before things would really change.

Today, or at least as of 2015-2016, Times Square represents 15% of New York City's total economic output. And it does this via 0.1% of the city's total land area and 7% of its total employment.

Real estate in the district is estimated to be worth over $7 billion, with the Square generating about $2.5 billion in municipal tax revenue and about $2.3 billion in state revenue. A lot has changed in more than a century. But perhaps most importantly, the portico came down.

For more on Times Square, check out the Times Square Alliance.

Archive Photos: Wikipedia

This recent study used geotagged tweets to measure social connectedness within American cities. There are two measures: (1) concentrated mobility and (2) equitable mobility. The first measures the extent to which social connections (geotagged tweets) are concentrated in a set of places within the city. And the second looks at the degree in which people move between neighborhoods in roughly similar proportions. These measures are the y-axis and the x-axis, respectively, in this graph:

So how do you read this chart?

Well if you look at New York, you'll see that it is relatively high in concentrated mobility, but the lowest in terms of equitable mobility. This means that social connections are highly concentrated and that there's low connectedness to other neighborhoods within the city. Miami, on the other hand, is the opposite. It's also an outlier. Few hubs. But its social connections appear to cross neighborhoods and spread across the city.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that the size of a city seems to have the biggest impact on social connectedness. Which makes sense -- it becomes harder to get around and so people start to localize. I am reminded of this whenever my friends in Los Angeles tell me they never go to the beach because it's simply too difficult and too time consuming to get across the city.

This also became clear to me after I started playing around with the Moves App back in 2015. The app no longer exists, but it was an activity tracker that allowed you to map where you, well, moved. And the more time you spent in one place, the more concentrated the activity would become. They depicted this through larger and larger circles. Example maps, here. My maps revealed that I need to branch out into different neighborhoods more often.

To download a full copy of the study, click here.

Chart: CityLab