PREFAB YARDS
SHoP Architects and developer Bruce C. Ratner this week unveiled designs for the first Atlantic Yards tower, a 32-story, 350-unit building that will be the world’s tallest prefabricated steel structure. SHoP has worked with ARUP and XSite Modular to develop a bracing structure that will ensure stability and safety for the modular building at a reasonable cost. The use of prefabrication reduces waste, costs and construction time — which all sounds good, except to workers who might see fewer jobs or lower wages than promised, adding more friction to the project’s already contentious debate about jobs. Though the research and technological development of this bracing system is sure to change the game for the application of modular construction moving forward (the tallest prefab structure currently standing is 25 stories, in Wolverhampton, England), Ratner may still choose to build this first tower using more conventional methods — though the Times reminds us that there are fourteen more buildings planned for the site, including a 50-story structure expected to be the second tower built, any or all of which might be constructed modularly. For more, see The New York Times, with more renderings on CurbedNY, and more questions about time frame, affordable housing and jobs raised by this latest announcement on Atlantic Yards Report.

The 10 megapolitan clusters and 23 megapolitan areas of the contiguous 48 states by 2040 | Adapted for Places from map by Grace Bjarnson, Metropolitan Research Center, University of Utah / Brookings Mountain West

MEGAPOLITAN AMERICA
Is the U.S. a nation of megapolitan regions? This week in Places, Robert E. Lang and Arthur C. Nelson question the misconception that America is a low density country in an effort to argue for planning policies that more accurately reflect our nation’s settlement patterns. By excluding park lands and areas that are totally unpopulated from the density calculations, they’ve identified ten megaregions that encompass the majority of the population, and are continuing to grow, with densities that rival Western Europe and even Asia in parts. Recognizing these clusters of economic activity and population density for what they are, the authors argue, calls for a reexamination of resource management, transportation planning and regional governance. Read the full piece.

Subway Construction | photo by Flickr user MTAPhotos.

MTA BLITZES
NYC Transit and the MTA are offering a new option to subway riders annoyed by weekend service delays and re-routings due to maintenance and construction. The MTA, in a plan being presented to their board’s transit committee next week, wants to experiment with shutting down full line segments on consecutive weekday nights (10pm to 5am) for repair “blitzes” that would concentrate and shorten inconvenience while speeding up construction time, improving worker safety and reducing costs. It’s a drastic change for a city used to 24/7 subway service, but a few nights of suspended service compared to weeks or months of weekend service changes seems like a reasonable tradeoff. Read more in the Daily News and on 2nd Ave. Sagas.

MAKING ROOM and THE GRID EXTENDED
Last week, Fred Bernstein published a review of our recent Making Room symposium. Continuing the coverage this week, Michael Kimmelman published a follow up in The New York Times‘ Critic’s Notebook. He reviews a couple of the projects more intensely, but focuses primarily on the work of Jonathan Kirschenfeld in the Bronx. He uses Kirschenfeld’s most recent Single Room Occupancy (SRO) project as a lens through which to view the difficulties of building an SRO in the city, the necessity of this housing type, as well as the neighborhood’s reaction to SROs. Read the full article here, and check out the videos on the Making Room website of the symposium if you didn’t make it.

Another of the Architectural League’s special projects that will surely capture the interest on all the urban enthusiasts reading the Omnibus these days is the League’s upcoming exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan. Eight visionary proposals, selected by a distinguished jury from over 120 submissions to the League’s international Call for Ideas, will be on view from December 5th, in a show that complements MCNY’s historical exhibition The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan for Manhattan: 1811-2011. While we get ready to contemplate the grid’s impact on the past, present and future of New York, ExtendNY has been busy applying the grid’s locational logic to every single point on the surface of the Earth. Imagine, as in the image below, if the ordinal system of streets and avenues made it all the way to Houston:

The Intersection of S 23,441 St and 5,484 Ave in a hypothetical extension of the Manhattan Street Grid

EVENTS and TO DOs

URBAN SUSTAINBILITY IN THE AGE OF CLIMATE JUSTICE: Drawing from his personal research in the metro Phoenix area, Andrew Ross, professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU, will discuss issues pertaining to sustainability in core urban centers. Focusing on key concepts related to eco-friendly design in cities such as water management, urban growth, pollution and energy supply, he will show that solutions to climate change and efforts to create sustainable communities are fundamentally social rather than technical. Tonight, Friday, November 18, 5pm, at The Cooper Union.

BLOCK BY BLOCK: NEW YORK STREET HISTORIANS: On Sunday, UnionDocs will present a conversation among some of New York’s “modern-day storytellers… [whose] work is part of a tradition of ‘unofficial,’ ‘informal,’ underground’ and ‘alternative’ histories” of the city. The panel, curated by Nathan Kensinger, will include author Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York; location scout Nick Carr of Scouting NY; urban explorer Moses Gates of All-City New York and walking tour guide Cindy VandenBosch of UrbanOyster. Sunday, November 20, 7:30pm, at UnionDocs.

GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY NEW YORK CITY ARCHITECTURE: Author and architect John Hill, best known for his blog A Daily Dose of Architecture, has published a new guide to more than 200 new buildings that have come to New York City’s streets in the last decade or so. To celebrate the launch of the Guide to Contemporary New York City Architecture, Van Alen Books will host a party on Monday, November 21st. But first, Hill is offering a free copy of the book to the winner of his architecture trivia quiz on his website. Today’s the last day to enter — take the quiz by 11:59pm to qualify. Monday, November 21, 7pm, at Van Alen Books.

BRACKET CALL 3 – CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: As part of their mission to encourage new forms of thinking revolving around cities, Bracket is constantly inviting the public to contribute to a platform of ideas based around the intersection of architecture, environment and digital culture. Their third issue, entitled Extremes, will explore the architectural, technological and infrastructural mechanisms that enable cities to function and, crucially, to manage an increasing variety and frequency of economic, ecological, infrastructural and social crises. February 20, 2012, is the deadline for submissions, via Bracket’s website.

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SOUTH BRONX RISING
This week, The New York Times new architecture critic Michael Kimmelman took a walk with NYC’s planning commissioner Amanda Burden through the South Bronx. They discuss the area’s long journey after decades of disinvestment and neglect and cite the importance of Nos Quedamos and Yolanda Garcia’s vision of what the South Bronx could become in driving its apparent resurgence, alongside the Bloomberg administration’s smart decisions about the physical elements that make a neighborhood: maintaining a street wall, ground floor retail, street trees and density. The walking tour ends with a followup to Kimmelman’s review of a new residential development in the neighborhood, Via Verde. Check out the video and the write up of the tour.

WHERE TO SHARE?
A couple of weeks ago, Janette Sadik-Khan announced that New York City was starting a new bike share program, set to open with 1000 bikes and 600 docking stations, and asked New Yorkers to suggest where to the stations should be placed. But how will the final locations be selected? The Atlantic Cities reports on the complexities of deciding exactly that. Working with Alta Bike Share, the company selected to implement the program, the city will  ”first target optimal service areas using detailed data models and public suggestions, then approach community boards that govern these areas with at least three possible locations, and last allow the neighborhoods themselves to make the ultimate decision.” In order to reveal the complex methodology of locating the nodes of this new infrastructural system, the article goes on to explain in detail the three “pillars” of a successful bike share program, “high density of stations, close proximity to transit and community feedback.” The public presentations begin next week. Check out the schedule of community meetings and other events at the bike share program’s timeline, and head over to Streetsblog for up-to-date coverage as this program unfolds.

TOO MUCH PARKING!
When people complain about parking in New York, the gripe isn’t usually that New York City has too many spaces. Yet, according to an article in Crain’s New York this week, Robert Moses-era zoning laws dictate that in new residential construction outside of Manhattan, the developer must build four parking spots for every ten residential units, despite New York’s comprehensive mass transit system. Building owners are losing money on predominantly empty parking garages. And even facilities that draw large crowds, like Yankee Stadium, have parking lots that remain mostly empty much of the time. The Yankee Stadium example is now prompting fears that the parking allotment for the contested Atlantic Yards Stadium in Brooklyn will also remain under-utilized. The prospect of a giant blacktop hole adds to an increasing number of concerns about the new development.

PEANUT PARK
New York City is becoming increasingly dependent upon public-private partnerships to maintain its parks. Central Park and Bryant Park have both been arguably saved by such partnerships, to name only two. This week, a new park has opened, this time sponsored by Planters, of nut fame. Mr. Peanut made the requisite appearance at the opening, monocle and all. While there may be something built into the premise of corporate sponsorship of public, even semi-public parks, that smacks ominously of corporate encroachment into civic life, the results are encouraging. Planters Grove, one of three such parks sponsored by Planters and designed by Ken Smith, was built for The Wald Houses, a public housing development in the East Village. The garden allows residents of the project access to the herbs planted there, and will also be open to the larger neighborhood. Read more of the coverage in The New York Times.

EVENTS and TO DOs

CINEBEASTS’ GOWANDERLUST!
This Saturday evening, Cinebeasts is hosting Gowanderlust! with Nathan Kensinger, photographer, documentary filmmaker and film festival programmer. Kensinger will be leading a “zig-zagging tour-screening” — part walking tour, part short film screening — along one of the cities most historied and fascinating industrial landscapes, the Gowanus Canal. Buy your tickets here and then join them Saturday, October 8th at sundown in front of the Bell House, 149 7th Street. A reception, including refreshments provided by Brooklyn Brewery and Cabinet Magazine, will follow at Cabinet Space. For more information, check out Cinebeasts.

OPENHOUSENEWYORK
The 9th annual openhousenewyork, when some of the city’s most spectacular and hard to access spaces and structures open their doors/gates/elevators/ladders/trap-doors to the public for viewings, takes place the weekend of October 14th-16th. Many talks, tours, and workshops are free; some require advance reservations (with a $5 fee). As usual, people are snatching up reservations fast, so be sure to plan your weekend soon. Here’s just a sampling of what you can find in the slate of events: the Holly Whyte Way Arcade Parade, a walking tour along the Old Croton Aqueduct (in both Manhattan and the Bronx), a walking tour on Shaping Urban Design and Policy: The East 96th Street Corridor, Brooklyn Bridge Park (previous coverage of BBP here), Elastic City’s Monumental Walk (previously), Pier Luigi Nervi’s George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal, AVAC System on Roosevelt Island (previously), the final days of the BMW Guggenheim Lab (previously), Lyn Rice Architects, Architecture Research Office (ARO), East Harlem School (previously), the Arsenal, Noguchi Museum (stay tuned for more on this next week!), the Digester Eggs at Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the Little Red Lighthouse, Fresh Kills by Bus, Build It! Architecture Workshop, Urbanitis East Harlem Tour, Chris Pellettieri’s Stone Carving Workshop at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Eagle Street Rooftop Farm, East 4th Street Cultural District Tour (previously), El Puente South Williamsburg Walking Tour, the Eldridge Street Synagogue, Melrose Commons, or tour the city on bikes with either the NYC DOT, a historian Exploring the Street Grid, or with Velo City’s high school student guides teaching you about urban design. Download a PDF event guide here or click through to make reservations on the OHNY site.

