Here’s to New York on Obscura Day! We wandered the streets of Gramercy, learning of Oscar Wilde’s old haunts. We drank where George Washington once kicked up his feet and had a pint in Lower Manhattan. We lurked in catacombs. We wandered forgotten beaches, stepping over dolls heads half-swallowed by the sand. We took photographs of New York’s amazing street art. We explored the shelves of books on magic. We walked in the footsteps of the occult. We looked for edible plants in Central Park. Here are some images and quotes from Obscura Day attendees to give you a sampling of what New York experienced that day:

19th CENTURY PUB CRAWL

Victorian Gentleman Enjoys a Martini -- Delmonico's Bar | Photo by Juan Monroy

“Despite having lived in New York for over a decade, I had never been in these spots… ”
– Obscura Day Attendee at the 19th Century Pub Crawl

DUTCH KILLS

Exploring Industrial Ruins in Long Island City | Photo by Juan Monroy

“The walking tour of Newtown Creek… was led by a true expert of the area… It was an eye-opening perspective.”
– Obscura Day Attendee at Dutch Kills

CONJURING ARTS CENTER

Enjoying the stacks, Conjuring Arts Center | Photo by Matt Downs

“Checking out this magical library!”
– Obscura Day Attendee at Conjuring Arts Center

FORGOTTEN BEACHES

Exploring Ruins, Staten Island | Photo by We Heart New York

“For this year’s Obscura Day, we once again joined the folks at Underwater New York, this time heading to Staten Island, where we clambered amidst the remains of the St. John’s Guild Children’s Hospital and gazed in sad wonder at the decaying bungalows of the Cedar Grove Beach Club, whose residents were evicted in 2010.”
– Obscura Day Attendee at Forgotten Beaches

GREENWOOD CEMETERY

Learning about historic disasters, Greenwood Cemetery | Photo by Ainsley McWha

“Exploring catacombs of New York disasters!”
– Obscura Day Attendee at Greenwood Cemetery

URBAN FORAGING

Learning what to eat and not to eat, Central Park | Photo by E. Mueller

“This plant is beautiful and deadly, like my ex-girlfriend.”
– Obscura Day Attendee at Urban Foraging

NEW YORK STREET PHOTOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

Photographing street art, Downtown New York | Photo by Passport Addict

“I had a great time during the tour, and I got that much more acquainted with my camera, downtown New York City, street art, and photography in general. All in all, I definitely can’t wait for Obscura Day 2013!”
– Obscura Day Attendee at New York Street Photography Workshop

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Anna Clarke grew up outside of Washington, DC. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Portland Review, Paradigm Journal, Connotation Press and The Slim Anthology of Contemporary Poetics. She was also a finalist in the 2010 Flatmancrooked Poetry Contest, judged by Mary Karr. Anna holds an MFA in Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Enter the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center (GMDC), a non-profit industrial developer that over the past twenty years has rehabilitated six North Brooklyn buildings and made more than 750,000 square feet of space available to small manufacturers, artisans and artists. The 99 businesses currently operating in GMDC facilities currently employ over 500 people. In addition to the local economic development benefits, the environmental advantages of retrofitting existing buildings to enable the production of local goods by local workers are huge. The greenest building, after all, is the one you have already. GMDC’s model is starting to receive attention from other cities around the country eager to help bring industrial jobs back to their communities. We sat down with Brian Coleman, CEO of GMDC, to discuss this model, the changing nature of manufacturing and the increasing challenges to making buildings that respond to cultural, demographic and economic shifts in urban industry.

-C.S.

GMDC's offices are located at the first building it acquired and renovated, at 1155-1205 Manhattan Avenue, which currently houses over 70 businesses.

How did the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center come to be?
GMDC was founded twenty years ago in order to save the building we are in currently, 1155-1205 Manhattan Avenue, from demolition. The City had repossessed the building from its previous owners for non-payment of taxes. In those years, the City didn’t manage its assets as well as it does today. And so it seemed easier to knock the building down, fence up the property, and save it for another day. My predecessor, who worked for a small local development corporation up the block, got involved in trying to save the building and the sizable concentration of jobs within it. After several years of arm-twisting, political good will and a lot of meetings, we were able to purchase the building for $1 and the City invested $1,000,000 to begin renovations.

The building does have some historical significance. It was built in the 1870s as a jute mill that made rope for the maritime industry. Over the years, as the demand for jute declined, the building was able to conform itself to the manufacturing needs of the day. And throughout, there have been good, solid businesses here that have provided good, solid jobs. The main impetus to protect it from demolition was to save the jobs located here.

Since then, we’ve probably put more than $15 million into the project. We have 70 to 75 tenants here; over 300 jobs in this one facility here alone. And we’ve been able to rehabilitate five other buildings in Brooklyn over the years. The average salary of one of the manufacturing jobs in our buildings is almost $43,000 a year. That’s about twenty thousand dollars more than a job in retail or food service. Manufacturing jobs are still an entryway to the middle class.

Even though the world of manufacturing has changed throughout the U.S., in the Northeast in particular, manufacturing jobs still exist in New York City. Of course, they’re different from what they used to be.

How so?
Manufacturing in New York used to be primarily mass production, it used to consist of “widget makers.” Currently, pretty much the only mass production that’s left in New York City is food production.

I like to describe the businesses in our building as “not my father’s or grandfather’s version of manufacturing.” These are small, custom, artisanal, value-added operations that are generally selling a high-end product to a local market. An architectural woodworker might be doing a Park Avenue boardroom, or a luxury condiminium in SoHo or Brooklyn Heights (or now maybe even in Greenpoint). A jewelry maker whose number-one client is Barney’s needs to be close to buyers on Madison Avenue as well as the media outlets based in New York.

Over the years, we’ve witnessed the demographics of our tenants change dramatically. The profile of a typical worker in one of our buildings has shifted from a male in his late fifties with a high school degree to a younger, better-educated set of people using rapidly-advancing technologies and working at the intersection of arts and electronics. 10 to 15 percent of our tenants are actually working artists. And a lot of the manufacturers who work in our buildings also have some kind of connection to art, from high-end woodwork and millwork to costume design and fabrication for the theater.

What does it mean to be the city’s “only non-profit industrial developer”?
We like to think that there are three aspects of our approach that differentiate us from a for-profit developer. The first is cost. Our lease rates are typically 10 to 15 percent below market. The second is that our average lease is five years, which is a much longer lease term than what a typical landlord, who prefers the flexibility of month-to-month or year-to-year leases, would offer. A lot of our newer tenants, we’ve found through surveys, have had to move two or more times in the five years prior to coming to us. The costs of making those frequent moves are a disaster for a small business. GMDC’s lease terms can make our buildings seem like a port in a storm for small manufacturers; a place where the security of a long-term, renewable lease enables them to concentrate on growing their business, on creating jobs.

