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UTRC presents Mayoral Transportation Forum

New York City May­oral can­di­dates from all major par­ties will answer ques­tions on a wide range of top­ics affect­ing the NYC rid­ing pub­lic, the busi­ness com­mu­nity and indus­try stakeholders.

The pur­pose of this forum is to give all can­di­dates for Mayor an oppor­tu­nity to address a wide range of issues that affect trans­porta­tion pol­icy, com­mu­nity sus­tain­abil­ity, safety and liv­abil­ity in New York City.
Mod­er­ated by Matthew W. Daus, for­mer TLC Commissioner
RSVP at:

www​.utrc2​.org/​e​v​e​n​t​s​/​M​a​y​o​r​a​l​F​o​rum

Youth as Untapped Capital


Screen Shot 2013-05-09 at 1.33.18 PM

“’Youth,’ accord­ing to Oscar Wilde, ‘is wasted on the young.’ While this old adage remains today, it is this panel’s con­tention that, with proper nur­ture, youth has the poten­tial to be a pow­er­ful force. Youth is, after all, a vast global neigh­bor­hood replete with its own gov­ern­ment, social net­works, and modes of learn­ing. Youth’s prob­lems emerge from the unstop­pable shadow of the world it enters. Youth as Untapped Cap­i­tal is the sub­ject of this panel, where men­tors and inno­va­tors dis­cuss the incred­i­ble capac­ity of today’s youth as inno­va­tors for change.” — from IDEAS CITY, a four day explo­ration of the future of cities, held in Lower Man­hat­tan from May 1 – 4, 2013, orga­nized by the New Museum.

CITY ATLAS was glad to par­tic­i­pate in the IDEAS CITY Street­Fest this year with our Share Your City tat­too project. We also took the oppor­tu­nity to attend sev­eral of the con­fer­ence pan­els held at Cooper Union’s Great Hall, which we will cover in these pages, begin­ning today with the IDEAS CITY panel on youth at a time of rapid transformation.

Den­nis Scholl of the Knight Foun­da­tion mod­er­ated the panel, which explored how orga­ni­za­tions can access the energy and capa­bil­i­ties of young peo­ple in cities every­where. Four pan­elists were invited to present their work: Naomi Hirabayashi of DoSome​thing​.org, visual artist Barry McGee, visual artist Car­los Motta, and Ellin O’Leary of Youth Radio.

DoSome​thing​.org is a plat­form that allows young peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in social activism with­out need­ing “money, a car, or an adult”.  There are pre-defined cam­paigns with action items that peo­ple can par­tic­i­pate in, or peo­ple can cre­ate their own. Naomi talked about the great suc­cess of their pro­grams in mobi­liz­ing youth to act on diverse issues, from home­less­ness to tex­ting while dri­ving. She showed how DoSome​thing​.org taps into the unique and advan­ta­geous posi­tion young peo­ple have over an adult author­ity fig­ure when edu­cat­ing other young people.

Painting by Barry McGee

Barry McGee

Barry McGee’s inter­ests are in “youth­ful activ­i­ties and things that are slightly agi­tat­ing”, mainly in the form of street art. He sees graf­fiti as a venue for self-expression in pub­lic spaces, con­trast­ing it with large print adver­tise­ments: “A tag isn’t sell­ing any­thing but yourself…[just] your beau­ti­ful name.” He also talked about how kids in San Fran­cisco are sub­vert­ing author­ity by tag­ging using the free anti-graffiti paint intended for paint­ing over graf­fiti. McGee showed us how youth are per­sis­tent in mak­ing their mark “in the land­scape of things”.

Installation by Carlos Motta

Car­los Motta

Car­los Motta’s pre­sen­ta­tion focused on his doc­u­men­ta­tion of queer youth activism, in par­tic­u­lar, activism that lies out­side of main­stream pol­i­tics. The national focus on gay rights mainly involves the insti­tu­tions of mar­riage, mil­i­tary, and the prison indus­trial com­plex. Motta is inter­ested in rad­i­cal activism that works out­side of this space. In his research, Motta has inter­viewed Quee­ro­c­racy, a group that has worked on AIDS fund­ing and crim­i­nal­iza­tion based on HIV sta­tus, and Felipe Baeza, an undoc­u­mented U.S. res­i­dent and queer activist, who focuses on the rights of undoc­u­mented res­i­dents, espe­cially their right to an edu­ca­tion.

Ellin O’Leary spoke about her orga­ni­za­tion, Youth Radio, which gives low-income youth the resources to pro­duce radio shows, videos, music, and other forms of dig­i­tal media. This allows young peo­ple to share their expe­ri­ences with a wider audi­ence, via a chan­nel they have com­plete con­trol over. She also talked about the inte­gra­tion of Youth Radio into the Oak­land com­mu­nity.  Young par­tic­i­pants at the orga­ni­za­tion helped trans­form the exte­rior of the build­ing into a memo­r­ial to Oscar Grant. They also helped start Art Mur­mur, a night street fes­ti­val cen­tered on the arts. Allow­ing the youth to start their own ini­tia­tives at the orga­ni­za­tion has helped the pro­gram to be accepted by the community.

Den­nis Scholl started off the panel dis­cus­sion by ask­ing how we can get youth ‘onto the board.’ At this state­ment, a man jumped up from the audi­ence and launched into a spo­ken word per­for­mance about the impor­tance of edu­ca­tion and the neg­a­tive impact that will be caused by bud­get cuts for many school sys­tems.  He also remarked on the fact that many impor­tant life lessons are miss­ing from the school cur­ricu­lum; for exam­ple, money and phys­i­cal appear­ance aren’t every­thing. The pan­elists looked on, sur­prised and inter­ested. At the con­clu­sion of the per­for­mance, Den­nis revealed that we had expe­ri­enced a “Ran­dom Act of Cul­ture num­ber 1,245”. The per­former was Jamarr Hall, a mem­ber of the Philly Youth Poetry Move­ment, and Den­nis had invited him to the panel.

Dur­ing the sub­se­quent Q&A, the speak­ers touched on the themes of empow­er­ing youth, self-organizing, and the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion. Speak­ers com­mented on the impor­tance of giv­ing youth choices and options as a way to empower them. Car­los men­tioned youth activists in South Korea, who were able to self-organize and find safe places to meet. The speak­ers also dis­cussed the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion and the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges that come with any change. Social media and SMS gives youth a way to self-organize and com­mu­ni­cate quickly but at the same time, there are some groups that are mar­gin­al­ized on these platforms.

Audience feedback

The audi­ence speaks back.

The first audi­ence mem­ber that spoke gave a cri­tique rather than a ques­tion. He chal­lenged the entire premise of the panel, remark­ing that youth did not want to be on “the board” with the pan­elists, and they were more inter­ested in mak­ing their own board. He told the panel that instead of try­ing to solve society’s prob­lems, “you need to focus on the obsta­cles you present…We’re wor­ried about you. We don’t trust you.” He also pointed out that there were very few young peo­ple at the panel.

The pan­elists did not reply.

More ques­tions fol­lowed from the audi­ence, from edu­ca­tors and adults who work with young, low-income peo­ple, about how to allow kids to be freer and unre­stricted and how to get low-income stu­dents inter­ested in par­tic­i­pat­ing in com­mu­nity service.

But none of the ensu­ing dis­cus­sion was as inter­est­ing as the chal­lenge from that first audi­ence mem­ber. The inter­ac­tion left me think­ing, what was the pur­pose of a panel about youth put on by adults for adults? Are peo­ple co-opting the tal­ents and enthu­si­asm of young peo­ple for their own pur­poses or empow­er­ing them? Teens today face a world under­go­ing rapid change, and young people’s opin­ions on crit­i­cal issues don’t yet match up with the scale of the issues them­selves. Every step that helps young peo­ple engage more fully can­not be val­ued highly enough, and maybe they should be mak­ing their own board.

