Sidewalk sheds are ubiquitous to the New York City streetscape. Mayor Eric Adams’s initiative Get Sheds Down, announced last summer, looks to replace the metal pipe and wood structures plaguing the sidewalks with updated designs that are cost-effective and less unsightly.

After a Request for Proposal was issued that garnered over a dozen applications to redesign the scaffolding, the city has named Arup and Practice for Architecture & Urbanism (PAU) as the firms responsible for iterating new equipment for the over 12,000 miles of sidewalk in New York City.

The firms were chosen by a panel of senior Department of Buildings (DOB) staff members for having “the most comprehensive plans to effectively deliver these new sidewalk shed designs for New Yorkers.”

In an announcement, the city said four options for new “sidewalk-level sheds” and two designs for “safety equipment,” such as netting, will be publicly released for any builder or contractor in the city to use. The new designs, which have yet to be released, will be incorporated into the building code and available for public use. The city hopes to have the new versions lining city streets by early 2025.

Replacing ugly scaffolding with a better version is a bandaid fix for a larger issue: addressing building repairs in a timely manner. As previously reported by AN the sheds are regulated through the DOB’s Facade Inspection Safety Program (FISP) which mandates any building six stories or higher to file a compliance report every five years to determine the building’s safety. Following a failed inspection buildings don the scaffolding until repair work can be completed. When the Adams administration announced the program in July, the average sidewalk shed stood for 500 days and nearly 4,000 city sidewalks were shrouded in scaffolding. Last December, one green plywood construction spanning a sidewalk in Harlem for over 21 years finally came down, and many others have since been dismantled.

“I’ve made it a priority to make facade work faster, ensure sheds aren’t left languishing on our sidewalks, and make the ones we do need are less impactful on local neighborhoods and our streetscapes. The designs the selected companies produce will start a process to reimagine what sheds look like,” said Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine in a press release.

The Adams’s administration has also said it is working with the New York City Council on legislation aimed at reducing the length of time that scaffolding spends on city sidewalks. It could pin hefty fines on building owners who leave them up for extended periods.