And the final reason is that we like to describe ourselves as benevolent landlords. Not unlike a not-for-profit affordable housing developer, we’re here in our tenants’ best interest. We’re here to make sure that they have a roof over their head, that they have quality space and the assistance they need.

We’re not feeding the poor; we’re not housing the homeless; our tenants are for-profit businesses. But what we do, not a lot of people do. And it’s harder and harder to do it because we compete in a real estate market that, despite what’s gone on in the world since 2008, is escalating. There’s a shortage of physical stock for us to work with, and I attribute that to speculation of various types; to legal and illegal conversions of industrial buildings to residential uses; and to the increasing demand for warehouse space – much of which is used to store goods imported from, say, China before being distributed to your local 99-cent store.

When it comes to residential conversions, the only jobs that a condominium creates are a doorman and a porter. And when it comes to warehouse uses, we don’t lease space for those operations because they are low-skill or no-skill jobs that pay, if you’re lucky, $10 to $12 an hour, whereas our tenants have employees making $80,000 to $90,000. We want to devote our space to good jobs, and manufacturers create good jobs. You might not get rich working in manufacturing, but you’ll be able to eat and keep a roof over your family’s head, and that’s not something that’s so easy in New York these days.

So, we’re fairly unique. We do have some friendly competitors – the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the Economic Development Corporation’s Brooklyn Army Terminal, for example – that are starting to adopt a model similar to ours by focusing on smaller-scale businesses. Certainly it would be possible to attract larger businesses – Philadelphia, for example, has been building 100,000 square foot facilities for a large-scale baker and for a significant pharmaceuticals entity – but I think New York has decided to prioritize the smaller scale businesses.

How did you get involved in this work?
I was born and raised in Brooklyn; I’ve raised my family here; my heart’s always been here. I’ve spent 25 years working in economic development and real estate, and I have been very lucky to run GMDC for the last nine years. The intersection between the economic development mission and the real estate work offered me the best of both worlds professionally.

It’s a very interesting place to work. We have great, diverse and dynamic tenants. And coming to work every day is both challenging and interesting because it’s a little bit different every day. And at the end of the day we do good work. Our tenants appreciate what we do.

How has GMDC, as an institution, responded to the City’s policy decisions over the past few years that directly affect industrial space? I’m thinking of the rezonings along the Williamsburg and Greenpoint waterfront, of course, but also of the Industrial Business Zones (IBZs) and the Mayor’s Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses?
If I look out my office window, I can see exactly where the 2005 rezoning of much of the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront ends. It literally ends at our building; everything south of us was rezoned, and there was a lot of collateral damage. We were able to help some the businesses that were told they had to relocate – sometimes in a matter of days – but we weren’t able to help them all.

Back in 2005 and 2006, we had a waiting list of 70 businesses that wanted to come into our buildings. With that kind of demand, there was bound to be fallout when so much industrial property ceased to be zoned for manufacturing. We were able to mitigate some of the damage: along with the New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN), we were a significant voice working with the City to help shape their thinking about which blocks we thought should be taken out of the proposed rezoning. We were able to win some battles, but at the end of the day not all of the manufacturing in the rezoned area was able to relocate. Most of these small businesses were renters: 20 or 30 years ago, a small manufacturer in North Brooklyn didn’t necessarily need the burdens of property ownership. You made your modest rent payments – manufacturers tend to be on the lower end of the rent scale – and your landlord was happy and you were happy. This was not a rough neighborhood, it was a manufacturing neighborhood, where working class people lived in rented two- and three-family homes and walked to work. Not only have the jobs left the area, but now those homes sell for $1,000,000 and the former residents can’t afford to live here. The rezoning, unfortunately, has caused significant damage. I don’t think any of the manufacturers in this area twenty years ago envisioned that they would lose their homes and workplaces to gentrification.

I think the Bloomberg Administration had a sense, around 2005, that as it was working up to this very large rezoning of industrial land, some protections had to be put in place to help lessen the blow. So the Mayor’s Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses and the IBZs were created. That Office doesn’t really exist anymore, the IBZ budgets have been decimated, and the enforcement of areas dedicated to manufacturing is weak.

But we are certainly encouraged by some things. The Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC)  appointed Miquela Craytor, who was formerly heading up Sustainable South Bronx, to run EDC’s industrial desk. She’s only been there for a few months, but she knows the sector well and we look forward to seeing how EDC will try to grow the number of jobs in the sector. And we are starting to see a little bit of manufacturing come back from overseas, products that need to be made “just-in-time” and therefore can’t be manufactured in Asia. And there are new technologies like 3D printing that are really promising and hopefully will be able to create new jobs.

Nonetheless, we would prefer for manufacturing to be protected with stronger zoning. Zoning is a more powerful instrument than any mayoral office that might be created because it’s more difficult to circumnavigate.

So, even with the environmental protections that we have in place now and the ways in which production has changed, you still think it’s necessary to regulate and segregate different land uses like residential, commercial or industrial?
I do. In areas that are zoned M1 (light manufacturing) or M3 (heavier manufacturing), a wide range of uses are allowed, including big box retail, hotels, certain medical uses. Competing with those kinds of businesses is difficult enough. Competing with speculative residential development in an escalating market is even more so. So, yes, I think zoning – and the strict enforcement of zoning – is still important.

I’m curious about the relationship between industrial development and sustainability. You talked about how in the old days, people would walk to work, and one of the statistics GMDC cites in its annual reports is how many of the commuters to your facilities walk or take transit to work.
We’re really proud of that statistic. Almost two thirds of our tenants and their employees walk, bike or take public transportation to work. Our facilities, we like to say, create jobs for local people. Sometimes, on new projects, people will ask us, “Hey, can you do a LEED building?” And frankly, LEED doesn’t have a category for what GMDC does. We take old industrial buildings and repurpose them for new kinds of industrial uses.

That’s very environmentally sound in itself, but we’ve also been on the cutting edge of green initiatives. We’ve experimented with solar – at one point we had the largest commercial solar power array in New York City. We were involved in commercial net-metering. And we worked with a group of three really smart people to develop the first urban hydroponic farm in the country: 15,000 square feet of space growing and selling commercial produce to Fresh Direct, Whole Foods and other regional retailers.

What do you see as the biggest hurdles to your work going forward?
Our ability to acquire affordable real estate and to create affordable space for small manufacturers. Residential conversions, both legal and illegal, only diminish an already shrinking supply of industrial stock. The rezonings have driven up the cost of real estate. So acquiring a space we can afford, renovating it and offering it to a small manufacturer at an affordable rent is increasingly difficult. And the increasing expenses aren’t just the costs of the real estate. On one property, we had to use some public subsidy and some New Markets and Historic Tax Credits (PDF) to make the deal work. The legal bill for the tax credit transaction alone was in excess of $500,000. We have to use these increasingly exotic and expensive, though useful, tools. And more expensive transaction costs means it’s that much more difficult for us to offer a $12, $14 or $16 per square foot rent that a cabinet maker, jewelry maker or glass maker can afford.