 

Future of civilization envisioned at NY Times “Energy” talk

The New York Times “Energy for Tomor­row” con­fer­ence opened with a keynote speech by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stressed the need for cities to act now to build a more sus­tain­able future. To the audi­ence at the tick­eted event and over live stream, he described an urban future where, by 2050, 75 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will be liv­ing in cities. His­tor­i­cally, cities have encour­aged free­dom and the for­ma­tion of knowl­edge, and Bloomberg linked this to the progress on sus­tain­abil­ity that cities, as opposed to the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, are mak­ing. He touted his own per­sonal involve­ment with the Sierra Club’s cam­paign to retire one-third of the nation’s 500 coal fired power plants by 2020; so far 144 have been closed. Bloomberg chalked up some of this suc­cess to the expan­sion of nat­ural gas and said he is “in favor of frack­ing, but not in our water­shed… we all have to make decisions–there’s no free lunch.”

Mayor Bloomberg speaking at the Energy for Tomorrow conference (http://img.deusm.com/ubmfuturecities/2013/04/524869/125138_768947.jpg)

Mayor Bloomberg speak­ing at the Energy for Tomor­row con­fer­ence (http://​img​.deusm​.com/​u​b​m​f​u​t​u​r​e​c​i​t​i​e​s​/​2​0​1​3​/​0​4​/​5​2​4​8​6​9​/​1​2​5​1​3​8​_​7​6​8​9​4​7​.​jpg)

Mayor Bloomberg laid out his guide­lines for how New York City has moved its sus­tain­abil­ity goals for­ward and how other major cities can achieve their aims:

  1. Develop a plan with ambi­tious, achiev­able, mea­sur­able goals such as PlaNYC 2030. He espe­cially empha­sized the need for met­rics to cal­cu­late the impact of sus­tain­abil­ity. Sci­en­tists and pol­icy mak­ers can argue about the impact of cli­mate change but as long as your met­rics are sound no one can argue with your con­clu­sions, he stated.
  2. City gov­ern­ments need inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­ity, sup­port, and strength to push poli­cies through because they are not always pop­u­lar at first. In other words, it is impor­tant to use pri­vate sec­tor skills and resources to achieve your goals, too. Bloomberg offered an exam­ple of New York’s lat­est public-private part­ner­ship: the Food Waste Chal­lenge, where over 100 restau­rants will be divert­ing their food waste to com­post. “The pro­gram will help meet the City’s PlaNYC goals to divert 75 per­cent of all solid waste from land­fills by 2030 and reduce green­house gas emis­sions. Food waste com­prises one-third of the city’s more than 20,000 tons of daily refuse and restau­rants account for 70 per­cent of com­mer­cial food waste. Par­tic­i­pat­ing restau­rants have pledged to reduce 50 per­cent of the food waste they send to land­fills through com­post­ing and other waste pre­ven­tion strate­gies” accord­ing to the press release from the Mayor’s office. Bloomberg also described a new public-private part­ner­ship to expand the com­mu­nity gar­den net­work by allow­ing gar­den­ing orga­ni­za­tions to use nine acres of under-utilized city land.
  3. “Be a thief.” In other words, steal the best ideas from around the world, such as bike share, and use them to improve your own city.

In regards to Hur­ri­cane Sandy, the Mayor urged imme­di­ate action and said “cli­mate change may or may not have caused Hur­ri­cane Sandy” but there is no ques­tion it was inten­si­fied by warm­ing waters and higher seas. He stated the neces­sity of New York City re-engineering its energy infra­struc­ture, and expand­ing its green infra­struc­ture. More pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions related to Hur­ri­cane Sandy will be announced in the forth­com­ing Mayor’s Report, due at the end of May.

Mayor Bloomberg con­cluded his remarks by urg­ing cities to be at the fore­front of envi­ron­men­tal change, and cau­tion­ing city lead­ers not to walk away from an exten­sive envi­ron­men­tal agenda. Sus­tain­able envi­ron­men­tal choices are good for the econ­omy, he said, and that is how they should be sold to con­cerned con­stituents. He advised lead­ers to focus on the short-term, and not to worry about the world fifty years from now because we have plenty of rea­sons to act now to improve the world.

May­ors’ Panel: How do we Rein­vent our Cities for the Third Indus­trial Revolution?

The city of 2025 could be crisis-ridden if the world doesn’t cre­ate more sus­tain­able mod­els of urban devel­op­ment. Research says that our cities will con­tinue to expand and increase in pop­u­la­tion, while their pop­u­la­tions will bring ris­ing con­sump­tion and emis­sions. Along­side these huge chal­lenges, there are also oppor­tu­ni­ties for busi­nesses: elec­tric vehi­cles, new low-carbon means of cool­ing, and energy effi­cient build­ings. We ask a group of may­ors to out­line an urban plan­ning strat­egy for 2025.

Mod­er­a­tor Bill Keller opened the panel dis­cus­sion by ask­ing each mayor or for­mer mayor to give a gen­eral overview of sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives they had pur­sued in their cities.

Jaime Lerner, the for­mer mayor of Curitiba, Brazil, spoke about devel­op­ing their Bus Rapid Tran­sit (BRT) sys­tem, and called cars “the cig­a­rette of the future.” Stephanie Miner, the mayor of Syra­cuse, New York, described the need to inte­grate sus­tain­abil­ity into every deci­sion made by the city agen­cies and the impor­tance of keep­ing a “big pic­ture” view.

Enrique Peñalosa, the for­mer mayor of Bogota, Colom­bia, described Bogota’s BRT sys­tem, and their famous bicy­cle high­ways: a 60 kilo­me­ter long, 15 meter wide net­work that runs through­out the city exclu­sively for cyclists. Peñalosa empha­sized the equity com­po­nent of sus­tain­abil­ity when it comes to deci­sions about dis­trib­ut­ing road space between cars, bikes, pedes­tri­ans, and mass transit.

Finally, Greg Stan­ton, the mayor of Phoenix, Ari­zona, spoke about ini­tia­tives to address the large amount of vacant land in Phoenix; a whop­ping 43 per­cent of the land within the city is vacant. One of the largest vacant parcels is being turned into an urban gar­den with help from the Inter­na­tional Refugee Com­mit­tee. Stanton’s goals for this and other sus­tain­abil­ity projects are to be “pos­i­tive and replic­a­ble” and he empha­sized the need to “inte­grate sus­tain­able think­ing in our entire culture.”

How do you sus­tain pro­grams in the face of chang­ing pol­i­tics, eco­nom­ics, migra­tion, and other urban problems?

Lerner cau­tioned lead­ers to “not project tragedy” and to invest one’s energy in chang­ing the cur­rent par­a­digm. He advo­cated a sys­tem of mobil­ity that com­bines all modes of trans­port, using smaller cars, and using incen­tives to encour­age bus use.

Miner encour­aged start­ing with small bench­marks to prove that sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives can work, and then mov­ing on to a larger, com­pre­hen­sive plan because other peo­ple get too over­whelmed with the changes.

In con­trast, Peñalosa advo­cated for a more com­pre­hen­sive approach because “in the end peo­ple like it even if they don’t at first.” He again empha­sized equity con­cerns and the impor­tance of involv­ing all parts of the city in deci­sion mak­ing for each neigh­bor­hood. He believed that buses should have pri­or­ity road space and what­ever is left should be divided up for cars, pedes­tri­ans, and bicy­cles. He cited an exam­ple of one day a year when Bogota is a car-free city, and every­one still gets to work using pub­lic tran­sit. He called pub­lic tran­sit rid­ers “heroes.” Finally, he dis­cussed bike lanes and said they “need to be more than a cute archi­tec­tural fea­ture and should be a right like a sidewalk.”

Greg Stan­ton ques­tioned the “sus­tain­abil­ity of sus­tain­abil­ity” on the fed­eral stage, and men­tioned its impor­tance on the city level, espe­cially to young peo­ple. He said that young peo­ple want to move to cities where long-term sus­tain­abil­ity is part of the com­pre­hen­sive plan, and there­fore pur­su­ing sus­tain­abil­ity ini­tia­tives on the local level is good for the economy.

What are the major obsta­cles to imple­ment­ing sus­tain­abil­ity policies?

