So, last week we warned you that we were going to be pushing hard to get you to come to our live talk show next Tuesday. We are all over the walls and feeds of a Facebook or Twitter user near you (BTW, why haven’t you become a fan yet? Why don’t you follow us on Twitter? Come on, people). And we’ve hit the streets, papering our local coffee shops and watering holes with flyers (that can be sustainably repurposed into handy coasters, paper airplanes or shopping lists).

But we want to stress that this is NOT something that is only relevant to our fellow Gowanus Canal aficionados and abutters. This is the kind of conversation that anyone who is interested in the relationship between art, ecology, urban history and land use will be way into. The idea is to go beyond the slugfest community meetings about whether to designate or not to designate the Gowanus as a Superfund site. No, the idea is to mine the environmental and biological histories of toxins. To analyze the EPA’s Superfund program in the context of emerging art forms informed by both eco-visualization and le interweb. To connect the local landscape to national precedents. To ponder what any of this has to do with the ethics of risk, the implications for financing local development, the design of our environments. And, of course, to hang out with the cool kids at the the Center for Urban Pedagogy and to chill at the Old American Can Factory.

Plus, it doesn’t take the rainiest June we can remember for us to wonder about New York’s combined sewage system (check out the video below). Or to wonder what remediation would actually look like – legally, socially and physically. So bring your friends and come over next Tuesday.

Here’s all the relevant info:

On Tuesday, July 7th, please come and join us and our friends and neighbors, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), for a different kind of SUPERFUND conversation called… “Goo Gone: risk, responsibility and toxins in the landscape.” Panelists will include artist Brooke Singer, environmental justice advocate Anne Rabe, congressional community coordinator Dan Wiley, and other cool cats who will offer new perspectives on the history of the Superfund program, the politics of designation, and the changing legal definitions of toxins, risk, and responsibility. This will be free and open to the public, but space is limited so please let us know if you’re coming by emailing info [at] anothercupdevelopment.org. This will go down at the Old American Can Factory.

Our friends over at WNYC’s Cityscapes gave architect Stephen Cassell a flipcam to explore the Gowanus and discuss the possibility of spongeparks along its banks. The vid also provides a great overview of why New York’s combined sewage system is gross.

Check it: