The New York City Department of Transportation wants to hire as a consultant Jan Gehl, who has helped cities like London and Copenhagen create less congested urban areas by taking back the streets from cars - and giving top priority to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Jan Gehl is a world-renowned Danish architect who wants to ban most cars from Times Square - and raise the price of street parking.

Times Square is "beyond the brink" with too many cars and pedestrians cramming into an inadequate amount of space, Gehl says.

The Storefront for Art and Architecture is experimenting with a bicycle share program to demonstrate to New Yorkers that bicycling is a viable, and enjoyable, transportation alternative.

Several European cities have successful bicycle sharing programs - Paris will shortly be making 10,000 bikes available from 750 stations across the city.

“We should learn to build villages in the way they were built in the past,” says Hans Monderman, the Dutch engineer seen as the father of Shared Space. He is not advocating unpaved roads, horse-drawn transport and reinstating stocks – he just wants neighbourhoods that work for everyone, satisfying residents as well as moving traffic along. Cars, he argues, have been allowed to dominate residential areas, particularly in suburbs, for far too long, and quality of life has declined has a result.

The Silicon Valley cities of Mountain View and Sunnyvale are alike in many ways. But their downtowns offer a study in contrasts because of land use decisions made 30 years ago.