“Every­one in the city has to under­stand the idea or sce­nario that you are propos­ing” said Lerner. He equated small projects to “urban acupunc­ture,” which are small projects that pro­vide a jolt of energy for the whole process of plan­ning. He also said it is the city’s respon­si­bil­ity to be more effec­tive since that is where most of the world’s pop­u­la­tion resides. He cited three basic things that every­one can do: use less cars, sep­a­rate our garbage, and live closer to work or bring work closer to us.

Miner said that the biggest obsta­cle is that all pol­icy deci­sions are made in a bureau­cracy that has designed cities for cars and not for green infra­struc­ture. She described the chal­lenges as “con­stantly going uphill to fight the bat­tle” to bring sus­tain­abil­ity into the gov­ern­men­tal thought process. Miner also said she would wel­come the state and fed­eral gov­ern­ment to part­ner with Syra­cuse, but that they can­not wait for them to do so.

Stan­ton echoed Miner’s atti­tude towards the fed­eral gov­ern­ment when he said “we wrote off the fed­eral gov­ern­ment a long time ago.” He believes that cities are on their own and are going to have to lead with­out state or fed­eral back­ing. As the mayor of a city in a very con­ser­v­a­tive state it is even more impor­tant to be a leader on sus­tain­abil­ity issues since it is not a pri­or­ity on the state level, Stan­ton said.

How do you pro­pose fund­ing these sus­tain­abil­ity ideas?

The two Amer­i­can may­ors, Miner and Stan­ton, advo­cated using tax breaks as lever­age and public-private part­ner­ships to fund sus­tain­abil­ity projects. In Syra­cuse, tax breaks are only given to devel­op­ers that use LEED stan­dards. Stan­ton touted the public-private part­ner­ship exam­ple of Solar Phoenix 2, the most suc­cess­ful home solar com­pany in the U.S. He also empha­sized pur­su­ing projects that ulti­mately save cities money, such as recy­cling and bike share programs.

Peñalosa talked about the prob­lems asso­ci­ated with ris­ing land costs that force peo­ple into slums or far from the city, which forces them to be depen­dent on cars for trans­porta­tion. He advo­cated for gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion to buy land because “cities must grow in the right places.” Lerner suc­cinctly stated his fund­ing strat­egy: “cut one zero off and you have cre­ativ­ity, cut two off and you have sustainability.”

Jeremy Irons dis­cusses his film “Trashed” with New York Times colum­nist Andrew Revkin

The doc­u­men­tary fea­ture film “Trashed” high­lights solu­tions to the press­ing envi­ron­men­tal prob­lems fac­ing us all. Acad­emy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons has teamed up with British film­maker Can­dida Brady to record the dev­as­tat­ing effect that pol­lu­tion has had on some of the world’s most beau­ti­ful destinations.

Jeremy Irons pas­sion­ately dis­cussed want­ing to use the medium of film to edu­cate and raise aware­ness about a “cur­able sub­ject.” He offered sev­eral pol­icy rec­om­men­da­tions: stop incin­er­at­ing trash, com­post food wastes, and reduce pack­ag­ing. He encour­aged New York­ers to aim for zero waste—San Fran­cisco recy­cles 80 per­cent of their wastes, while New York is around a measly 15 per­cent. Irons instructed con­sumers to never use plas­tic bags (which take around 500 years to decom­pose), and to remove exces­sive pack­ag­ing from items they pur­chase in the store to send a mes­sage to man­u­fac­tur­ers to reduce packaging.

Jeremy Irons discussing trash and "Trashed" (http://jeremyironsno1fan.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/energy12.jpg?w=460&h=345)

Jeremy Irons dis­cussing trash and “Trashed” (http://​jere​myiron​sno1​fan​.files​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​3​/​0​4​/​e​n​e​r​g​y​1​2​.​j​p​g​?​w​=​4​6​0​&​a​m​p​;​h​=​345)

Irons also talked about envi­ron­men­tal and jus­tice issues related to elec­tronic waste, such as old com­put­ers that end up burned in Africa. His solu­tion is for the bur­den to be on man­u­fac­tur­ers to take back old elec­tron­ics and demol­ish or reuse them safely. He repeated that indus­tries should have to prove that their prod­ucts are 100 per­cent safe rather than con­sumers demand­ing this of manufacturers.

He cited envi­ron­men­tal and social con­cerns like beached orca whales whose bod­ies are com­pletely toxic, chil­dren with increased rates of Atten­tion Deficit Dis­or­der (ADD) and aller­gies, and chem­i­cals being emit­ted from incin­er­a­tors of which we don’t know the effects. He con­nected the dots of exces­sive con­sump­tion and waste to over­ar­ch­ing prob­lems with our “throw-away” cul­ture today. Irons decried the “unholy sin” of buy­ing some­thing and then toss­ing it away, and cau­tioned that we need to value every­thing for its quality—from rela­tion­ships to mate­r­ial objects—and to rethink the atti­tude towards the way we live.

3 ways to fix America’s politics from Jeff and Joe

Jasper Johns, "3 Flags" (1958); Whitney Museum

Jasper Johns, “3 Flags” (1958); Photo: G. Clements; Whit­ney Museum

_On a balmy Fri­day after­noon, I had the plea­sure of hear­ing two very pub­lic minds dis­cuss and debate the state of con­tem­po­rary Amer­ica. The par­tic­i­pants — Joe Scar­bor­ough, the host of Morn­ing Joe on MSNBC, and Jeff Sachs, the out­spo­ken direc­tor of Colum­bia University’s Earth Insti­tute — were affa­ble and smart; one could tell they are close friends. After a brief intro­duc­tion by each, the con­ver­sa­tion was mainly about pol­i­tics. As a broader solu­tion to our com­bined climate/energy/resource chal­lenge will be helped or hin­dered by how our Fed­eral gov­ern­ment oper­ates, I lis­tened with keen interest.

Joe Scarborough and Jeff Sachs (Photo: Jeffsachs.com)

Joe Scar­bor­ough and Jeff Sachs (Photo: Jeff​sachs​.com)

Using the exam­ple of the US Senate’s recent fail­ure to pass the uni­ver­sal back­ground checks for gun pur­chas­ing leg­is­la­tion, despite the fact that over 90% of Amer­i­cans sup­port it, Sachs and Scar­bor­ough exam­ined the extra­or­di­nary influ­ence of lob­by­ing and spe­cial inter­est groups in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal sys­tem. Although they hail from oppo­site sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, both speak­ers agreed that the power of these groups is so per­va­sive that the demo­c­ra­tic essence of the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment has essen­tially van­ished. Through­out the con­ver­sa­tion, they advo­cated for dras­tic changes from the status-quo, changes that would effect all areas of Amer­i­can life and politics–gun con­trol, health care, fis­cal respon­si­bil­ity, media, edu­ca­tion, and infrastructure.

Despite the depress­ing idea that the Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment is too cor­rupt to func­tion, both men seemed opti­mistic in the future of the United States. From the con­ver­sa­tion as a whole and sev­eral inter­est­ing fol­low up ques­tions, I extracted three of the most impor­tant themes — ideas that they believe are nec­es­sary for the reju­ve­na­tion of our country.

1. Decode the incomprehensible

Prob­a­bly the longest thread in the con­ver­sa­tion was about money: taxes, the fed­eral bud­get, the deficit, the bailout(s), and the 2009 stim­u­lus pack­age. Another long tan­gent was about America’s health­care and the pass­ing of the 2010 Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act. For both issues, Sachs and Scar­bor­ough agreed that the com­plex­ity of the bud­get and of health­care is so extreme that it is impos­si­ble for the layper­son to truly under­stand what is going on or to advo­cate for him or her­self within the system.