Do you think the kind of businesses that GMDC serves, with all of the changes that you have described, require the same building typologies as earlier generations of industry and manufacturing?
Most modern manufacturers would look at the typical building GMDC utilizes and say that it’s useless, because most modern manufacturing – whether in an American suburb or abroad – is horizontal, not vertical. We’ve been able to take what most people believe are basically obsolete buildings and re-tenant them with niche industries that can work on the third, fourth or fifth floor.

And over the past 12 to 24 months, our model has been attracting more attention. When President Obama starts talking about manufacturing jobs in his State of the Union address, there is all of a sudden more interest in what GMDC does and how it does it. A lot of communities nationwide want to bring manufacturing back, and we are currently working on projects in Philadelphia and St. Paul, Minnesota that are the beginning of our work to help other groups around the country to replicate our model.

Brian T. Coleman serves as the CEO of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center and its related companies. He joined GMDC in 2003 after sixteen years of experience in economic development, commercial, industrial, and residential development and property management in New York City and New Jersey. Most recently, Coleman led a development team that acquired and rehabilitated an historic 72,000 square foot industrial property in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  The $17.8 million project utilized a combination of Historic and New Market Tax Credits and is the home of 12 businesses and over 100 jobs. GMDC is currently working to replicate its non-profit model in the City of Philadelphia and St. Paul, Minnesota.

All images courtesy of the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center.

[1] Crean, Sarah “Did City’s Industrial Policy Manufacture Defeat?” in City Limits Monday, Jan 3, 2011

Rendering of Moynihan Station Concourse | Image via of Friends of Moynihan Station.

MOYNIHAN COMMENCEMENT
The demolition of the original Pennsylvania Station sparked furor at the loss of a grand entrance to the city. Renovations to the current Penn Station have been on hold due to insufficient funding for years now. But hope looms on the horizon. Port Authority executive director Patrick Foye has announced that construction will soon begin on phase one of the new Moynihan Station. While phase two, turning the Farley Post Office building into a grand intercity train station, is still a long way off, phase one will widen concourses, ease access to the commuter lines and add new entrances to the concourses via the post office building. According to Foye, “the commencement of construction here later this year is gonna send a message to the development community, to investors, to Related and to Vornado and frankly to the whole community that this project’s gonna happen.” Check out the coverage at Capital New York and Second Avenue Sagas.

GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL: A TRIUMPH OF ENGINEERING
A few years ago, Vishaan Chakrabarti offered his take on Why Grand Central Works, and now the station is being formally honored for it. Grand Central Terminal is already a historic landmark, on both city and national registers, for its architecture. Now it joins the ranks of the Erie Canal, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Hoover Dam to become a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark. According to The New York Times‘ City Room, the American Society of Civil Engineers identified several reasons for the site’s designation as “a triumph of engineering,” including its use of ramps, high platforms and separated departure areas (one floor for commuters, the other for long-distance travelers) to ease flow and boarding. The group also recognized the site’s place in real estate history for its pioneering use of selling air rights above the rail lines and storage areas, which allowed a vast train yard in the middle of the city to become some of the city’s most valuable real estate. Not to mention, the engineers’ society added, “the system still works.”

Image via NYC DOT

CITI BIKE
Mayor Bloomberg and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit announced this week that New York City’s forthcoming bike share program will be sponsored by Citibank to the tune of $41 million, with Mastercard contributing $6.5 million to sponsor the payment system. The bright blue Citi Bikes will start appearing in about a month and a map of draft locations for the first 420 of 600 stations in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Long Island City is now available on the NYC DOT’s Bike Share site. The program will be the largest in the U.S., the only one in the country that is entirely privately funded, and will deploy 10,000 bikes by August 2013. Some are frustrated by the slow roll-out, and many are questioning the price structure, in which costs escalate quickly for anyone who plans to use the bikes for more than the initial 30-45 minute free period (depending on membership level). However, the Citi Bike website states clearly that the program is intended “to be used primarily for trips under 3 miles,” making it a complement to, rather than a replacement for, other modes of transportation. For more information about pricing, how the bike share will work, and where to find upcoming bike share demos, visit the Citi Bike website.

TEST CITY
Hobbs, NM is about to play host to a experimental, uninhabited “scientific ghost town” modeled after the quintessential modern-day American city. City Lab is a $1 billion environment, produced by Pegasus Global Holdings, that will cover about 400 acres and will include urban, suburban and rural zones designed to accommodate a population of approximately 35,000. But, in order to ”allow for a true laboratory without the complication and safety issues associated with residents,” it will be entirely unpopulated. Thus, the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation (CITE) will “allow new technologies to integrate into the nation’s urban, suburban and rural ‘legacy infrastructure,’ and provide detailed measurable results on their impact to the economy and its many sectors.” CITE will initially be set up to test intelligent transportation systems (ITS), green energy, alternative energy power generation (e.g. geothermal, solar), smart grid technologies, next generation wireless infrastructure,  and new first responder technology for homeland security. Read more on the CITE City website and on Boing Boing.

Image via Socrates Sculpture Park

EVENTS and TO DOs

CIVIC ACTION PART II
When part one of Civic Action: A Vision for Long Island City opened this past fall, we spoke to Jenny Dixon, the director of the Noguchi Museum, and Alyson Baker, the former executive director of Socrates Sculpture Park about the project. Now, the socially-engaged artists who led the design teams in part one, Natalie Jeremijenko and xClinic, Mary Miss, Rirkrit Tiravanija and George Trakas, have expanded on their ideas for part two of the exhibition, an installation at Socrates Sculpture Park that opens this weekend. Through “sculpture, site-specific installations, earthworks and participatory, social activities,” the artists will further explore concerns of sustainability, accessibility, development and neighborhood change in Long Island City, a neighborhood with a strong tradition of artistic presence and influence. Part two of Civic Action opens Sunday, May 13, 2-6pm, and will be on view through August 5. More information is available here.

THE SECRET SOUNDS OF CITIES
Tasked with the challenge of performing and showing the secret sounds of the cities in which they live, architects, urbanists, sound artists and DJs from around the world will perform at The McKittrick Hotel on Thursday, May 17. Hosted by The Storefront for Art and Architecture and curated by Daniel Perlin, the Secret Sounds of Cities will feature the sounds of seven cities interpreted and performed by seven artists and will be followed by a dance party. The event is free and open to the public and there’s already a waitlist. Add your name to it here.

APPLY FOR THE UNIONDOCS COLLABORATIVE STUDIO
Regular Omnibus readers may have noticed our recaps of a number of interesting events put on by UnionDocs, a center for documentary arts in Williamsburg that has demonstrated a consistent and sensitive interest in creative representation and exploration of urban space and New York in particular. If you’re interested in actually making, as opposed to just appreciating, evocative non-fiction multi-media work — place-based or otherwise — now’s your chance: apply to be a part of UnionDocs’ Collaborative Studio. The Studio starts in September 2012; deadline for application is June 30th. International applicants are encouraged, with visa and residency options available.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

-C.S.