ILLUMINATING THE CITY
Last weekend’s Bring to Light, New York’s second Nuit Blanche festival, brought light sculpture, installations and video to the walls, streets, alleys and public spaces of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Tomorrow, the New Museum is hosting a panel discussion to consider the potential of the Nuit Blanche model to reimagine public space and catalyze dialogue. “Illuminating the City: Site-Specific Art as Urban Activator” will start at 4pm and will feature Ethan Vogt and Ken Farmer of Nuit Blanche New York; Eva Franch, director of Storefront; Stephanie Thayer, executive director of the Open Space Alliance for North Brooklyn; David van der Leer, assistant curator for architecture and urban studies at the Guggenheim; with more panelists to be announced. Buy tickets or find more information here. And if you missed Bring to Light last weekend, check out photos from the event in Time Out,  Flavorwire and on the Bring to Light website.

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More than five years later, Atlantic Yards continues to provoke web innovation, with the advent of Atlantic Yards Watch, not a platform for opposition but a self-described “community-based initiative to protect the health and livability of neighborhoods” impacted by the now-under-construction Barclays Center arena and the planned 16 towers. While the arena is the only project building under construction, demolition, utility and railyard work continue, as well as construction staging and development of a massive surface parking lot.

Atlantic Yards Watch, the product of three civic groups concerned about gaps in State oversight, is more than a web site; the sponsors — the Boerum Hill Association, the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council and the Park Slope Civic Council — have already partnered with Transportation Alternatives on a survey of illegal parking and hope to hire consultants to analyze issues like traffic.

Very Tight Fit
Atlantic Yards represents a very tight fit — an effort to shoehorn an arena into a residential neighborhood, at its southern and eastern borders, by overriding city zoning that requires a 200-foot buffer zone between arenas and residential districts. So residents near the project site have been submitting regular incident reports — emails, photos, and video — along with links to the associated 311 service requests.

The incident reports offer fodder not only for the Atlantic Yards Watch blog, but also for other media outlets. For example, Atlantic Yards Watch has highlighted the proliferation of rats in the blocks near the 22-acre site, helping focus the attention of a city task force and adding pressure on developer Forest City Ratner to extend abatement efforts beyond the project perimeter. Indeed, on July 14 the developer announced it would buy neighbors new garbage cans as part of a multi-faceted response to the problem.

Atlantic Yards Watch has posted numerous photos of apparent parking violations, including some by construction workers and police officers, leading to sympathetic television coverage. Also, partnering with Transportation Alternatives, Atlantic Yards Watch conducted an offline survey to document the scope of the problem. After that, a representative of Empire State Development (ESD) — formerly known as the Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) — and neighborhood residents said that the police have finally cracked down on scofflaws.

Filling a Niche: Transparency
Atlantic Yards Watch, which launched in May and was developed with the help of a graduate class at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, fills a niche that remained despite established advocacy groups and blogs. And it responds to a widespread local perception that the ESD, the State authority with the inherently complicated role of promoting development while overseeing it, has “done the developer’s bidding,” in the words of Brooklyn Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries. “Atlantic Yards Watch is intended to address gaps in oversight that we hope will eventually be closed through the establishment of a local development corporation or authority that is accountable to the public,” said Howard Kolins, President of the Boerum Hill Association, one of the co-sponsors of the site.

The three groups behind the project are part of the coalition known as BrooklynSpeaks, initially spearheaded by the Municipal Art Society (MAS), which, beginning in 2006, pursued a “mend it, don’t end it” strategy regarding Atlantic Yards. By contrast, Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn (DDDB), formed in 2004, led opposition to Atlantic Yards via lawsuits challenging the use of eminent domain, the legitimacy of the environmental review, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s revision of the deal to sell development rights to the Vanderbilt Yard in Brooklyn.

Pushing for Transparency in Court
By late 2009, however, BrooklynSpeaks (sans MAS) had joined DDDB in court challenging the ESD’s decision to re-approve the project while maintaining, despite significant reason for skepticism, that Atlantic Yards would be finished in ten years. The lawsuit, which included as petitioners three local elected officials, charged that the ESD, in its rush to approve a slightly reconfigured project, had failed to study the neighborhood impacts of a potential 25-year buildout.

That lawsuit was initially dismissed by Supreme Court Justice Marcy Friedman in March 2010, a day before the arena groundbreaking. It was reopened, remarkably, as Friedman agreed to admit into the record the Development Agreement — which allows a 25-year buildout — that the State withheld until after the court argument in the first stage of the lawsuit.