The Bloated Healthcare Bill (Graph: The Heritage Foundation)

The Bloated Health­care Bill (Graph: The Her­itage Foundation)

The biggest imped­i­ment to reform is the fact that most of our prob­lems are made to be so vast and com­plex as to be incom­pre­hen­si­ble to any­one but the experts. Often­times, the data itself is made avail­able under a ban­ner of gov­ern­men­tal trans­parency, but that doesn’t mean any of that data is easy for any­one to under­stand. This does not have to be the case. If these sys­tems are exposed, their machi­na­tions made trans­par­ent, and the infor­ma­tion made read­ily under­stand­able, the aver­age Amer­i­can would be able to gain a greater under­stand­ing of how his gov­ern­ment works, would have a voice in how these sys­tems func­tion, and would be able to imme­di­ately object if some­thing looks questionable.

The future of Amer­ica does not lie only in trans­parency, which in many cases we already have, but in trans­parency cou­pled with infor­ma­tion edu­ca­tion — allow­ing every cit­i­zen the oppor­tu­nity to under­stand how his or her gov­ern­ment works and giv­ing him the abil­ity to hold it accountable.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy makes policy understandable for the rest of us, in this case, redistricting (image: welcometoCUP.org)

The Cen­ter for Urban Ped­a­gogy makes pol­icy under­stand­able for the rest of us, in this case, redis­trict­ing (image: wel​come​toCUP​.org)

2. Embrace Social Media as a mode of Polit­i­cal Empowerment

Although the name of the event was “America’s Future,” most of the dis­cus­sion was about the state of con­tem­po­rary Amer­ica. For­tu­nately, towards the end, an audi­ence mem­ber asked how an aver­age cit­i­zen, real­iz­ing the cor­rup­tive lob­by­ing groups cur­rently embed­ded in Wash­ing­ton, should go about chang­ing it. Now, with Occupy Wall­street, the Arab Spring, and Barack Obama’s remark­able grass­roots cam­paign still fresh in our national con­scious, I might sound like a bro­ken record on this one. But, as Sachs and Scar­bor­ough both attested, social media is the newest and most effec­tive tool of polit­i­cal empowerment.

Daily Twitter and Flickr use in New York City (Image: Dailymail.co.uk)

Daily Twit­ter and Flickr use in New York City (Image: Dai​ly​mail​.co​.uk)

With the grow­ing real­iza­tion that a can­di­dates’ plat­form and speeches are writ­ten by national strate­gists, their elec­tions bought by cor­po­ra­tions, and, once they’ve made it to Wash­ing­ton, their votes cast by lob­by­ing groups, it is extremely nec­es­sary that a new crop of politi­cians are brought to the cap­i­tal. Sachs and Scar­bor­ough praised social media as a plat­form for aspir­ing and inspired politi­cians to project their voice to a larger com­mu­nity, to form enthu­si­as­tic grass­roots cam­paigns, and to take that momen­tum all the way to Wash­ing­ton. Only with the influx of these new, community-minded politi­cians will the entrenched lob­by­ing groups have to retreat.

This point also builds on the above point. New media has the poten­tial to allow for every­one to gain under­stand­ing of how our gov­ern­ment works and at the same time allow for every­one to have a voice in that process. In the future, every­one will be a politi­cian but no one will need to be political.

A visualization of twitter during the midterm elections (image: themonkeycage.org)

A visu­al­iza­tion of twit­ter dur­ing the midterm elec­tions (image: the​mon​k​eycage​.org)

3. Use Com­mon Sense to Find Com­mon Ground 

The most won­der­ful part of the con­ver­sa­tion was the fact that although these two men stand on very dif­fer­ent sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum, Joe Scar­bor­ough being a proud con­ser­v­a­tive and Jef­frey Sachs a vocal lib­eral, they man­aged to agree on the fun­da­men­tals of all the top­ics they dis­cussed. Whether it was gun con­trol, the stim­u­lus, or edu­ca­tion, they man­aged to agree on some basic steps that could be taken to fix the prob­lems that plague our country.

I left the talk opti­mistic that in increas­ingly polar­ized Amer­ica there is some­thing we can all agree on, or at the very least, agree to dis­agree upon — it just takes a lit­tle com­mon sense and the will­ing­ness to do the right thing. We can no longer afford divi­sion. We can only hope that an increas­ingly vocal and informed pub­lic will begin to hold their gov­ern­ment account­able for the change they want to see in the country.

Jane’s Walk NYC

On Sat­ur­day, May 4 and Sun­day, May 5, thou­sands of New York­ers will come together for Jane’s Walk NYC – a week­end series of 100+ FREE guided walks (and bike rides!) through­out New York’s five bor­oughs. Reg­is­tra­tion is NOT required.  Whether you choose to stroll through neigh­bor­hoods you love or dis­cover new neigh­bor­hoods you’ve never vis­ited, you’ll enjoy this inter­na­tional pro­gram cre­ated to com­mem­o­rate the life and legacy of urban­ist Jane Jacobs. Scroll down to view the walk sched­ule. For more infor­ma­tion: http://​mas​.org/​p​r​o​g​r​a​m​s​/​j​a​n​e​s​w​a​l​k​n​yc/

Tips and Impor­tant Information

  • The dead­line to sub­mit a walk is Fri­day, April 26th at 6:00 PM.
  • Walk leader infor­ma­tion ses­sions will be held in the MAS offices on Thurs­day, April 11 at 6:00 PM and Mon­day, April 15 at 1:00 PM.  To RSVP for a ses­sion, email janeswalknyc@​mas.​org with your pre­ferred date.
  • You may choose to start your walk at 9:00 AM, 12:00 PM, 3:00 PM, 6:00 PM or 9:00 PM.
  • Lead­ers are strongly encour­aged to lead their walks twice over the course of the weekend.
  • Your walk must be at least 30 minutes.
  • Plan to arrive a few min­utes early for your walk at the designed meet­ing location.
  • Meet­ing places can be located using Google Maps, and the MTA Trip Plan­ner is help­ful for tran­sit information.
  • All Jane’s Walks NYC will pro­ceed rain or shine.
  • Check your walk list­ings before depart­ing on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day in case there are any last-minute changes.
  • Join mul­ti­ple walks in one day and through­out the weekend.
  • Ask ques­tions and offer insights–Jane’s Walk works best when there is a friendly dia­logue through­out.  Intro­duce your­self to other walk­ers, vol­un­teers and hosts. Be curi­ous! Every­one host­ing a Jane’s Walk is a vol­un­teer and pas­sion­ate about the city we love.
  • Fol­low the action and join the con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter using #janeswalknyc.  Also, be sure to take pic­tures and upload them to our Flickr group, and share your pho­tos and thoughts on our Face­book page.
  • Wear sen­si­ble shoes and dress appro­pri­ately for the weather. Jane’s Walks vary–some are just one building’s inte­rior; while some are a solid two hours and 40 blocks long.
  • Bring friends and fam­ily to enjoy this spe­cial weekend!
  • Please Note: Walk details are sub­ject to change

Why luxury developments are lonely and why we should care

(Image: One57.com)

(Image: One57​.com)

When a New York City bro­ker recently sold a condo in the opu­lent One57 build­ing for $6.5 mil­lion to a Chi­nese woman, he expected her to move in imme­di­ately. How­ever, when he asked what she was look­ing for, she said it was not for her but for her daugh­ter, who would be attend­ing school in the city, either at Colum­bia or NYU. When he asked how old her daugh­ter was, she replied: “Well, she’s 2.”

While this pur­chase may seem sur­pris­ing and exor­bi­tant, it merely reflects a change in pur­chas­ing trends for new lux­ury devel­op­ments in New York City. The same bro­ker, speak­ing with a Chi­nese News Agency, said that more than 25% of his busi­ness now comes from that coun­try. Build­ings like One57 are attract­ing rich investors from all over the world, from places like Rus­sia, South Korea, and China, inter­na­tional busi­ness­men who can eas­ily shell out sev­eral mil­lion dol­lars for a brand new condo. An illu­mi­nat­ing piece from Atlantic Cities explains why this is a neg­a­tive trend for New York.

When these investors pur­chase liv­ing space in New York, or in com­pa­ra­ble North Amer­i­can cities like Van­cou­ver, they are doing so pri­mar­ily for the value of the invest­ment and only sec­on­dar­ily for habi­ta­tion. This results in apart­ments and con­dos that lay vacant for a large por­tion of the year. While the few res­i­dents that do main­tain con­sis­tent res­i­dency end up with relax­ation and quiet, most com­plain that the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing in an empty build­ing is lonely.