An Occupy Wall Street working group at the 60 Wall Street POPS

READING PRIVATELY OWNED PUBLIC SPACE
The recent occupation and re-occupation of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan by the Occupy Wall Street protesters provoked an accompanying frenzy of classificatory activity around the terms “public space” and “privately owned public space” and the behaviors that are encouraged, allowed or prohibited in these spaces. “Tell me how you classify,” writes Alain Robbe-Grillet quoting Roland Barthes paraphrasing Brillat-Savarin, “and I’ll tell you who you are.”[1] And, we might now add, whom you do not want using your public space.[2]

According to the canonical text on privately owned public space, or POPS, Privately Owned Public Space, The New York City Experience (2000) – co-authored by Jerold Kayden, professor of urban planning and design at Harvard and the leading expert on the subject, the Department of City Planning and the Municipal Art Society — 41% of the 503 existing POPS were “of marginal utility.”[3] In the twelve years since that study was published, the worst of these spaces have only gotten worse, the percentage of marginal spaces has increased, and very few new, outstanding or rehabilitated spaces have been built.

The activities owners allow or prohibit in a POPS constitute one of the key indicators of its health and vitality. And prohibitions posted on POPS’ Rules of Conduct signs range from simple rules like “No Smoking” to exhaustive catalogues that sound more like the Abominations of Leviticus than descriptions of expected behavior in public space. Therefore, a close reading of a space’s posted Rules of Conduct can suggest how well or poorly a space functions. I might take this argument a step further: without ever visiting a particular POPS, a shrewd observer could simply analyze its Rules of Conduct sign in order to divine its character, location, design concept or parti, and current condition.

The City’s recent public plaza zoning, enacted in 2007, contains the following provision governing the design and content of Rules of Conduct signs (italics denote defined terms in the zoning):

[A "Rule of Conduct"] sign shall not prohibit behaviors that are consistent with the normal public use of the public plaza such as lingering, eating, drinking of non-alcoholic beverages or gathering in small groups. No behaviors, actions, or items may be listed on such sign that are otherwise illegal or prohibited by municipal, State, or Federal laws.[4]

In general, Rules of Conduct signs in POPS specify prohibitions in four categories: movement (“no skateboarding”); sound (“no radio-playing”); illegal activity (“no distribution of controlled substances”); and use of space (“no sleeping”). In the post-Zuccotti-Park era, however, an increasing number of owners of POPS have begun posting regulations that essentially limit all permitted activities to passive uses.

Little thought was given to what public space meant… the simple provision of space itself was considered an unalloyed good.Even before Zuccotti Park, this desire for passivity was a recurring subtext in Rules of Conduct signs. The posted rules for many POPS are coded with an underlying fear of activity, of users whose impulses, if unchecked, are to gamble, deal drugs, play loud music, engage in public sex, and otherwise misbehave and disturb the blessèd calm of public space. These signs express a view of public space as fundamentally inert, of public space as a refuge from urban life rather than as a place of engagement within it.

VISITING ZUCCOTTI (BEFORE AND AFTER)
The regulations posted on the Zuccotti Park Rules of Conduct sign were the subject of a recent lawsuit by the Occupy Wall Street (“OWS”) protesters. New York State Supreme Court Justice Michael Stallman’s decision ratified Mayor Michael M. Bloomberg’s expulsion of the protesters from the park, at least to the extent that they can no longer colonize the space with tents and other structures with impunity. The space has returned (mostly) to its spinsterish previous life as a large, empty plaza. In his brief decision denying their motion for a full restoration of the encampment, Judge Stallman held that the protesters had “not demonstrated that the rules adopted by the owners of the property… are not reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions permitted under the First Amendment.”[5]

In an amicus brief recently filed by the City opposing a new suit brought by the NYCLU seeking to vacate charges of trespass, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of governmental administration against an OWS protestor, the City writes: “Many of the NYCLU’s assertions misconstrue the nature of POPS in general, the ability of POPS owners to prescribe reasonable rules of conduct for those using the space and the particular provisions of the Zoning Resolution applicable to Zuccotti Park.”[6] But the regulations governing POPS and Rules of Conduct are not nearly as clear as the City would have the court believe.

Kayden, et al., cite the origin of POPS in the 1958 Voorhees draft zoning resolution, the basis for the City’s 1961 revisions of the 1916 zoning, which matter-of-factly recites the rationale for incentivizing public space through zoning: “[i]n order to bring more light and air into the streets surrounded by tall buildings, as well as to create more usable open space, a bonus device has been established to encourage the setting back of buildings from the street line.”[7] The original bonus dealt only with plazas in front of the building, and can be traced to the 1961 drafters’ reliance on the Corbusian model of the “tower in the park,” which later so vexed the contextualists and their streetwall model.

A problem that has come down to us through the genesis of the regulatory history of POPS is that, until relatively recently, little thought has been given to what public space means in the context of private ownership: the simple provision of space itself was considered an unalloyed good.

Left: Original Rules of Conduct sign for Zuccotti Park | Right: Post-occupation rules for Zuccotti Park

The rules the Supreme Court decision deals with were promulgated by Brookfield Properties, the owners of the POPS, after the occupation was already in full swing. The pre-occupation rules for Zuccotti Park — named for John E. Zuccotti, the Chairman of Brookfield, who chaired the City Planning Commission when the first major revision of zoning rules requiring descriptive signage in POPS was undertaken — were much milder than the new ones, prohibiting only active “nuisance” activities.

The revised, post-occupation Zuccotti Park rules upheld in the Supreme Court decision specifically cited its intended use for “passive recreation,” among a host of other very specific prohibitions.

The suit illustrated how amorphous the regulations are that control POPS. According to the City’s own analysis, the zoning “never expressly defines what limits the owner may impose, if any, upon… public use” in POPS.[8]

Rules of Conduct sign for 590 Atrium

EXAMINING THE SIGNS
Even the best spaces in the inventory, like 590 Atrium, the POPS in the former IBM building, tend to err on the side of inclusiveness when deciding what activities should be banned, listing multiple, seemingly arbitrary collections of prohibited behaviors.

Despite its stern phraseology and Teutonic capitalization, the 590 posting is far less threatening than many POPS signs. But it also offers a few key indicators of how building owners (and their legal departments) view appropriate behavior in public space as essentially one of “quiet enjoyment.”

Left: The Carlton Regency North POPS, empty even of required amenities | Right: Carlton Regency North Rules of Conduct sign

Some Rules of Conduct signs imply a harrowing past for a particular space. One Midtown POPS has posted a Rules of Conduct sign that prohibits “fighting, assaulting another person, engaging in sexual activity,” and contains a “no defecating” clause. It seems to me that an explicit rule against defecation, suggesting that without the prohibition a user might think it permissible, would only seem necessary in an extremely poorly designed space. And, indeed, the Carlton Regency North at the southeast corner of East 37th Street and Lexington Avenue is one of the worst-designed spaces in the entire POPS inventory, to the shame of its designer (listed in the City Planning POPS database as Harry F. Green) and to the building that “maintains” it.