In the latest twist, on July 13 the judge ruled for the community groups, ordering the ESD to produce a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) detailing the impacts — such as noise, traffic, and safety — of the longer construction period. (The ESD has not announced whether it will appeal.) Such a ruling is highly unusual, given that judges rarely second-guess agencies, but in this case Justice Friedman deemed the ESD’s actions “arbitrary and capricious.” What was behind the agency’s rush in 2009? The lawyer for BrooklynSpeaks suggested that the ESD was driven by a end-of-2009 deadline to get tax-exempt bonds issued for arena construction.

Community Contributions
While ESD documents, conducted by the ubiquitous environmental consultant AKRF, used the bloodless language common to environmental reviews (e.g., “significant adverse neighborhood character impacts”), Atlantic Yards Watch brings the impact of construction home, posting video of trucks idling outside a residential building at 5:45am, photos of trucks leaving the construction site with piles of dirt uncovered, violating an agreement with the State, or photos of a wrong-way truck blocking traffic.

It also serves as a longitudinal archive of area conditions. In response to widespread belief that the construction site contributed to the rat problem, City health officials recently surveyed the Forest City Ratner-controlled site, and announced that it appeared to be well-maintained. However, it’s plausible that the developer had stepped up site maintenance in anticipation of that walk-through. After all, Atlantic Yards Watch had previously posted photos of lingering piles of garbage. And Forest City did agree to add new trash receptacles in the construction site for food waste only.

The Atlantic Yards Blogosphere
Atlantic Yards Watch complements an established, and evolving, blogosphere regarding Atlantic Yards. The most prolific site is NoLandGrab, a daily anthology of articles and blog posts related to the project, often with critical commentary appended. Prospect Heights photographer Tracy Collins has been documenting both the neighborhood around the project and Atlantic Yards-related events; photographers Adrian Kinloch and Jonathan Barkey also chronicle events. All have been vital for my own daily blog, Atlantic Yards Report, which features original reporting, plus analysis and commentary.

Both DDDB and BrooklynSpeaks use a blog format for announcements and articles. Other Atlantic Yards-related blogs have been published for shorter periods, such as the urban design-focused Brooklyn Views. A more personal blog, the Footprint Gazette, in 2008 chronicled the significant disruptions faced by a smaller number of Prospect Heights residents within the project footprint, as pre-construction utility work went on outside their windows.

“If Jane Jacobs had the tools and technology back when she was fighting Robert Moses’ plans to bulldoze Lower Manhattan, I bet The Death and Life of Great American Cities would have been a blog,” Brooklyn blogger and activist Aaron Naparstek told the Times in 2006. Perhaps, though Jacobs and her allies also had the Village Voice, which crusaded along with them. These days, established media outlets, with shrinking numbers of staff and a universe of topics to cover, give projects like Atlantic Yards relatively little scrutiny.

Can it be Duplicated?
While the overall response to Atlantic Yards may seem a salutary example of citizen media, using widely available innovations like blogs and YouTube, it also relies on several educated professionals with formal or informal journalistic, programming and photographic skills, and the capacity to put in significant volunteer hours.

Regarding Atlantic Yards Watch, said Peter Krashes, an artist (and Dean Street Block Association president) who helped develop the initiative, “I think it is duplicable.” After all, he observes, most community controversies are far less complicated, involving fewer problems and fewer agencies. A community board, he mused, could even adopt the model of establishing on online repository to register and track concerns.

Making an Impact
Atlantic Yards Watch sponsors hope to do more. With $4,000 in support from Council Member Letitia James, the aim is to hire consultants and/or reach out to other community groups in areas impacted by the project.

The initiative has already changed the ecosystem for discussing Atlantic Yards. Arana Hankin, Director of the Atlantic Yards Project for the ESD, gave Atlantic Yards Watch an off-the-cuff compliment at a June 23 community meeting on rats, calling the web site “fantastic and wonderful,” but at the same time — to the frustration of some — suggesting that complaints must be filed directly with the agency to provoke changes. However, thanks to Atlantic Yards Watch and that public meeting, the media had become aware of the “rat tsunami,” spurring official concern.

This weekend, the site’s most prolific contributor posted another incident report, documenting how trucks delivering steel idled on the public street rather than used the designated staging area. Once again, citizen watchdogs were making sure that government overseers could not plead ignorance.

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Journalist Norman Oder has written about the Atlantic Yards development — and other urban issues — in his watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report since 2006 and is now working on a book about Atlantic Yards. Until late 2010, he spent 14 years as an editor at the magazine Library Journal. In 2000, he began operating a tour guide business specializing in Brooklyn, New York Like a Native. He lives in Brooklyn.

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.

HIGH LINE PHASE TWO NOW OPEN
Section 2 of the High Line is open to the public after a surprise soft launch on June 7th, between 20th to 30th Street along 10th Ave. The latest phase has doubled the length of the park to one mile. Some of the best new features to check out: the 4,900 square foot 23rd Street Lawn; an elongated, wooden radial bench (between West 28th and 29th Streets); and the 26th Street Viewing Spur, a glass framed lookout over West 26th Street with cascading teak sitting steps. See the official High Line site for more information on Section 2.

