The birth of Streetfilms requires a trip back to 2001 when Executive Director Mark Gorton first founded The Open Planning Project (TOPP) in an effort to create transparency in government information and planning. TOPP started with a single employee and initially modest goals.

Mark hired Rob Hranac of Cambridge Systematics and the two incorporated their shared engineering and computer science backgrounds to design a sustainable, scalable traffic modeling system that would allow all citizens access to information previously held by transportation officials. Armed with new, accurate information, community groups and organizations would be able to approach the NYC Department of Transportation with sensible, citizen-informed plans to improve their streets and visualize their neighborhood public spaces.

As Mark became further involved with transportation advocacy, he realized that even though people all over New York City knew how dangerous it was to cross their streets, ride a bike in traffic, or find a quiet, open space to relax near their homes, it was hard to translate these conditions to elected leaders and city government.

For nearly ten years, filmmaker Clarence Eckerson Jr. had been an advocate and volunteer for Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) and was the producer of the cable-access show bikeTV. In October 2004, he premiered a twenty minute short "The Case For a Car-Free Central Park" to nearly 700 people at a rally on Central Park West. Realizing the amazing potential of video in demonstrating the possibilities that exist for positive change in the city, Mark and Jacqueline Arasi (now TOPP's Managing Director) hired Clarence to produce films showcasing communities' struggles to make their neighborhoods safer from traffic.

Mark also financed "Contested Streets," a film from Cicala Filmworks which chronicled the automobile's domination of the NYC landscape from the turn of the 20th Century to the present. In addition, it contrasted NYC current transportation policies with cities like London, France and Copenhagen, all of which have taken drastic steps to de-emphasize the car as the primary mode of travel.

In 2006, the New York City Streets Renaissance (NYCSR) was formed. A collective effort of non-profit advocacy organizations Transportation Alternatives, Project for Public Spaces, and The Open Planning Project, the primary goal of the NYCSR was to create a citywide enlightenment and encourage planning our streets for people and places, not cars and traffic. Other ideals included fostering an atmosphere of cooperation between the Department of Transportation and the communities they serve, and pushing for innovation, particularly the creation of more car-free, people-friendly pedestrian plazas.

Meanwhile, Clarence continued to produce films & short vignettes and it became apparent there needed to be a delivery system for the general public to alert them of their existence. In the spring of 2006, Aaron Naparstek, a Brooklyn community leader, transportation expert and author of Honku: The Zen Antidote to Road Rage, pitched Mark Gorton the idea of creating a blog chronicling transportation and urban environmental issues that weren't being regularly covered by any other New York City news source.

Mark had also been thinking about getting a blog up and running - so he invited Aaron to join the Open Planning Project and thus Streetsblog was born. The blog features articles from a wide range of contributors including neighborhood leaders, transportation experts, and everyday citizens.

When Aaron first published some of Clarence's videos on Streetsblog, he coined them "streetfilms". A simple name, but everyone liked it - thus Streetfilms became reality as a companion vlog site to Streetsblog.

Today, Streetfilms continues to evolve. Although still producing films within communities, Streetfilms is also tackling more complex issues like physically separated bike lanes, parking policy, and bus rapid transit. Many films have had an obvious effect on the public conscious and policies.

For example, since the publishing of our film on the weekly car-free event in Bogotá called Ciclovia, there have been many cities using it to advocate and win car-free closures. Our most popular film has been our examination of physically separated bike lanes, which advocates in NYC had been pushing for decades. Just nine months after its posting, NYC had its first experimental lane. And we have fun too: highlighting Bike Boxes, explaining traffic calming, and going on plenty of bike rides.

Back to more serious ground, Streetfilms has interviewed world transportation experts like Jan Gehl, Donald Shoup, "Gridlock Sam" Schwartz, and Enrique Penalosa, and also featured people like New York Times "Ethicist" Columnist Randy Cohen and David Byrne. Our DVDs have been requested by dozens of cities and organizations and we've been invited to show Streetfilms at copious film festivals, transportation symposiums, and in presentations from Boulder, Colorado to Tasmania.

All StreetFilms are created under the banner of a Creative Commons License 3.0 with the stipulation of "No Deriv-No $$$" meaning that advocacy organizations, ordinary citizens or anyone may use the films as they see fit, link to, duplicate and distribute. They may not, however, alter any of our productions or profit from sales without prior approval from Streetfilms.

Streetfilms continues to grow with the addition of filmmaker Elizabeth Press, who has brought in a unique vision of style. She has also created some amazing animated/claymations of traffic calming features which easily demonstrate how they work. Together, the crew gains more exposure and accolades daily. Encouraged by the positive responses generated by their video work, they are more committed than ever to make their productions a momentum building tool to galvanize communities in NYC and beyond!