This trend is not new and, save for a brief respite dur­ing the reces­sion, shows no signs of slow­ing down. When the New York Times pub­lished this arti­cle ear­lier this year, the real estate blog Curbed responded sar­cas­ti­cally because they found the article’s con­clu­sion to be so incred­i­bly obvi­ous. Their head­line: “Shocker: Rich Peo­ple Buy NYC Homes And Don’t Live In Them.”

This is bad news for the activ­ity on city streets. Although a neigh­bor­hood might be cham­pi­oned as incred­i­bly dense sta­tis­ti­cally, if all of its tow­ers are empty, it might not be quite as dense as pre­vi­ously cham­pi­oned. Falling den­sity means decreased street activ­ity, less sup­port for local busi­nesses and restau­rants, and a shrink­ing sense of com­mu­nity. While this trend–a prod­uct of relent­less cap­i­tal­ism and gentrification–cannot be stopped, hope­fully these non-resident own­ers will soon come to real­ize the effect of their absence on their neighbors.

[This trend may include exclu­sive low rise neigh­bor­hoods in New York and other cities, like Manhattan’s Green­wich Vil­lage, where ear­lier lively streets pro­vided a model of urban­ism for Jane Jacobs, and London’s Bel­gravia (as noted in the NYT). The BBC has also been fol­low­ing the phe­nom­e­non of wealth and mobil­ity in a series of reports called Wealth with­out Bor­ders.]

 

A survey on extreme weather for every New York City resident

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We offer a new sur­vey to City Atlas read­ers to help guide policy-making in New York City. As described by the sur­vey designers:

“Study on: Impacts of extreme weather events on dif­fer­ent social groups in New York City -  Please par­tic­i­pate in an oppor­tu­nity to inform pol­icy mak­ing in your city.

The fol­low­ing link takes you to an online ques­tion­naire that lasts between 20 to 30 min­utes, depend­ing on answers that you give through­out the questionnaire.

Thank you for con­tribut­ing to our impor­tant study ‘Impacts of extreme weather events on dif­fer­ent social groups in New York City’ devel­oped by The Cen­ter for Research on Envi­ron­men­tal Deci­sions (CRED), Earth Insti­tute, Colum­bia University.

The impor­tance of this research has never been more evi­dent given recent events with Hur­ri­cane Sandy and its impacts on New York and sur­round­ing areas. How­ever, we are not only inves­ti­gat­ing impacts of storms, but also other extreme weather events such as heat waves.

Extreme weather events impact dif­fer­ent socioe­co­nomic groups in dif­fer­ent ways. Our project seeks to under­stand specif­i­cally how dif­fer­ent income groups expe­ri­ence weather events such as heat waves and strong rainstorms.

We will hap­pily share the results of the sur­vey once it is com­pleted and fully ana­lyzed, which will roughly take until the end of the year. The study ana­lyzes indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences and bur­den of impacts of strong rain­storms and heat waves, com­pares expe­ri­ences across the 5 bor­ough area, and sug­gests most effi­cient adap­ta­tion options in dif­fer­ent parts of NYC.

We thank you very much again for your sup­port in this impor­tant ini­tia­tive!
Dr. Diana Reckien.

Prof. David Krantz, Direc­tor, Cen­ter for Research on Envi­ron­men­tal Deci­sions, Earth Insti­tute, Colum­bia University.”

 ___

Note on the sur­vey from par­tic­i­pants at City Atlas: we found on aver­age it took about 15 – 20 min­utes to com­plete, and pro­vided an inter­est­ing oppor­tu­nity for reflec­tion on recent events, their after­math, and the future in the city.

 

 

 

Public Design Workshop for the BK Waterfront Greenway

Your Voice Is Needed!

NYC Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (DOT) will hold a Pub­lic Design Work­shop for the Brook­lyn Water­front Green­way on Wednes­day, March 20, 2013.

DOT will be host­ing its third pub­lic input ses­sion for the DUMBO and Vine­gar Hill recon­struc­tion project to accom­mo­date the Brook­lyn Water­front Green­way. At pre­vi­ous pub­lic input ses­sions, neigh­bor­hood res­i­dents brought up con­cerns about recon­struc­tion of Bel­gian block road­ways to accom­mo­date bicy­clists. At this meet­ing, DOT will present revised con­cepts for fur­ther pub­lic input on cob­ble recon­struc­tion and the design of the Pearl Street Tri­an­gle Plaza.

Brook­lyn Green­way Initiative’s view is that the City should not recon­struct any streets with­out mak­ing them acces­si­ble to bikes. Cob­ble­stone streets were laid dur­ing the car­riage age. They can be recon­structed in ways that honor their his­tory, while still serv­ing all of the tax pay­ers today who are pay­ing for them.

What is your view? Please attend this impor­tant meet­ing and express it.

When: Wednes­day, March 20, 2013   6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Where: NYU-Poly Incu­ba­tor,   20 Jay Street, Suite 312, Brooklyn   

Open House for Greenpoint Environmental Benefit Projects Program

The Green­point Ben­e­fit Projects Pro­gram is host­ing pub­lic meet­ing to announce the next step of the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits project fund­ing that came from the Exxon set­tle­ment for Green­point Brook­lyn. Get updated on the program’s progress, meet the gen­eral admin­is­tra­tor and weigh in on the types of envi­ron­men­tal projects you want to see funded in Greenpoint.

FOOD WILL BE PROVIDED

Down­load and Save the Date

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion con­tact Laura Truet­tner at ltruettner@​aol.​com

Doc­u­ments related to the Pro­gram can be found at the Green­point Library or at
http://​www​.ag​.ny​.gov/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​a​l​/​g​r​e​e​n​p​o​i​n​t​-​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​a​l​-​b​e​n​e​f​i​t​-​p​r​o​j​e​cts

What’s in the water? Debut presentation

What’s in the Water? is the lat­est issue of Mak­ing Pol­icy Pub­lic, a series of fold-out posters that use graphic design to explore and explain pub­lic policy.

Join CUP on Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 13th, for a con­ver­sa­tion with Barry Estabrook, an award-winning writer on issues of food safety and jus­tice, and Al Apple­ton, a Senior Fel­low at the Cooper Union Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Design, on the risks frack­ing poses to the city’s food, health, and drink­ing water.

Atten­dees will also receive a free copy of the What’s in the Water? poster.

What’s in the Water? debut pre­sen­ta­tion
Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 13, 7 pm
The Cooper Union
Rose Audi­to­rium
41 Cooper Square, Lower Level
on Third Avenue (btwn 6th & 7th streets)
N/R to 8th Street, 6 to Astor Place

Free and open to the pub­lic.
RSVP here by Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, at 5 pm.

Streetfilms re-introduces Zozo, the purple livable streets hero!

Street­films is rein­tro­duc­ing their Jim-Henson-designed, child-friendly urban plan­ning mas­cot: Zozo, the pur­ple liv­able streets hero. As described on meet​zozo​.com, “Zozo makes friends wher­ever he goes. Zozo loves to talk to peo­ple about walk­ing, bik­ing, using tran­sit and mak­ing a bet­ter, hap­pier city. As New York becomes more liv­able, the more Zozos will come back to join him.” (Yipes!)

Street­films, an orga­ni­za­tion that pro­duces short films about trans­porta­tion around the world, is now bring­ing Zozo back to where he once belonged. Although orig­i­nally designed and devel­oped last year, the project–which includes a series of vignettes, col­or­ing pages, and teach­ing curriculum–never gained a large fol­low­ing because it’s cre­ator, the Liv­able Streets Edu­ca­tion project, is no longer oper­at­ing. The 10 Zozo vignettes are meant to teach chil­dren about the impor­tance of street safety, as well as the ben­e­fits of walk­ing, cycling, and using pub­lic trans­porta­tion. And, although meant for chil­dren, these videos will make every­one laugh.

