Is New York’s scaffolding getting a glow-up? Expectations are low – but rising

In Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the fictional city of Thekla exists in perpetual construction, with “cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams”. When asked why the building takes so long, the inhabitants reply, “So that its destruction cannot begin.” New Yorkers will recognise this logic. Here, shopfronts come and go but temporary scaffolding is forever.

That’s why the city’s Department of Buildings (DOB) recently unveiled six new designs that seek to reimagine the eyesore – technically known as sidewalk sheds – so that they take up less space, let in more light and to do away with the structural crossbars that have a tendency to take out distracted pedestrians. 

The current hunter-green Board of Safety and Appeals (BSA) sheds have been darkening New York streets since the 1970s. There are roughly 8,400 installed around the city, rivalling bodegas for urban ubiquity. Combined, the sheds would stretch nearly 400 miles – almost double the route length of the New York Subway and nearly as long as a CVS receipt. 

These structures protect pedestrians from falling debris but they also reduce New Yorkers’ quality of life. “For too long, outdated and cumbersome sidewalk sheds have blocked sunlight, hurt small businesses and cluttered our neighbourhoods,” said New York’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams, in a recent statement. 

Designs on the future

“One of the great things about walking in New York is looking up…” says Vishaan Chakrabarti, the founder and creative director of Pau (Practice for Architecture and Urbanism), one of the two studios, along with Arup, whose new pavement-shed designs seek to reduce the city’s clutter of steel and plywood. Pau’s “Baseline Shed” uses a pitched roof to let in sunshine. Alongside a raingutter and the potential for a platform to be added above for workers, not to mention the elimination of crossbracing, it’s the kind of bright idea that the city needs. “These sheds will feel more like a canopy than a cage,” says Chakrabarti. “It will be a game-changer for everyday New Yorkers … [it] should heighten the experience of the city.”

Arup’s designs, including the “Flex Shed” and the “Air Shed”, continue with the existing horizontal idea for the sake of flexibility, with adjustable heights and widths to accommodate the city’s variable streetscape of trees, stoops, garbage bins and newsstands. 

This is not the first time that the DOB has tried to replace the BSA sheds. In 2009, it held a global Urbanshed design contest that was won by Urban Umbrella – you might have seen its elegant white arches in front of luxury shops and hotels. There are currently 105 Urban Umbrellas around New York. Given that the cost is at least double that of a standard shed (which are often more affordable than actually making repairs), the design is beautifying the city at a snail’s pace. Kenneth J Buettner, the president of York Scaffold Equipment Corporation in Queens, tells Monocle that the fault of the Urbanshed contest was that the winning design could only be used by its owner. What is promising about this new raft of designs is that “they are owned by the city and will be put into the public domain”, meaning that if the designs pass the rigorous scrutiny that still lies ahead, they will be able to be installed by any contractor. 

But Buettner warns that the new designs face structural and economic challenges. “Whether the concepts can prove flexible enough to truly accommodate the variety of New York’s streetscapes is one question but whether they can achieve this at a price point that rivals the existing BSA structures is quite another,” he says. 

Policy and process

Design alone is not a silver bullet. Policy changes will be equally crucial. After all, more than a third of pavement sheds are in place because of Local Law 11, which states that buildings more than six storeys high must survey their façades every five years. Along with the new designs, City Hall has also announced the recommendations from the Façade Inspection & Safety Program, an engineering study into ways the current requirements could be revamped to reduce the number of sheds.

One recommendation that is set to go into effect in 2026 is the raising of the inspection period from five to six years – a move that Buettner says “should cut a fifth of the city’s sidewalk sheds straight away”. 

But there are other ways to speed up the process. For instance, many scaffolds are in place for inspection purposes – but surely these superficial surveys could be conducted from the ground with binoculars or, better yet, by drones.

Shedding sheds for quality of life

The task of reducing shed numbers is formidable but it’s also popular. New Yorkers have suffered long enough. The annual Sheddie award, given to the longest-standing shed, went this year to a structure that has been up for 25 years; in 2023, a shed in Harlem was finally removed after 21 years – long enough for a child to be born, grow up and move to Los Angeles. 

In a city of such vaunted atmosphere, no New Yorker should have to endure such gloom. Ironically, the wonderfully sharp, blue-hued and hyperreal quality of the city’s sunlight is probably because of the refractive, jewel-like effect of its façades. But New York’s skyward obsession needn’t shroud its streets in darkness, at least, not permanently. Necessary as these sheds are, improvements and policy and design can make a big difference. 

But the consequences go beyond quality of life; they also shape the city’s global image. In 2023, when Donald Trump arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court to surrender to authorities, crowds and photographers struggled for a clear shot of this American first because the scene was obscured by a forest of sidewalk sheds. New York deserves to be dramatic – let’s not obscure its moments in the sun. 

Thankfully, things look to be going in the right direction. In the near future, locals and visitors walking down New York’s avenues might begin to notice something different: pavements that feel wider, a blue sky and a city that – while still under permanent construction – seems just a little less cluttered and claustrophobic.