Take Back the Streets - NYTimes.com A FEW years ago, when my husband and I were planning our daughter's wedding, I worried - not that the groom would vanish, the bride would trip or guests would be deluged by downpour. I worried that the bridal party would march out of Calvary Church into Street Fair Hell. Several times a summer, parts of Park Avenue South, which the church faces, aretaken over by fairs, usually with no stronger commemorative pretext than the season itself. Vendors sell the same cellphone cases, T-shirts and sweatshop handbags that you can buy on any street corner. Odors waft from sausage vans, crepe stands and gyros smoking on grills. Music from radio D. J. booths, live performers and ice cream trucks creates a cacophony to match. Litter fills the streets. I'm not alone in my plaint: there's a growing protest against what a friend aptly termed "street pestivals." Planned correctly and scheduled sparingly, fairs and parades can boost neighborhood commerce and civic spirit. But this has gone too far. We want our streets back. New York has a long tradition of street events, rooted in the celebration of religious holidays and ethnic pride. As the city dug itself out of decades of decay and civic neglect, fairs and parades became a great way to get people onto the streets and into neglected neighborhoods. But the tool has lost its usefulness. Arguably, the whole city is a street fair these days; no one needs convincing to venture into SoHo. And yet last year there were more than 1,500 street fairs and parades in New York. Famous parades provide some of the city's famous local color; the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the St. Patrick's Day Parade and the Village Halloween Parade are beloved by many. Last year's gay pride march, which took place the day after same-sex marriage was approved in New York State, was inspiring. And some of the best parades are authentically local events, like the Chinese Lunar New Year Parade and the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. But there are scores of others that involve groups from outside the neighborhoods where they take place and require a hefty police presence and a cleanup by sanitation workers afterward. Boosters argue that such events draw dollars into neighborhoods, and in some cases that may be true. But it's also clear that many businesses would rather shutter than deal with the influx of crowds, and the anodyne hawkers of mass-produced goods who tramp from fair to fair absorb their share of the cash flow. Fairs and parades can be incredibly disruptive to anyone trying to get around the city. On an uptown bus recently, an announcement explained that there would be no bus service the next Saturday during the day because of a parade. What are the old and infirm who can't make it up and down subway steps supposed to do? Taxis were sure to be stuck in traffic for hours. It would be easier to accept most street fairs and parades if they were truly community events. Instead, many are corporate operations, organized by companies like Mardi Gras and Clearview Festival Productions. The city has taken some recent steps to ameliorate the inconvenience, cutting back on permits and limiting the hours of operation. But it's hard to see the government pruning them back enough to please local residents. A big part of the problem is that too many of these events are unnecessarily located in Manhattan, the city's already congested heart. Wouldn't it make more sense, then, to spread the events around the city? There are fabulous new libraries and cultural centers, designed by gifted architects, in every borough. People who attend street fairs and parades could discover them along with neighborhood restaurants and shops. Some parts of the city which have fewer residents could even be designated as regular festival sites, so that unsuspecting travelers wouldn't have their regular routes suddenly upended. In doing so, the city would replicate its successful remodeling of Broadway starting at Times Square, where handsome outdoor chairs and tables now supplant clogged lanes of traffic, honking horns and bus fumes. This lively environment is what city streets were built for in the first place - walking, playing, commerce and vehicles. It was only in the 20th century that cities started to be designed "to make cars happy," as the architect Andrés Duany has often said. There is a natural, permanent festival atmosphere all day, every day, and buses are not delayed, since they have been permanently rerouted. It's impossible to please everybody, and it's hard to find the right mix of events to keep the city hopping. But the well-designed clusters of festive, parklike spaces stretching along the city's most famous thoroughfare accomplish what street fairs were intended to do - without the noise, dislocation and mess. Jayne Merkel, an architectural historian and critic, is the author of "Eero Saarinen."