To help Street­films spread the word about Zozo, watch their videos on Vimeo, print out col­or­ing book pages at the project’s web­site, meet​zozo​.com, and talk to your kids and your friends about the project. Street­films also doc­u­mented the cre­ation of Zozo project in their short doc­u­men­tary “The Search for the Zozo.” Check it out!

KochAndGonzoIt’s worth not­ing that NYC has a unique his­tory of civic-minded Hen­son crea­tures, as can be seen in this photo of the late Mayor Ed Koch and the mup­pet Gonzo at a press con­fer­ence. (The mayor remarked, “If he can also bal­ance a bud­get, I’ll hire him.”)

Photo, top: Street­films; bot­tom: mup​pet​.wikia​.com 

 

Art and Architecture of the Subway

MTA ArtMunic­i­pal Art Soci­ety presents a tour fea­tur­ing the art, archi­tec­ture and his­tory of New York’s sub­way system:

“On this tour with archi­tec­tural his­to­rian Anthony W. Robins, we will ride the rails from the Bat­tery to Mid­town, and con­sider the three major phases of sub­way design: the orig­i­nal 1904 IRT, the Dual Con­tracts exten­sions of the ‘teens and the mod­ernistic Inde­pen­dent Line that opened in 1932, with a peek at a ’70s redesign by Philip John­son. Bring an unlim­ited Metro­Card or one with at least three fares. Don’t miss the tour that CBS called one of the five best art walks in New York! $20 / $15 Members.”

More Info

(Image: MTA)

 

Hester Street Collaborative

Why is design a good skill for young people?

Our work tends to be very hands on, fun, and playful.

Anne Fred­er­ick: Design is very inter­dis­ci­pli­nary by nature. You can con­nect design into almost any cur­ricu­lum. In the ele­men­tary school we con­nect to sci­ence, art, social studies…design allows you to con­nect what you are learn­ing to very tan­gi­ble activ­i­ties. That becomes empow­er­ing for stu­dents because they get to actu­ally see their efforts lead to tan­gi­ble changes. They are build­ing things, plant­ing things…which then actu­ally become a part of their local built environment.

That process is par­tic­u­larly reward­ing for stu­dents who have a hard time pulling it together in the class­room. Some stu­dents are a dif­fer­ent kind of learner. Design allows for the dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles to be cel­e­brated and exercised…we see our stu­dents keep com­ing back to learn and they get engaged more and more.

Hes­ter Street Col­lab­o­ra­tive usu­ally works with under­served com­mu­ni­ties, and brings the tech­niques and processes of design and com­mu­nity advocacy.

How do you define an “under­served community?”

Anne12

Anne Fred­er­ick: For us, “under­served com­mu­ni­ties” are com­mu­ni­ties that might not have a say oth­er­wise in the devel­op­ment of their neigh­bor­hood. We take our cues from the peo­ple that make up a place. We always part­ner with groups that are doing orga­niz­ing work and have a mem­ber­ship, or really have their ear to the ground. These are com­mu­ni­ties that might be fac­ing issues of dis­place­ments, lack of afford­able hous­ing — peo­ple who have iden­ti­fied them­selves as need­ing the resources of a design studio.

We really look toward the social jus­tice and community-based orga­ni­za­tions around the city, who have already iden­ti­fied a need, and we see if the types of resources and ser­vices we pro­vide can help. If there is some way we can work together, we then col­lab­o­ra­tively shape that scope of work together.

How did the col­lab­o­ra­tive get started?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Hes­ter Street Col­lab­o­ra­tive was started by myself and the two part­ners of Leroy Street Stu­dio, where I used to work as an archi­tect. When we moved our offices down to the Lower East Side, we felt that there was an oppor­tu­nity to cre­ate a prac­tice that related to the neigh­bor­hood in a mean­ing­ful way. It also hap­pened that when we moved down­town, 9/11 occurred, slow­ing down the whole busi­ness and giv­ing us an oppor­tu­nity to rethink our­selves. It had been an inter­est of the part­ners and myself to do some­thing grounded to the com­mu­nity prior to 9/11, but that event really gave us a moment to move in new directions.

We started by devel­op­ing design edu­ca­tion pro­grams with pub­lic schools. I had a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in work­ing with young peo­ple. Since I had been already teach­ing in other design-related edu­ca­tion pro­grams, which hap­pened to be located across the street from a mid­dle school, we thought, “Why not just walk across the street!”

We take our cues from the peo­ple that make up a place.

We started out by found­ing Ground Up, which is our Design Edu­ca­tion pro­gram with [pub­lic school] MS131. We kicked every­thing off by think­ing about how stu­dents could impact spaces, either in their school cam­puses or com­mu­nity. We started this within a small lit­tle sculp­ture gar­den in front of the school.

From there we grew into more design edu­ca­tion work, as well as work­ing with small community-based orga­ni­za­tions on larger open space projects around the neigh­bor­hood, and then more recently citywide.

So, you started as a group engaged in projects local to the Lower East Side; are there are any plans to widen your scope?

Anne Fred­er­ick: When we started, it was really impor­tant to acknowl­edge the place that we are located. Since the Lower East Side is such a rapidly gen­tri­fy­ing neigh­bor­hood, we really wanted to be aware of the impact hav­ing a stu­dio in this neigh­bor­hood had on accel­er­at­ing that gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in what­ever way it does. So it was impor­tant to start out with the idea that the [com­mu­nity] needs are here first.

The past ten years we have really focused locally, even though our mis­sion is truly city­wide. We have started here, but through word of mouth and with the help of our part­ners, [we almost always work col­lab­o­ra­tively with other orga­ni­za­tions on each project] have received the oppor­tu­nity to work in other neighborhoods.

Right now we feel we are at a moment where we feel we can con­tinue to con­tribute to our neigh­bor­hood, but begin to serve more com­mu­ni­ties. We are think­ing about how some of the tools and exper­tise of design­ers can aid social jus­tice move­ments not just near us, but through­out the city.

So the project devel­op­ment and design process is guided by team­ing up with com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions, rather than propos­ing design plans from a loca­tion far removed.

Anne Fred­er­ick: Exactly, that is very impor­tant to us.

What is the usual process for mak­ing the type of pub­lic space projects Hes­ter Street Col­lab­o­ra­tive develops?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Usu­ally it starts with some stake­hold­ers — orga­ni­za­tions or indi­vid­u­als — who have iden­ti­fied a need for something.

I’ll use the East River Water­front as an exam­ple — there was a coali­tion of orga­ni­za­tions who are imbed­ded in that neigh­bor­hood, and who wanted to have a say in the devel­op­ment of the [local] waterfront.

They were con­cerned that the fur­ther devel­op­ment of the water­front would accel­er­ate the gen­tri­fi­ca­tion of the area, and place addi­tional pres­sure on the con­stituen­cies who are already being squeezed out.  This group had already iden­ti­fied needs, and just by being based in the neigh­bor­hood and hav­ing rela­tion­ships with the orga­ni­za­tions in the coali­tion, HSC started to have con­ver­sa­tions with the orga­ni­za­tion to see if they needed help with the com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing process for envi­sion­ing and visu­al­iz­ing the waterfront.

Usu­ally the work evolves from a group or coali­tion, who expresses inter­est about a pub­lic or open space issue and we will part­ner with them. Those part­ner­ships can be very long term, because these projects just don’t hap­pen overnight. Projects of this nature can hap­pen over many years and decades.

Does HSC work with grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions [bot­tom up] in addi­tion to city-based agen­cies [top down]?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Yes, we work with city agen­cies a lot. Often we are work­ing to be a bridge between the more grass­roots groups and city agen­cies. For exam­ple we have been work­ing on a project titled Peo­ple Make Parks for sev­eral years with Part­ner­ships for Park. The project is attempt to make the parks cap­i­tal process more trans­par­ent and eas­ier to engage with.  For groups who want to have a role in how their parks are redesigned, Peo­ple Make Parks pro­vides a road map for that process.