BATTLE FOR BROOKLYN REVIEWED
Norman Oder, resident expert on Atlantic Yards and author of the watchdog blog Atlantic Yards Report, recently reviewed Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley’s documentary on the seven-year development controversy, Battle for Brooklyn. Oder finds the film to be “most valuable in the camera’s witness to the palpable insincerity and cold-blooded indifference of the developer-government alliance” and wonders if Ratner’s deputy Bruce Bender asked the right questions. Read Oder’s full film review over on Dissent and his comment on Forest City Ratner’s response to the film.

BAD HABITS = DANGEROUS STREETS
SVA Masters student Ron Gabriel has created a compelling video campaign called “3 Way Street” drawing on the dangerous behavioral tendencies bikers, people and cars play out on NYC streets. Gabriel’s project exposes how “pedestrians jaywalking, cyclists running red lights and motorists plowing through crosswalks” make our streets unsafe. Catch the cleverly annotated video here.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR SOUTH STREET SEAPORT
Gotham Gazette covers the latest land use controversy over plans for South Street Seaport, following a 40-year string of unsuccessful development strategies. The Howard Hughes Corporation has been in preliminary discussion with SHoP Architects to redevelop the neighborhood, which, although it has some of the oldest architecture in Manhattan, has been home to many struggling businesses over past few decades. A 2008 plan sought to tear down the Pier 17 mall and construct a huge condominium, which was heavily critiqued by Community Board 1. Competing area demands like public retail needs and newer businesses like the New Amsterdam Market make for a complex design challenge. Stay tuned for updates and see the full story here.

Graphic via Architecture Magazine

IS LEED TOO POWERFUL?
On ArchitectureBoston, Michael Liu outlines the debate surrounding the legitimacy of LEED certification. Starting in 2010, Henry Gifford filed a class-action lawsuit against the non-profit US Green Building Council (USGBC) on a number of accounts, claiming USGBC’s claims to improved energy performance of LEED-certified buildings were unsubstantiated and contributed to a defrauding of the public en masse over the actual benefits of LEED-certified buildings. LEED-certification currently charges significant sums for construction and professional credits, turning LEED into what Gifford calls “a fee-generating monopoly.” Gifford provides a relevant contribution by opening up discourse around who makes what rules and unpacking the added complexity of charging money for institutionalized standards. Nevertheless, LEED certification also represents the need to formalize and codify design standards to move toward a sustainable future. Gifford points out that we need to be wary of how these standards are met; he critiques the “process of certifying buildings and the creation of a fee-generating bureaucratic structure” rather than green design standards themselves. Read Michael Liu’s full op-ed here.

HIGH-TECH TOURISM
CultureNOW, an organization formed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 specifically to illustrate the cultural and historical richness of Lower Manhattan, has mapped out the history, art and architecture of New York’s public realm to create a “museum without walls” iPhone app. CultureNOW President Abby Suckle calls the app, which won an honorable mention in the New York City’s 2011 BigApps 2.0 contest, a “treasure hunt, almost like urban archaeology.” Users can explore with maps, photos, tour routes and renderings of former buildings, all while listening to timely podcasts from experts like Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, Pratt Professor Bill Menking and architect Hugh Hardy. Download the app here.

Poe Park Visitor Center | Image via NYC PARKS/Malcolm Pinckney

EDGAR ALLEN POE AND DESIGN EXCELLENCE IN THE BRONX
The new Poe Park Visitor Center, located in the Bronx between the Grand Concourse and Kingsbridge Road, sits on a 2.3 acre park that was home to the last residence of famed author Edgar Allen Poe. The visitor center is the first parks project to be completed from the Bloomberg Administration’s Design and Construction Excellence Initiative. Designed by architect Toshiko Mori, the new center is a 5,400-square-foot visitor center that includes a gathering space for community use and a display area showcasing the Poe farmhouse vista. A modest structure, Mori did not want to overwhelm Poe’s tiny farmhouse. See Archinect’s full coverage on the center.

EVENTS + TO DOs

BY THE CITY / FOR THE CITY CALL FOR DESIGNS
Last month, we told you about Institute for Urban Design’s call for ideas for its By the City/ For the City project, which asked New Yorkers to share their ideas for how to improve NYC. IfUD has now opened up the second phase of the program to designers who want to visualize these ideas. The ideas and designs will eventually be published in a public atlas. The Call for Designs will be open through July 14th. Submit your designs and visit the competition’s site here.

CITY AS STAGE: CONVERSATION ON ‘FORECLOSED’
On Saturday, June 11th, the Whitney will host a free, public platform lecture on Foreclosed: Between Crisis and Possibility, at 3pm at The Kitchen, 512 W 19th Street. As part of the exhibition Foreclosed: Between Crisis and Possibility, the discussion will explore urban space as a site of contestation and possibility. It will begin with a screening of Yto Barrada’s video Beau Geste (2009), followed by a conversation between Tania Bruguera (Artist), Peter Marcuse (Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University), Damon Rich (Urban Designer, City of Newark) and Radhika Subramaniam (Curator, Parsons The New School for Design). See full details here.