Rules of Conduct signs at Penn Plaza

Some other troubled spaces, like the Penn Plaza complex, which contains seven large POPS, gang-post several signs together as newer behavioral issues emerge to be confronted. The through-block space off 34th Street contains a gamut of users at lunchtime, but at off-times during the day in good weather, when local workers are at their desks, the space is filled with street people. Lest their enjoyment of the sun and the planter seating become troublesome to Vornado, the owner of the POPS at Penn Plaza and around Penn Station, the company has also posted numerous signs to remind visitors that the space is closed at night, and that the rules prohibit sleeping, panhandling and loitering. Also prohibited are more actively problematic behaviors like rollerblading, skateboarding, biking and littering, which required the addition of a footnote of a sign below the larger one.

The POPS at 60 Wall Street, on the ground floor of the Deutsche Bank building, is a vast, postmodern, vaguely orientalist confection designed by Kevin Roche, complete with palm trees and originally a water feature along the western wall. After the evacuation of Zuccotti Park, the space played host to “working groups” of OWS protesters who offered training and workshops in subjects like “Nonviolent Communication and Compassionate Communication.”

After the diaspora from Zuccotti Park, Deutsche Bank posted six large signs (non-conforming under the new zoning rules), laying out a new program of prohibitions, which included a ban on “signs and posters,” a provision that seemed aimed at the OWS groups now using the atrium. After the rule was challenged on First Amendment grounds, Deutsche Bank issued a clarification maintaining that the rule was intended to apply only to affixing signs to walls and other parts of the premises and was not intended to limit the carrying or display of signs by protesters.[9]

Left: New Rules of Conduct signs at 60 Wall Street | Right: The western half of the space, with homeless concentration

Almost since its opening, 60 Wall Street has been the cold-weather refuge for a large homeless population. But because the space is so vast — two sections of tables and chairs separated by a wide central circulation aisle, and even a subway entrance to the IRT Wall Street station — the homeless users and local Wall Street workers co-exist without direct interaction. The homeless stick mainly to the western half of the space along the wall and the Wall Street crowd occupy the tables on the eastern edge, next to a row of small shops. 60 Wall Street illustrates an important, but largely unacknowledged, function of some of the larger spaces in the POPS inventory: that of providing warmth, shelter and some degree of bodily comfort (there are also two public restrooms in the space) to a population that would otherwise be out on the street, unprotected during the winter months. The responsibility of POPS owners to accommodate all users is well-documented; as City Planning has itself made clear, exclusion by owners of classes of “undesirable” persons for reasons other than improper conduct is forbidden.[10]

Despite all the rule-making, there is still no clear guide as to what constitutes proper behavior in a POPS, or exactly what kind of activities property owners can control. The spaces themselves offer a bewildering array of definitions.

Rules of Conduct sign for the Whitney Sculpture Court

The POPS at the old Whitney Sculpture Court space across from Grand Central, which lost its art-related use in 1997, has a lengthy list of prohibitions, including “no controlled substances” in addition to the standard no gambling and no drinking clauses, and a somewhat ambiguous prohibition against “conduct which is inconsistent with a Sculpture Gallery.” To begin with, the sculpture gallery has been out of existence for fifteen years, so what was contemplated by that rule? Too-fervent criticism of Modular Constructivism? It is impossible to know what the drafters of the Rules of Conduct signs were after precisely, except the legal protections afforded by prohibitory repletion in case someone needs to be removed from the space and its owners defended from legal action.

In the shadow of the occupation of Zuccotti Park, new signs with deeper prohibitions have begun appearing. The new signs, in addition to the standard “no skateboarding” sorts of rules, now all contain variants of the revised Zuccotti Park restrictions, specifically what we might think of as protester-unfriendly prohibitions:

No camping or erection of tents

No lying down on the ground or on benches

No tarps or sleeping bags

No storage of personal property

No obstruction of paths or entrances

SEEKING CLARITY
The Zuccotti Park occupation has changed the way owners of POPS have thought about regulating behavior in their spaces. However restrictive some Rules of Conduct signs may have seemed before Zuccotti, they were also so vague and unsystematic as to be unenforceable. For example, the zoning specifically encourages “lingering” in spaces; but many Rules of Conduct signs ban “loitering.” How is the line between the two determined? The new rules, by contrast, are clear and unambiguous: no camping, no tents, no occupation.

Since the new “post-Zuccotti” rules have now been tested by at least one court and found to be “reasonable time, place and manner restrictions” permitted by the First Amendment, their adoption by many more owners is a certainty. And while City Planning has managed to stay mostly above the fray in the battle over the use of Zuccotti Park, which has been stage-managed by the Mayor’s Office, groups like the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) have started to apply pressure to allow nighttime closings for all spaces similar to the closing times for New York City’s public parks in order to define a set of clear, enforceable rules, a zoning change that would need to go through the City Planning Commission.

Left: 41 Madison Avenue with newly posted anti-camping regulations based on the Zuccotti Park rules | Right: 345 Park Avenue's "post-Zuccotti" rules

The current planning department director and Chair of the Planning Commission, Amanda Burden, is a protégée of William Holly Whyte, the great theorist and healer of urban public spaces. She recently directed the department to restructure and tighten the zoning rules governing public plazas based on Whyte’s observations of and recommendations for best practices in public spaces, especially with regard to seating. Because of her decades-long involvement with and love of public space, her administration has been marked by a brilliantly close reading [11] of these spaces. However, the revised rules are prospective, and with very few new spaces getting built, they are little-used. Existing spaces are not helped at all by the new regulatory framework unless they are rehabilitated.

At the end of March, both City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the Mayor went on the record to support the idea that POPS should obey the Rules of Conduct for New York City parks, which include, for most parks, nighttime closings and time-tested regulations against both commercial and private activities, including camping. The City’s interest in defining POPS activities by a known universe of regulations, along the lines of the rules for public parks, is clear. Parks have evolved a clear separation of public uses from private intrusions like commercial activities in part through licensing, which in turn supports the parks through the fees collected, and requirements for City permits for protests or parades. The situation of hybrid spaces like POPS is less clear and thus explains the City’s enthusiasm for applying the parks rules to clarify and reinforce its rights in managing what happens in the spaces.

In the post-Zuccotti Park era, an increasing number of POPS owners have begun posting regulations that essentially limit all permitted activities to passive uses. In part, the confusion about what these spaces are for derives from the term “public space” itself, and even more from the hybrid condition known as “privately owned public space.” The critic Rowan Moore has pointed out the “insubstantiality” of the very concept of public space, evident in the phrase itself, a criticism voiced by Marc Augé and other scholars about the other common generic identifier, “green space.” Both are abstractions that “corrode” (Augé’s term) the experience of actual places. “No one says, ‘I am going to the public space this afternoon,’”[12] Moore writes, identifying the central lack of definability in the image-repertoire of the concept.