Do you ever face any resis­tance from the com­mu­ni­ties you engage with?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Work­ing with lots of peo­ple is never easy. Democ­racy is not a neat and tidy process. Part of the inter­est­ing part of col­lab­o­ra­tion is allow­ing dif­fer­ent opin­ions and con­cerns to arise, and work them­selves out. We don’t advo­cate for one view or the other but be try to develop a broad plat­form where par­tic­i­pa­tion can hap­pen. Not every­one is always going to be happy, but that is the nature of the beast.

So HSC is bro­ken down into edu­ca­tion pro­grams, advo­cacy, and com­mu­nity design. What kinds of projects and activ­i­ties fall under those categories?

Anne Fred­er­ick: For the edu­ca­tion pro­grams – we work in pub­lic schools, with ele­men­tary, mid­dle, and high school stu­dents all in the LES com­mu­nity. We are really com­mit­ted to have that longer term com­mu­nity engage­ment here, [Lower East Side] so we can have a more in depth expe­ri­ence with indi­vid­ual stu­dents rather than serv­ing thou­sands of stu­dents. One of the goals of the design edu­ca­tion pro­grams is to impact the youth that we are work­ing with. We feel that the best way to do that is through sus­tained engage­ment. For exam­ple, the ele­men­tary school we have been work­ing with, we have been build­ing an out­door class­room (school gar­den) since 2004. Every year, each group of stu­dents who par­tic­i­pates, adds another layer to it. Some­times we work with the same stu­dents from grades 2 through 5.

Thats awe­some! You get to see some of your stu­dents grow up and wit­ness the devel­op­ment of their education.

Anne Fred­er­ick: Yes, its a great process.

What falls under “com­mu­nity design,” and “advocacy”?

Anne Fred­er­ick: In regards to our com­mu­nity design, we work with orga­ni­za­tions and con­stituency groups in the neigh­bor­hood, and pro­vid­ing resources of plan­ners, artists and design­ers to impact the com­mu­nity space. Like I said, often those are very long-term projects. For exam­ple, we have been work­ing on the Allen and Pike Street cor­ri­dors since 2004, and we coor­di­nate com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pa­tion, to ini­ti­at­ing the the cap­i­tal process and devel­op­ing an ongo­ing series of pub­lic art and design inter­ven­tions at the site, as a way to con­tinue to draw atten­tion to that space, and envi­sion what it could be.

Design allows for stu­dents with dif­fer­ent learn­ing styles to be celebrated.

Often there’s a flu­id­ity between our edu­ca­tional pro­grams, advo­cacy, and com­mu­nity design because our stu­dents will con­tribute to the art instal­la­tion. Each area of our orga­ni­za­tion is not dis­tinct from the oth­ers, but all are work­ing together to empower com­mu­ni­ties to impact change of com­mu­nity pub­lic spaces. We sort of address the issues we care about through these dif­fer­ent ways.

For us, advo­cacy is about work­ing with our part­ners to try and bring about the change they want to see in their com­mu­ni­ties. So we work with with elected offi­cials and city agen­cies to chan­nel com­mu­nity con­cerns and aspirations.

How do you feel that this sort of process helps to build social con­nec­tions between com­mu­nity members?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Our work tends to be very hands on, fun, and play­ful. So pro­vid­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for indi­vid­u­als to par­tic­i­pate in a fun inter­ac­tive way, is a much less intim­i­dat­ing for­mat than going to a town hall meet­ing and hav­ing to stand up in front of a lot of peo­ple and voice your con­cern. We try to take the process and meet peo­ple where they are at, to insure their ongo­ing participation.

How does Hes­ter Street Col­lab­o­ra­tive envi­sion a more sus­tain­able city?

Anne Fred­er­ick: Hav­ing engaged, invested cit­i­zens that have a clear and trans­par­ent abil­ity to effect change in their neigh­bor­hood. [That] allows for more peo­ple to invest more effort in the place where they live. If you think your thoughts and actions mat­ter, you are going to be more of a stew­ard of your envi­ron­ment — that, for me, is sustainability.

About Hes­ter Street Collaborative:

Hes­ter Street Collaborative’s (HSC) mis­sion is to empower res­i­dents of under­served com­mu­ni­ties by pro­vid­ing them with the tools and resources nec­es­sary to have a direct impact on shap­ing their built envi­ron­ment. We do this through a hands-on approach that com­bines design, edu­ca­tion, and advo­cacy. HSC seeks to cre­ate more equi­table, sus­tain­able, and vibrant neigh­bor­hoods where com­mu­nity voices lead the way in improv­ing their envi­ron­ment and neglected pub­lic spaces.

HSC was founded in 2002 by the archi­tec­ture firm Leroy Street Stu­dio (LSS). The East New York Urban Youth Corp, a non­profit group spe­cial­iz­ing in build­ing rehab and com­mu­nity out­reach, approached LSS to work on an afford­able hous­ing project and Com­mu­nity Cen­ter. As a result, the LSS partners/HSC co-founders designed and built a series of play­ful inter­ven­tions for the court­yards, as well as a lobby with local sculp­tors and tile mak­ers, and future ten­ants. The lobby design replaced stan­dard tiles with mosaics and hand carved clay tiles, and installed ferro-cement planters in the court­yard. The trans­for­ma­tion was dra­matic, and the project led to the for­ma­tion of Hes­ter Street Collaborative.

About Anne Frederick:

As the found­ing direc­tor of HSC, Anne has worked to develop a com­mu­nity design-build prac­tice that responds to the needs of under-resourced NYC com­mu­ni­ties. Her unique approach to com­mu­nity design inte­grates edu­ca­tion and youth devel­op­ment pro­gram­ming with par­tic­i­pa­tory art, archi­tec­ture, and plan­ning strate­gies. This approach is rooted in part­ner­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion with var­i­ous com­mu­nity based orga­ni­za­tions, schools and local res­i­dents. Prior to found­ing HSC, Anne worked as an archi­tect at Leroy Street Stu­dio Archi­tec­ture and as a design edu­ca­tor at Par­sons School of Design and the New York Foun­da­tion for Archi­tec­ture. Anne grad­u­ated from Par­sons School of Design and The New School for Social Research in 1998, and has rep­re­sented the work of HSC at var­i­ous con­fer­ences, lec­tures and exhibitions.

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Pho­tos: Jes­sica Bruah

Sandy volunteer opportunities, updated

 

Food trucks turn out to be handy after hur­ri­canes. Photo: @nycfoodtruck

 

An update on the vol­un­teer effort in the New York City area.

The peo­ple most in need in areas like the Rock­aways (which faces drop­ping tem­per­a­tures and another, smaller storm tomor­row night) are likely to be the poor­est res­i­dents and the elderly, res­i­dents that were unable to relo­cate to rel­a­tives or friend’s houses inland.

Occupy Sandy: Their twit­ter feed pro­vides an up-to-the minute list of activ­i­ties and oppor­tu­ni­ties. A friend and I deliv­ered blan­kets to their St. Jacobi Church loca­tion in Sun­set Park, Brook­lyn yes­ter­day, and I can report that their vol­un­teer relief oper­a­tion looks effec­tive and well-organized. Hav­ing said that, the miles of affected beach­front and water­front hous­ing around the city has cre­ated an enor­mous need not yet met by city ser­vices. If you’d like to help, Occupy Sandy is a place to start, and there are sev­eral other groups that have repur­posed them­selves to help in the effort and are worth scan­ning too, to get a more com­plete picture.

596 Acres is work­ing in the Rock­aways and has a detailed list of requests for both items and manpower.

iVol­un­teer is a group whose main mis­sion is to con­nect vol­un­teers with Holo­caust sur­vivors. They’ve joined the relief effort to help home­bound elderly peo­ple stranded in high rises in Far Rock­away, where power has not be restored yet. For info on their activ­i­ties and how to con­nect, go here. They are affil­i­ated with a par­al­lel effort to reach the Rock­aways, Sandy Help, which was writ­ten up in the NYT dur­ing the first week of response.