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

Paper Partition System | via Shigeru Ban Architects

LOW COST, HIGH SPEED SHELTERS
The Tokyo-based firm Shigeru Ban Architects (SBA), known for its ecologically sensitive, flexibly programmed structures, is seeking financial support for their effort to help victims displaced by the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. SBA plan to deploy simple, cardboard and paper partition shelters, originally designed for use after the 2005 Fukuoka earthquake, which provide privacy and separation for families in highly dense refugee camps and can be produced at low cost and high speed. Find out how to donate, and see photographs of SBA’s designs, on the firm’s website. (To learn more about Shigeru Ban’s work, watch the video of his Architectural League lecture in 2008 here.)
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PREFAB AT ATLANTIC YARDS
This week brought renewed controversy over the Atlantic Yards site, this time in prefab form. The New York Times reports that Forest City Ratner may erect a modular 34-story residential tower to meet low-income housing requirements at the site. Building modularly will save big on time and money, but at what cost? Activist group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn is particularly concerned with the loss of promised union jobs. Ratner plans to open its own factory for the production of modular pieces for construction, a move that DDDB calls “the latest casualty among Forest City Ratner’s endless string of cynical, empty, broken promises.” Modular construction has also been criticized on quality – this will be the tallest modular structure ever built, and questions have been raised on compromised appearance. Check out more coverage on Atlantic Yards Report and Brownstoner, who includes a clip from the soon-to-be-released documentary The Battle of Brooklyn from directors Suki Hawley and Michael Galinsky on the use (and abuse?) of eminent domain at Atlantic Yards.
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NYU AMENDS PLAN FOR EXPANSION
NYU has re-released plans to expand its campus into Greenwich Village as two reconfigured super-blocks — part of which includes a 14-story dorm atop a public school (currently a grocery store). WNYC reports that the plan now requires the relocation of the grocery store, a popular dog-run and a sports facility. Although NYU promises to provide benefits to the community (such as an increase in neighborhood open and green space), the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation remains opposed to the changed plan. Decide for yourself: a standing display of the new plan will be on view Tuesdays through Sundays, starting next week, at NYU’s Open House space (528 LaGuardia Place).
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Through the Lens of Food | via MAS Context

MAS CONTEXT
MAS Context is a quarterly online journal created by architecture and urban design firm MAS Studio to address issues “that affect the urban context,” and does a great job of doing just that. The most recent issue focuses on networks, “whether physical or virtual, formal and informal, to understand their possibilities and power in our lives,” and includes essays on everything from physical infrastructure to media and information to genealogy and mediation. Check out the full issue here, and be sure to read the interview with Foodprint Project founders Nicola Twilley and Sarah Rich, familiar to Omnibus readers from Food and the Shape of Cities and Foodprint City, which furthers the discourse on how the relationship between food and the built environment interacts with and molds our experience of urban life.
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VISION2020
Vision2020, NYC’s comprehensive waterfront plan, was released by the Department of City Planning in complete form on March 14th. The plan outlines a 10-year vision for the future of the City’s 520 miles of shoreline, promoted by the Bloomberg administration as the city’s “sixth borough.” The document covers expanding the waterfront for recreation, supporting the working waterfront and coordinating governance over waterways. Stay tuned for more coverage of the plan on Urban Omnibus, coming soon.
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Indra's Cloud, 2008 by Anne Percoco | via Water Water Every Where at BRIC

TO DO: EVENTS AND VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
Richard Sennett, urbanist, author and professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics (and the Omnibus’ very first “Walk and Talk”), will speak at 6pm on Monday, April 11th at the City College of New York on “The Edge: Borders and Boundaries in the City.” As a social analyst, Sennett has explored the relationship between cityscape and subjective experience — drawing on ethnography and interviews to contextualize his findings.

Explore the boundaries of  plastic in architecture, engineering and materials science at the fourth of the glass, concrete, metal, plastic and light conference on architecture, engineering and materials. “Permanent Change: Plastics in Architecture and Engineering” will take place March 30 – April 1 at Columbia University.

“Water Water Every Where” is now on view at BRIC Arts | Media | Brooklyn, an exhibition featuring the work of seven artists, six based in New York, all exploring “water’s inextricable presence in our lives.” The show is curated by Elizabeth Ferrer, who aims to push back against what she sees as the typical New Yorker’s tendency “to look inward (and indeed, upwards) when imagining the contours of the city.” The show will be up through Saturday April 30th on 33 Clinton Street in Brooklyn.

For the urban agriculturists out there, check out Battery Conservancy’s call for volunteers to create an urban farm in Battery Park, every day next week, March 21-25, 9-5pm. Contact urbanfarm@thebattery.org for more information.

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

If all public meetings convened by acronymed local agencies benefited from the voice of talented thespians, local politics might be more transparent, and definitely more entertaining.

The Civilians, an investigative theater troupe, takes social debate to the stage through research and interviews that form the content of their scripts. Last year, Urban Omnibus featured a video segment on The Civilian’s performance Brooklyn at Eye Level, which was an early iteration of its current production In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards. In the Footprint dissects the issues surrounding the contentious Atlantic Yards development, drawing on testimony from local business owners, outspoken residents and community organizers. The play presents diverse points of view in the words of people involved in or affected by this controversial project, from the owner of a neighborhood bagel shop to celebrated Atlantic Yards proponent Jay-Z. It succeeds not only in representing the range of interested parties, but also in providing space for each voice. Given the pathos of the last line in the closing song, “you have the right to your own space but not the space that’s all around you,” the collection of voices resounding through one theater is a unique achievement.

