In Janette Sadik-Khan’s Ted Talk “New York’s Streets? Not so Mean Any More,” Janette talks about missioner and how she reshaped the streets of the five boroughs through the transformation of pedestrian space, bike lanes, and bus lanes.  She first describes how she helped to create more space for pedestrians to walk or sit starting with Times Square which is one of the most iconic and most visited places in the United States with an average of 350,000.  She is very hands on and believes in the idea rapid testing with temporary materials and if the desired amount of data or results is not an improvement then the temporary space can be put back the way it was.  In her first six years as transportation commissioner (from 2007- 2013) she created 50 pedestrian zones throughout the city.  She also helped to implement over 350 miles of bikes lanes, most protected by parked cars.  In addition she helped to establish Citi Bike a bike-sharing program which made New York one of the bike capitals of the world.  In addition to working with bikes and pedestrians she also wanted to improve the way the buses moved around NYC.  She helped to create bus only lanes which maximized the movement of buses throughout the city.

To present her evidence Janette used a lot of pictures, one on almost every slide she showed and used the least amount of words she could.  No where in her presentation did she use complete sentences because it is said that if there is more than 6 words on a slide the audience gets distracted and does not maintain the information.  Janette used before and after pictures to show her progress and express to the audience that what she was making real change throughout NYC.

Throughout her Ted Talk Janette keeps saying that anywhere and in any city streets can be improved just by reimagining the space.  To finish her talk Janette states, “you just need to reimagine your streets they are hidden in plain sight.”  She is showing the audience that the change of city streets to improve mobility and create a safe atmosphere is not expensive and does not require a lot of planning.  She gives an example where she turned a street into a pedestrian zone in one weekend with some paint, planters, and the addition chairs.  Reimagining the streets is not the hard part and she thinks any urban city in America can follow the example of NYC and become a safer more bike and pedestrian friendly environment.

I have been to the library only a few times and have never used the online data base.  When I searched “electric bikes” a lot of different and interesting articles came up.  Most of the articles that came up had to to with the use of electric bikes in other countries including China and Australia.  This made me think that I might want to change my focus area on electric bikes from stylish motorcycle looking bikes to the use of electric bikes by older people or how electric bikes impact the enviorment.  Overall I think that the use of the library data base will not only be helpful for research in this class but also in my other classes.