But definitional clarity alone will not reconcile competing interests in POPS. While regulations and enforcement need to address the assumption among property owners that people will not behave appropriately unless sternly admonished about what they can and cannot do in a space, the fundamental disconnect between the rights of property owners to control activities within POPS and the rights of the public to protest and even occupy these spaces remains muddled and perhaps ultimately irresolvable.

Any successful set of rules will need to balance free speech with property rights in the wake of the conflicts at Zuccotti Park, but simply regularizing the array of private rules of conduct in POPS, with their quirky, restrictive and sometimes incomprehensible provisions, will be critical in helping to frame the more important debate about rights and restrictions.

“The design of any good city demands a theory of the desirable,” Michael Sorkin wrote in the afterword to his ideal zoning resolution, Local Code.[13] The same is true at the smaller scale of the 517 POPS in the City’s inventory of public space, but the problem is in defining what exactly that unified field theory of the desirable should encompass.

One way of expressing the vision for a particular space is through the rules that govern engagement and interaction within it. These are sometimes explicit (as in the case of POPS), but sometimes expected limits to behavior are expressed in a subtler way, internalized through our daily experience of the urban, public realm. The goal for POPS should be to develop a framework of rules that expresses the freedom of public spaces as long as certain common sense limits are observed about the rights of others. Such a framework is not best represented by Rules of Conduct that limit and hector the user, but rather a set of regulations that provide a sense of the fitness of all activities that do not harm others. A thought experiment: imagine that Rules of Conduct signs tell you nothing about a public space except that it embodies a potential for enjoyment, and that you have to experience it directly to understand and appreciate its particular excellence.

Occupier-modified Zuccotti Park entry plaque

For more information or to get involved in advocacy efforts surrounding POPS, stay tuned for updates about a newly forged collaboration between Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, a group founded by Jerold Kayden, and the Municipal Art Society. A committee (currently in formation), called APOPS@MAS, will  examine the rules for POPS and suggest improvements, an effort that could be the beginning of a useful discussion among stakeholders about the future of public space in the private realm. 

Douglas Woodward is a planner and urban designer.

All photographs by Douglas Woodward, except for “Original Rules of Conduct sign for Zuccotti Park” by Tristan Lewis.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

PICK YOUR PRESERVATION
Preservation efforts across New York City will become $3 million richer this year thanks to a partnership between American Express and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Each year, Partners in Preservation selects historic and cultural monuments from a pool of applicants in a major U.S. city and asks the public to vote on which of the finalists should receive funding. This year, they have selected forty sites in New York City, ranging from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum to the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center to the 1964 World’s Fair Rocket Thrower. The four sites with the most votes will receive full funding, and an advisory committee will decide how to distribute the remaining money. To garner support, this weekend each site will open its doors to visitors for tours and special events, and Untapped New York is profiling all forty sites between now and when voting closes on May 21st. To learn more about the sites, visit them this weekend during a five-borough open house this weekend, or check in with Untapped New York, which is posting profiles of all forty finalists while voting is open. Check out the nominees and place your votes, once per day through May 21st, at partnersinpreservation.com.

KICKSTARTER URBANISM
Kickstarter can be a great tool for designers to get their ideas off the ground, but what are its implications for urbanism? This week on Design Observer, Alexandra Lange takes on Kickstarter Urbanism. The problems inherent to using Kickstarter to fund urbanistic projects, according to Lange, are those that make it such a valuable tool to designers of objects: its universal accessibility, its lack of a physical focal point and the direct connection between the “artist” and the person funding the project. With major urban innovations there are major jurisdictional and bureaucratic hurdles to get past, none of which makes for a good money raising pitch that can be put into a pithy video to headline a Kickstarter campaign. That may be true, Nate Berg then countered in a piece on The Atlantic Cities, but there are some similar websites that can make small but valuable contributions to the development of local planning projects, such as ioby and Brickstarter.

via alexmaclean.com

UP ON THE ROOF
Rooftops are a refuge for the urban dweller. They are above the din, closer to the sun, and away from the crowds — though not quite out of sight. In his new book Up on the Roof: New York’s Hidden Skyline Spaces, Alex MacLean shows a previously privileged view of ”greenhouses, graffiti, topiary, trees, swimming pools, sculpture, lawn chairs, chaises longues, picnic tables, paving stones, cocktail bars, solar panels or a Sopwith Camel.” MacLean’s photographs paint a picture of an unfamiliar New York, one with a seemingly underutilized resource. “Cumulatively, his pictures of New York illustrate a city that has intuitively understood for a long time the value of a ‘green roof,’ and seems poised to exploit the potential.” Read more about his work in The New York Times.

SHARING IS CARING
The Bloomberg administration has made much of it’s commitment to harness the potential of technology and data for the broader good, hosting hackathons, competitions and workshops to create apps that make the city more navigable and comfortable and its government more transparent. But New York City isn’t the only place that’s been seizing the opportunities afforded them by new technologies, and though many cities share common problems, opportunities are scarce for developers to coordinate their efforts. As a result, similar apps are created by different developers for different cities, which is a waste of brain power and time, according to the “G7,” an informal group of CIOs from seven major American cities who are working to improve opportunities for sharing ideas. The group is launching a unified database “that will house standardized data from member cities — Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle — making it easier for them to share applications,” and plan to host events focused on shared problems and shared results. Read more about the project on Governing (via Planetizen).

EVENTS and TO DOs

FRIEZE ART FAIR
The Frieze Art Fair has taken over Randall’s Island for the fair’s U.S. debut, housed in a 250,000 square foot temporary structure designed by SO-IL architects on Randall’s Island (read ArtInfo’s interview with SO-IL about their design here). For this weekend, the fair brings to New York 180 of the leading galleries from around the world to showcase contemporary work by living artists, and presents Frieze Projects, a program of eight commissioned site-specific works, this year by John Ahearn, Uri Aran, Latifa Echakhch, Joel Kyack, Rick Moody, Virginia Overton, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. and Ulla von Brandenburg; Frieze Sounds, a series of audio commissions, produced in association with BMW (since no cultural event/urban intervention in New York is complete without the sponsorship of a German car company); and Frieze Talks, a daily program of lectures, debates and discussions. Frieze New York runs from May 4-7. Tickets must be purchased ahead of time. More information and tickets available here.

MOVEMENTTALKS
Begging the question, “what is the impact of crying out for nature through dance as a visceral, political and an essential response to the contemporary world?”  MovementTalks looks at the ways in which dance as an art form engages space and nature, bringing people together and raising consciousness about global issues such as the safety and availability of drinking water. Join somatic practitioner and educator Martha Eddy; Charles McKinney, the principal urban designer for the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation; Mary Rohe; Andrea Haenggi and Natasha Alhadeff-Jones. Friday, May 11, 8pm, Buttenweiser Hall, 92nd Street Y, Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street. More information and tickets available here.