In the Footprint catalyzes dialogue among audience members because it creates a conversation that animosity between opposing camps prevented from actually happening in real life. For example, onstage the zealous ACORN director Bertha Lewis can spar with the equally passionate Patti Hagan, founder of Prospect Heights Action Coalition. Both women care deeply about the implications of the project and acknowledge its complexity (Lewis lauds the potential for jobs, low income housing and community improvement while Hagan decries the corruption of officials and destruction of the neighborhood), something that may have been lost sight of over years of argument and protest. Audience members are able to see a microcosm of what was at stake in the project, and because the production uses the actual words of the real-life stakeholders it portrays, this microcosm is not so much simplified as distilled.

Of course, a point of view is present; the selection of interviewees and the way in which their testimony is condensed and arranged grants sympathy to a certain side of the AY debate. Opponents of the project are given more stage time and seem more quirky than grandstanding supporters. Developers Forest City Ratner and Mayor Bloomberg declined to be interviewed for the project and thus their only lines are drawn from press releases and public statements — but considering they have been the dominant force in the Atlantic Yards saga, it’s hard to bemoan their lack of representation in In the Footprint. After all, it is a production by The Civilians about civilians. The stage gives a platform for many voices who didn’t have the microphone during the process, like the owner of a nearby beauty shop and a security guard, along with those who did. And given its themes of urban character and neighborhood, the play achieves just what a good neighborhood ought to: interaction and discussion.

The Civilians say they use a journalistic approach to examine the layers of complexity around a certain issue. In the case of Atlantic Yards, drama and complexity abound. In the Footprint becomes a lens to scrutinize the deeper socioeconomic and racial conflicts entangled in the new Nets arena. Often, the debate over the development was a vehicle to air grievances about the gentrification of Prospect Heights and express tension between black and white residents – a reality that, at the time, escaped many onlookers who were not directly ensnared in the issue. Through the dialogue, the audience can piece together a history of Prospect Heights and Fort Greene from redlining to gentrification. Ultimately, very little is said about basketball, but much is revealed about Brooklyn and Brooklyn identity. Sports, as is often the case, became a metaphor for hometown pride – the Dodgers are invoked a number of times, usually by Borough President Marty Markowitz – and everyone seems to weigh in on what it means to be a Brooklynite. As the Hagan character point out, Brooklyn, despite the fact that it could easily exist as its own city, has no local newspaper. It does, though, have a lot of bloggers.

Bloggers, vocal citizens and actors too, it turns out. Steve Cosson directs a performance that recalls the historic role of theater as a platform for social commentary: at one point the aforementioned bloggers even join in a bathrobed Greek chorus and remind the audience of the potential for dialogue and education that comes at the intersection of art and community activism.

In the Footprint runs through Saturday night at the Irondale center in Fort Greene.

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Caitlin Blanchfield is a freelance writer and Urban Omnibus project associate residing in New York City.

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.

TO DO
First up on this week’s roundup: stuff to check out this week. Our October calendars are bursting with a plethora of first-rate events, installations, programs and otherwise worthy additions to your to-do list.

For the advance planners out there, check out the line-ups for another event-packed weekend starting October 8. Next weekend brings both Conflux, a festival devoted to art and technology in the urban environment, and Open House New York, a weekend of tours through and access to sites of architectural, engineering and design significance all over the city, many of which are ordinarily closed to the public. Many OHNY tours fill up early — sign up for your favorites ASAP. And stay tuned for more details on both events here on Urban Omnibus, coming your way next week. While we gear up for that weekend of urban exploration, there’s plenty going on this weekend as well:

Greenpoint / Williamsburg
Omnibus contributor Sarah Nelson Wright has kept us posted on all things North Brooklyn this weekend. Wright is the curator of Common Ground: Imagining North Brooklyn, now on view at the Renaissance Center of North Brooklyn, which exhibits works from artists inspired by the area. Tonight she is hosting a film night (with discussion following) that will feature three documentaries on abandonment, development and habitation in North Brooklyn. Then on Saturday night in Greenpoint, she and Nathaniel Lieb will be participating in Bring to Light, New York’s first Nuit Blanche festival, organized by DoTank:Brooklyn. Fifty artists will create “light, sound and unexpected installations” that inhabit street corners, galleries, shops, rooftops, vacant lots and buildings in a celebration of “the magic and luminance of light.” All this and more — throughout the weekend, Greenpoint Open Studios offers access to more than 160 artist and exhibition spaces in an effort to foster support for the area’s art community.

Staten Island
Then spend your Sunday on Staten Island for a sneak preview of Freshkills Park. Look back at Zach Youngerman’s report on the project from this week’s recap of ASLA: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, DESIGN as a preface for this weekend’s activities, which include canoe, trolley and walking tours, workshops, birdwatching and kite flying. This first-ever public event at the site is free and open to all from 11am-4pm.

DUMBO
Another after-dark destination can be found at 81 Front Street where artist/designer/programmer Eric Corriel’s site-specific digital video installation DUMBO Underwater will be on view through October 13. The piece, inspired by issues around climate change and scientific projections that rising sea levels could leave many coastal cities partially underwater, imagines DUMBO flooded by the East River and “transform[s] the possibility into an experience.” Watch a video of the 80′ x 9′ installation at the top of this page, or go see it in person between sundown and sunrise.