Food Trucks: Hot food is impor­tant and is going to get more impor­tant. Jet­Blue has been spon­sor­ing the NYC Food Trucks response since the storm, and now trucks seem to be cir­cu­lat­ing through most of the affected areas. The ini­tia­tive is on its sec­ond IndieGogo cam­paign, and you can sup­port it here.

To help from a desk­top: the Mayor’s Fund for NYC gives 100% of your dona­tion to hur­ri­cane relief. Alter­na­tively, Occupy Sandy has an Ama­zon wish list.

Infor­ma­tion from the city: Food, blan­ket and water dis­tri­b­u­tion loca­tions in Brook­lyn, Queens and Staten Island, along with the addresses for overnight shelters.

Thought­ful reading:

Dou­glas Rushkoff: on the illu­sion of self-sufficiency, the after­math of the storm, and the election.

What if you could give the city a ticket? The “City Ticket Kiosk” and 2 mobile apps offer the chance

A year ago, I attended an exhi­bi­tion at MoMA called “Talk to Me: Design and the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Peo­ple and Objects.” One project in the exhibit, Mayo Nissen’s City Tick­ets, left an indeli­ble mark on me. Mayo Nissen’s pro­posal was to readapt park­ing ticket machines to “City Tick­ets kiosks.” The City Tick­ets kiosks would allow cit­i­zens to report on urban problems–a pot­hole, graf­fiti, or an awk­ward junc­tion, for instance–and to sug­gest local improve­ments: benches for sit­ting on, or per­haps a weekly market.

The way City Tick­ets kiosks would work is sim­ple. The kiosks would gen­er­ate short forms, printed as standard-format receipts. Each receipt would dis­play a hyper­local map on the reverse side, indi­cat­ing the exact loca­tion of the prob­lem, or sug­ges­tion. Per­haps the most elu­sive aspect of this design is that the kiosks would enable cit­i­zens to mail this infor­ma­tion, free of charge, where it would be processed and routed to the cor­rect depart­ment for an effi­cient response. The reports would then be entered into a pub­lic data­base, allow­ing cit­i­zens to track their reported prob­lem or sug­ges­tion in the sys­tem, includ­ing the pro­jected date of completion.

The ratio­nale behind City Tick­ets is to cre­ate direct com­mu­ni­ca­tion between local author­i­ties and cit­i­zens, which is usu­ally hin­dered by bureau­cracy. While the City Tick­ets kiosk remains an unre­al­ized idea, two mobile appli­ca­tions, SeeClick­Fix and Love Clean Streets, have been devel­oped under the same premise. Apply­ing a sim­i­lar con­cept, these two mobile appli­ca­tions trans­late the phys­i­cal infra­struc­ture of the City Ticket Kiosk to a dig­i­tal format.

The SeeClick­Fix appli­ca­tion, avail­able world­wide, allows cit­i­zens to report on urban prob­lems to their local gov­ern­ment via their mobile phone or the web­site. Cit­i­zens sub­mit a descrip­tion, image, and the exact loca­tion of the prob­lem, and local author­i­ties are respon­si­ble for respond­ing to it. While the issue is in the process of being addressed, cit­i­zens can stay informed of its progress. An addi­tional fea­ture of the app is that it is pred­i­cated on com­mu­nity interaction–citizens can vote on, com­ment on, vote to fix, or update issues already reported by their neighbors.

Love Clean Streets, an appli­ca­tion avail­able to users in Lon­don, sim­i­larly allows users to report envi­ron­men­tal crime issues via their mobile app, or the web­site. A short video adver­tis­ing the app claims that cit­i­zens can report the issue in less than 40 sec­onds. The local author­ity is respon­si­ble for deal­ing with the report and the user can review the progress of it.

The real, and still untapped, poten­tial of these two appli­ca­tions is impres­sive. They pro­vide a new oppor­tu­nity to mobi­lize vast num­bers of cit­i­zens to become engaged in their local com­mu­ni­ties, thereby fos­ter­ing a sense of empow­er­ment among cit­i­zens. Fur­ther­more, a trans­par­ent sys­tem that holds gov­ern­ment account­able for their actions reaf­firms cit­i­zens’ con­fi­dence in gov­ern­ment. While still rel­a­tively new, the intro­duc­tion of these two appli­ca­tions may be the start of a new move­ment in par­tic­i­pa­tory urban planning.

Pho­tos: Mayo Nis­sen 

NYC surfers seek ban on plastic bags

There are no plas­tic bags in this image.

I picked one up shop­ping this morn­ing, writer Ian Fra­zier has been dri­ven mad by see­ing them in trees, and soon they may be banned in NYC, if our res­i­dent surfer orga­ni­za­tion has its way. As a step towards pro­tect­ing the oceans, chang­ing our habits about plas­tic bags is per­haps part of phase one.

5 Gyres, an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to clean­ing the world’s oceans of plas­tic, is com­ing to the Bres­lin (at the Ace Hotel) in Man­hat­tan on Thurs­day, in con­junc­tion with Surfrid­ers NYC, in a ben­e­fit for their 1400 mile bike ride to push for leg­is­la­tion ban­ning plas­tic bags.

San Fran­cisco got the ball rolling in 2007 by ban­ning large retail­ers from using plas­tic bags, and as of Octo­ber 1 this year, the City on the Bay requires stores to also charge for paper bags, as a way to encour­age shop­pers to bring reusable totes with them. That will be behav­ior change on a large scale, and a good marker for the many major and minor shifts that we’ll need to make on a planet with 7 bil­lion peo­ple, which also val­ues its oceans.

Even bet­ter, as described in the New York Times, reusable totes are likely to become a new way for New York­ers to be noticed:

“In Santa Mon­ica, Calif., where a 10-cent charge for paper and a ban on plas­tic bags went into effect last year, the reusable bag cul­ture has exploded, said Josephine Miller, an envi­ron­men­tal pro­gram ana­lyst with the city…People want to be seen with the coolest, hippest reusable bag, she said, adding, ‘Busi­nesses are putting logos on reusable bags.’”

More about the move­ment to ban plas­tic, via WPIX.

A site explain­ing the progress of plas­tic bag leg­is­la­tion around the country.

Photo: Long­boat Key News

Sweet dissatisfaction: using map art to understand NYC’s most common complaints

Media artist Diet­mar Offen­hu­ber has used data gen­er­ated by two years of 311 com­plaints to cre­ate an inter­ac­tive map of New York­ers’ most com­mon com­plaints. (h/t to Curbed and Atlantic Cities.)

The 311 line is New York City’s ded­i­cated gov­ern­ment infor­ma­tion ser­vice line, through which res­i­dents can access pro­gram infor­ma­tion and also sub­mit com­plaints and requests. Offen­hu­ber divided the com­plaints into three types: lit­ter (blue), graf­fiti (red), and noise (green), and as the map’s key indi­cates, areas of over­lap­ping com­plaint can be iden­ti­fied by inter­me­di­ate col­ors. (As ele­gant as it is for design pur­poses, dis­play­ing just three types of com­plaint prob­a­bly misses the full spec­trum of likely 311 calls.)

Com­plaints are mapped onto a block-by-block grid of the city, cre­at­ing a col­or­ful dia­gram of each area’s most fre­quent prob­lem. Beyond sim­ply being a beau­ti­ful ren­der­ing of civic frus­tra­tion, the map can be used as an edu­ca­tion tool to high­light neighborhood-specific con­cerns. For exam­ple, high-traffic Man­hat­tan appears in green, as noise com­plaints are the most com­mon in the bor­ough. The Bronx and much of Queens seem to suf­fer pri­mar­ily from graf­fiti prob­lems, and Staten Island and much of Brook­lyn are both­ered by lit­ter. The map also allows view­ers to zoom in, reveal­ing hid­den idio­syn­crasies. For exam­ple, some major streets in Harlem share the prob­lem of lit­ter; Chi­na­town too suf­fers from seri­ous graf­fiti issues.  You can even zoom in to see what prob­lems are plagu­ing your block and neighborhood.

Check out some of Offenhuber’s other green-minded work, such as “Trash Track­ing,” at his web­site.

Image: Diet­mar Offenhuber