JANE’S WALK
Keep your fingers crossed for better weather — this weekend the Municipal Art Society has more than 70 walks and bike rides scheduled for its annual Jane’s Walk NYC. Jane’s Walk is an international program that celebrates the neighborhoods that make up a city, created to commemorate the life and legacy of Jane Jacobs. No registration is required, so check out the many options available on the MAS website and put your walking shoes on!

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Dutch Kills Green | Image: Linda Pollak

Public Space Potluck: Dutch Kills Green
Tuesday, May 15th
UPDATED DATE: Wednesday, May 23rd
6:30-8:00 pm
Queens Plaza, Long Island City, Queens
Queensboro Plaza (7, 7X, N, Q)
Queens Plaza (E, M, R)
Free and open to all
RSVP on Facebook or by email to rsvp@designtrust.org by Monday, May 14 Wednesday, May 23

Join Urban Omnibus and the Design Trust for Public Space for a field trip to Dutch Kills Green, a one-acre public space at the eastern end of Queens Plaza, Long Island City’s newly-transformed gateway to the borough.

Dutch Kills Green opened last month, marking the completion of a $45 million project to revitalize Queens Plaza that has improved roadway and streetscape design, reclaimed open space for public use, and reconnected the surrounding neighborhoods to the nearby river. A former commuter parking lot, the site now boasts ample green space with wetlands, native plantings, inviting seating, and permeable pavers designed by artist Michael Singer.

In 2009, we spoke with architects and urban designers Sandro Marpillero and Linda Pollak of Marpillero Pollak Architects, and landscape designer Margie Ruddick of WRT Design — the principal designers of the project along with Michael Singer Studio — to talk about the Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project and how the site challenges conventional notions of what an urban park can be. The redesign, overseen by the NYC Department of City Planning and the NYC Economic Development Corporation, “transforms the tangle of urban infrastructure cutting through Long Island City from a harsh, disorienting industrial maze into a lush, navigable landscape, a gateway to Long Island City that organizes various flows and scales while providing a refuge for residents, workers and the road-weary.“

It’s time to see the results of their efforts for ourselves, so we’re partnering again with our friends at the Design Trust for one of their Public Space Potlucks. These potlucks are informal events that invite urbanists to share a meal and some conversation while exploring New York City’s built environment. Please bring your own beverage and a dish to share. Plates, napkins and utensils will be provided.

We will be at Queens Plaza’s Dutch Kills Green from 6:30-8:00pm. Arrive by 6:45pm to hear from key players involved in the project (list in formation):

Penny Lee, Senior Planner, New York City Department of City Planning
Linda Pollak, Principal, Marpillero Pollak Architects
Margie Ruddick, WRT Design
Tracy Sayegh Gabriel, Vice President, Development, New York City Economic Development Corporation
Leni Schwendinger, Principal, Light Projects Ltd.
Margie Ruddick, Principal, Margie Ruddick Design

Feel free to invite friends and colleagues, just remember to RSVP on Facebook or by email to rsvp@designtrust.org by Monday, May 14 Wednesday, May 23

After the potluck, the Long Island City exploration will continue over cocktails at Dutch Kills (27-24 Jackson Ave).

Questions? Contact Kristin LaBuz at the Design Trust for Public Space at klabuz@designtrust.org.

Image courtesy of Marpillero Pollak Architects

-V.S.

Start at my apartment, a rent-stabilized tenement in a nice part of town. The building is pre-war. Not sure which war, so you can choose whatever war you’d like. I prefer the Second Seminole War myself. Photos by Leni Riefenstahl are hung up in the hallway, I guess because someone wanted to make the building look nice and, in addition, remind you of Nazis.

If you walk a block west, you’ll find a little French bakery with a yellow awning. They make buttery, flakey, crusty, slightly sweet, slightly salty croissants. You eat one and forget everything; the croissants make you stupid.

If you walk a block north, you’ll find a park with a pool. On oppressive summer nights, able bodies scale the fence and take a dip. It’s refreshing, until you remember that during the day hundreds of children kamikaze into the pool and pee in the water. We are, after all, 60% water.

The Law & Order franchise has filmed many episodes in this park. The detectives have found three hundred and twenty-two dead bodies there. This number is approximate.

A good friend lives in the apartment building down the block, next to a café that caught on fire last year. I always look up to see if a light is on in his apartment. Sometimes we run into each other on the street and grab an empanada from the guy who hits on every girl who comes into the joint. “You are too beautiful to have a boyfriend.”

Up the block there’s a store that sells rings made of horn. Buffalo horn. That means the eight and a half buffalo left in North America have no horns. But there’s good news — the rings are pretty.

Two blocks west there’s a deli, open 24 hours. It’s owned and operated by a family of elderly Koreans. You pay for a bagel with a five, and the cashier says, “You change is three hundred dollar!” If you are Korean or a regular — and I am both — you get free chocolate. It’s a horrible deli if you hate free candy.

Across the street is a restaurant that specializes in vegan food. Judging by the smell, I’d say it only serves celery.

A block east of that is a trendy restaurant and bar that serves teensy oyster sandwiches and martinis with pickled ramps. I bought music equipment from the executive chef. He makes beats for rappers on his free time.

Walk one block west and one block north, you’ll find a store that sells fresh mozzarella, hand-pulled and plastic-wrapped into little white bocce balls. Out front, two old Italian men sit on plastic lawn chairs, which are chained to a gate. They bicker a lot, or maybe they just seem like they’re bickering because they’re mostly deaf. The shop has handwritten signs yellowed with age, a warped tin ceiling, and peeling linoleum floors. If you ask why there’s a UV light in the store, you will not get an answer.

Across the street is a tiny closet of a pasta restaurant. The week before a friend moved to California we ate there to say goodbye. He finished his plate, my plate, and then ordered another. California has since made him soft.

Three doors south is a hair salon that looks like a punk gothic bordello tripping balls on acid.

If you walk a few blocks north, near a Jamaican snack counter, you’ll see a psychic. She sits, patiently, next to her crystal ball, as though she’s waiting for something to happen. Sometimes she listens to the baseball game.

Now you’ve reached a corner found in nearly every part of the city: Duane Reade on one side, Citibank on the other, a subpar pizza joint, a bar with lousy music (think Bon Jovi, but without irony), a dry cleaner, and a homeless guy sitting on a box. This one is the nice guy. There’s another, less nice guy who declares, “Chinks never give change.”

On the third floor of a building nearby there’s a nail salon. Everyone in the neighborhood seems to agree that it’s a house of ill repute. I don’t know anyone who has taken advantage of the services, but everyone can’t possibly be wrong.

There’s a cantina two blocks east that has a banner for Cinco de Mayo festooned on their wall. It’s up all year long. Every day is Cinco de Mayo.