Lower Manhattan
If you are still looking at the sidewalks to find cuts and patches, maybe a different urban intrusion has caught your eye. Four years ago, an artist from Brooklyn added his John Hancock to the streets and sidewalks in the form of a singular, continuous line (about eight miles long) drawn with paint. He attached a bucket to his bicycle and rode through the city, painting the line in the middle of the night in the shape of his name, MOMO. Maybe you’ve seen it, but if not, Momo has a map of the trajectory on his website, as well as a video following the line through downtown Manhattan.

NEWS
Next up: things you should know.

Dirty Water

Anyone unconvinced about the importance of stormwater management for New York City might consider watching the video above. Speaking of dirty water, this week the Environmental Protection Agency designated Newtown Creek as New York City’s second Superfund site this year, meaning the Gowanus Canal — pronounced a Superfund site in March — is no longer the city’s sole site contaminated enough to warrant federal designation. The City isn’t leaving the problem entirely to the EPA. Mayor Bloomberg announced on Tuesday a new “green infrastructure” plan to reduce sewer overflow, clean up the waterways and save $2.4 billion in future sewer management costs. (And if anyone has seen the new Wall Street movie, did you catch the cameo of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, specifically the elevated walkways designed by Ennead, playing the role of a California sea water cold fusion factory?)

Atlantic Yards
Two sets of headlines circulated this week about the development of Atlantic Yards with the release of renderings by SHoP Architects of a public plaza outside the arena at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, and developer Bruce Ratner’s acknowledgment that the announced 10-year timeframe for completion of the project was a best-case scenario. AY watchdog Norman Oder offers an extensive media response roundup and breaks down both the design and public policy issues surrounding the two announcements on Atlantic Yards Report. In an op-ed for the New York Observer, Oder shares a more detailed look at the ‘fuzzy math’ that consultants KPMG used to support the case that “the housing market would be healthy enough to absorb 1,930 luxury condos” over the originally proposed 10-year timetable.

Kingsbridge Armory
CITYLIMITS reports on the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment as a group of Bronx students provide their input on the future of the site. The students had participated in Center for Urban Pedagogy‘s Urban Investigations program and were using their new knowledge to invoke change at a community meeting last week. Project leader and CUP program manager Valeria Mogilevich stated “We’re trying to get students to change their perception of how the city works, and their potential impact on it.” The students, who had no prior knowledge of Community Benefit Agreements, started the program in the summer and created a poster at the end of the seminar, to educate the community on the effects of the redevelopment.

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

A “skyscraper showdown” is in headlines this week, making contentious building projects a recurring theme for the summer. This time we have 15 Penn Plaza vs. the Empire State Building. The City Council has approved plans for a 67-story tower to be built two blocks away from, and just 34 feet shorter than, the iconic Empire State Building. Detractors claim New York’s skyline will be ruined and views of the city’s most recognizable structure will be obstructed, and the sole councilperson to vote against the project, Charles Barron, dissented due to what he saw as an insufficient number of contracts set aside for minority and women-owned businesses; supporters point to job creation, economic development, and the constant growth and change intrinsic to our fair city. Meanwhile, Brian Lehrer asks how this hasn’t come up before and over on Co.Design, Ken Carbone offers up a few alternative ways for the structure to stake its claim on the skyline.

It’s no surprise, thanks to the dysfunctions of Albany and the (many) gubernatorial scandals of recent years, that this year’s candidates for Governor of New York are promising reform and change. But on one topic of great concern to the NYC metropolitan area in particular, public transit and the extraordinary debt faced by the MTA, the candidates’ platforms are unclear. In an op-ed in the Albany Times Union, John Petro and Dan Morris of the Drum Major Institute point to Albany and the state government’s inadequate investment in public transit as a primary cause of the MTA’s now-spiraling deficits and they call on the candidates to clarify their platforms and voice their ideas. In the words of Petro and Morris, “Our public transit system is an irreplaceable asset and an invaluable part of the nation’s infrastructure that should be protected. Leaders in state government better start treating it that way.”

Early last year we talked to Colleen Werthmann and Michael Premo, two of the minds behind Brooklyn at Eye Level, a theater performance with a journalistic approach that explored all aspects of and viewpoints on Atlantic Yards. This fall, the investigative theater company The Civilians is updating the material gathered for that production to present In the Footprint. Again bringing interviews and documentation about the development to the stage through dance, music and spoken word, The Civilians offer a multifaceted portrait of a complex project. In the Footprint will run from November 12 through December 11, 2010 at the Irondale Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy has released its latest video, produced by a group of students from Brooklyn’s Walt Whitman Middle School who ask: Why are there so many empty lots in our neighborhood? The Good, the Bad, and the Empty, which premiered on Places this week, takes us on a vacant lot tour of Flatbush and follows the students as they question local residents, landowners, community activists, and city officials about the existing conditions of the unused lots and why they were left dormant in the first place. The students find everything from trash-strewn, abandoned “construction sites” to well-tended community gardens, and share their ideas to activate these vacant, underutilized spaces.

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