The bulky, green sidewalk scaffolding that wraps around many buildings in New York City is as familiar a sight as rush-hour traffic — and just as reviled.
The wood-and-steel structures guard against falling construction debris, but squeeze people into dark, cattle-herding chutes and make it hard to see stores. They often blight neighborhoods for years.
On Tuesday, city officials unveiled six designs that reimagine this scaffolding, known officially as “sidewalk sheds.” The new options take up less space, allow in more light and air, and eliminate the X-shaped bars that make pedestrians feel like they are in cages.
The “Baseline Shed” design has an angled roof that tilts upward to let in more light, while the “Speed Shed” has a lightweight aluminum frame with netting to catch debris, which can be assembled quickly and put on wheels to move around.
The “Flex Shed” can be adjusted to different heights and widths to go around trees, stoops and garbage bins. The “Air Shed” looks like a suspended shelf, supported on one side by a column that runs against the building.
As early as next year, the Buildings Department plans to make the new designs available and include them in the building code, which spells out requirements but does not mandate a specific design. There are no plans to phase out the green sheds.
“It is a drastic improvement that we’re offering New Yorkers, all the while keeping them safe,” said Jimmy Oddo, commissioner of the Buildings Department.
Carlo A. Scissura, president of the New York Building Congress, an industry group that includes building owners and contractors, said that he was excited to see more innovative designs, but whether they actually get used would depend on cost and logistics. “This is step one of a process,” he said.
The Buildings Department awarded a $3.5 million contract to two firms, Arup and Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), as part of a “Get Sheds Down” campaign by Mayor Eric Adams to improve public safety and quality of life. Each firm came up with three of the new designs.
Citywide, there are more than 8,400 sidewalk sheds — 1,000 fewer than when the campaign started in 2023.
“For too long, outdated and cumbersome sidewalk sheds have blocked sunlight, hurt small businesses, and cluttered our neighborhoods,” Mr. Adams said in a statement while traveling abroad.
More than one-third of the sidewalk sheds are up because of a city law that requires facade inspections for buildings over six stories at least once every five years. Sheds go up if unsafe conditions are found and remain until repairs are made.
About 40 percent of all sidewalk sheds are in place for more than a year.
“It impacts New Yorkers every day so significantly, and yet it’s kind of this detritus that we ignore, and we shouldn’t,” said Vishaan Chakrabarti, the founder of PAU.
Mr. Oddo said that while sidewalk sheds would not disappear altogether, the new designs would be less “obtrusive” and “ubiquitous.”
Sidewalk sheds have been used to protect pedestrians since at least the 1800s, with what were then called “sidewalk bridges” made entirely of timber.
Today’s green sheds can be traced to 1974, when a contractor won approval for the design from the Board of Standards and Appeals, which oversees land use matters. Soon, other contractors were copying the “B.S.A. shed.”
Earlier sheds were often painted in colors like red and yellow, but from 2013 until this year they had to be the same color: hunter green. Now they can also be white, metallic gray, and any color that matches the building.
This is not the first attempt to replace the B.S.A. shed. In 2009, the Buildings Department and other groups held a worldwide design contest called urbanSHED, which drew 164 entries from people in 28 countries. The winner was Urban Umbrella.
Urban Umbrella is now a business that installs slender white structures with umbrella-like arches. Currently, there are 105 up in the city. A typical Urban Umbrella shed costs between $75,000 to $100,000, compared with about $45,000 to $52,500 for a B.S.A. shed, according to the company’s estimates.
Buildings officials did not provide pricing information for the six new designs, which are still being tested. They are expected to cost more to build than the green sheds, but at least one of the designs could reuse parts like steel poles.
James Arnason, Urban Umbrella’s president, said that demand for premium scaffolding had steadily increased, especially at buildings with ground-floor businesses that depend on foot traffic. He added that he would consider including the city’s new designs in his company’s offerings to give building owners more choices.
Councilman Keith Powers, who represents a swath of East Midtown and the Upper East Side, has received hundreds of complaints about sidewalk sheds from local residents and businesses. “They become this unpleasant feature of your neighborhood,” he said. “The only time anyone’s happy to see scaffolding is on a rainy day.”
Mr. Powers added, “I am very encouraged by new designs that will provide more light and air to the neighborhood and end the era of the ugly green scaffolding.”
Winnie Hu is a Times reporter covering the people and neighborhoods of New York City.
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