Around the corner, there’s a famous restaurant, helmed by a celebrity chef. It was the hot spot for exactly two days and now everyone agrees it’s “only OK, and kind of expensive for what you get.” Again, everyone can’t possibly be wrong.

Next door is a popular sushi place that doesn’t take credit cards. There’s an ATM on the street that always has a line. The transaction fee is $4.00, the highest I’ve seen so far.

If you want to buy a purse or stroller to carry your dog, let me know. There are a few in the area. I will make fun of you though.

There was once a bookstore, but it’s now gone.

The pleasant smell of fresh laundry hovers around the Fidelity Investments.

If you walk two blocks south and two blocks west, or if you walk two blocks west and two blocks south, you’ll reach a community garden. It’s small, but packed with pansies, marigolds, oregano, rosemary, and a concrete birdbath with a fairy on it. On the weekends, gardeners come and pick the Corona bottles and cigarette butts out of their beds.

I saw Owen Wilson and Matthew Broderick near there, but not at the same time. They are shorter in real life. Lou Reed smells like patchouli. I’m disappointed too.

Just a few blocks away is the subway station where I stepped in vomit last month. Note: this is not the 50th Street C/E station, where I have also stepped in vomit, nor is it Penn Station stop, where I stepped in vomit. I understand now that the 8th Avenue line is a favorite among those who like to vomit. Also, I need to look where I step.

One block north, there’s the gelato place where my friends got engaged. He bought them cones and then went down on one knee.

My office is exactly two blocks west and twenty-five blocks north of my apartment. Riding the subway, it takes twelve minutes door-to-door, but I prefer to walk.

All photos by Annie Choi. 

Annie Choi is the author of Happy Birthday or Whatever (HarperCollins). Her work has appeared in White Zinfandel, the New Museum’s The Last Newspaper, and Pidgin Magazine, among others. Her second book will be published by Touchstone/Simon & Schuster in 2013. Her blog is at annietown.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Genesis of a icon: In this June 5, 1908 photo, the Manhattan Bridge is less than a shell, seen from Washington Street. It wouldn't be opened for another 18 months and wouldn't be completed for another four years.

NYC 100 YEARS AGO
The New York City Municipal Archives have digitized and made available online 870,000 images dating back to the mid 1800s. The treasure trove of images tells the story of a city in its adolescence. You can see major feats of engineering in their nascency, Babe Ruth attending the 1936 World Series at the Polo Grounds, crime scenes, mug shots, elevated trains, Depression-era bread lines. Because the Municipal Archives house any image that was turned into or taken by the city for any bureaucratic purpose, the range of images made available is mind-boggling and the story that they tell is fairly inclusive. For example, you can find photographs from the mid-1980s of every building in New York City, taken to update the City’s records for tax purposes. See the entire Municipal Archives Digital Gallery here, or (since the site has been down as a result of high traffic) check out slideshows of images selected from the archive at the Daily Mail and The Atlantic.

NEW PLANS FOR THE NYPL?
What will it mean to be a public library in the future?  With new technologies available and research taking on new and different forms, what kind of spaces should a library provide to maintain its democratic purpose? Faced with those questions, the New York Public Library in 2008 announced a $300 million renovation plan for its iconic central branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, a plan that has been met with fierce opposition by many writers and researchers who are apprehensive about how the physical changes might affect the scholarly experience. (For more on the plan and its criticisms, see the NYPL website and past coverage in The Nation, The New York Times and The New Republic.) This week, on Design Observer, Mark Lamster argues that proposed changes to the physical building should be brought before the public. While the NYPL has put forth a strong case for their modifications, which include more space for classes and computer work stations, as well as a projected timeline, they still haven’t provided drawings, plans, sections, renderings or a model. For a building admired and beloved for its majestic spaces, Lamster says, there’s an imperative for the Library to allow the public to see, not just hear about, what these changes might mean.

POST-PANAMAX HARBOR OVERHAULS
In 2006, voters in Panama decided to double the shipping capacity of the Panama Canal, allowing larger, heavier boats to go through the canal — which means that larger, heavier boats will be coming into our harbors. Currently, only the ports of Miami and Norfolk, Virginia have the capacity to service these larger boats, so the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is scrambling to update the harbor infrastructure by 2014, when these “post-Panamax” container ships will begin to arrive. The improvements involve dredging the Anchorage Channel in the Hudson River, replacing siphons that serve as the back up route for fresh drinking water to get to Staten Island and raising the Bayonne Bridge by 64 feet. All told, the project will cost upwards of $1.25 billion, but bring in 279,000 jobs and $9 billion in annual business, according to the Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). See more at MetroFocus.

ANALYZING HYDROELECTRIC
In 2009, we looked at the potential of harvesting energy from the East River. Now it looks like hydroelectric energy from the waterways surrounding New York City — and the water supply system within it – might become a reality. Last week, Gotham Gazette reports, the City Council unanimously passed legislation requiring the city’s Department of Environmental Protection to test New York City’s “water supply, waste-water treatment facilities and natural waterways” as potential sources of hydroelectric power. According to Speaker Christine Quinn, “New York City would be able to power all the lights on Broadway with hydroelectricity produced from water flowing through the pipes under Times Square.”

SEWAGE OVERFLOW ALERT SYSTEM
New York City’s stormwater retention issue has been more and more in the forefront of people’s minds lately. Every time the city is hit with a big storm the sewer system gets overloaded, pouring a combination of waste and stormwater into the New York Harbor. Lief Percifield, a graduate student at Parsons, has a DIY solution. He wants to install sensors at the overflow points along the harbor to alert New York City residents when Combined Sewage Overflows are happening so that residents can take action: if people use less water while the system is strained, by waiting to wash clothing or dishes, they can help alleviate overflow. Read more about Percifield’s project, DontFlushMe, at Gotham Gazette.

EVENTS and TO DOs

OBSCURA DAY
Last month we spoke to Dylan Thuras of Atlas Obscura about finding curiosity and delight in the city around us. This Saturday, April 28, head out to discover some for yourself on Obscura Day 2012, the project’s annual “international celebration of unusual places.” The events in New York include a trip to the forgotten beaches of Staten Island, Brooklyn rooftop camping, a tour of the lost streams of Manhattan and an exploration of Newtown Creek’s Dutch Kills tributary. Become a tourist in the most familiar of neighborhoods and discover the hidden wonders, both natural and unnatural, in your own city. More information and tickets to specific events available here.

FOOD BOOK FAIR
From time to time, we check in with writer, curator and food systems-enthusiast Nicola Twilley about the ways that the infrastructure and culture of food shape our urban environments. Next Friday, as part of the first-ever New York City Food Book Fair, an event that will bring together authors, readers and activists all bound together by their shared interest in food, Twilley and her Foodprint Project co-founder and author of Urban Farms Sarah Rich will be talking about the ways in which cities and food are inextricably linked. The panel will take place on Friday, May 4, 5-6pm, the Wythe Hotel, 80 Wythe Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The Fair runs from Friday, May 4 through Sunday, May 6. More information here.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about