In late 2013, the MTA will complete a 2-mile extension of the 7 line, from its current terminus at Times Square to 34th Street and 11th Avenue. Improving transit access to the far west side of Manhattan is part of a far-reaching City plan to activate the Hudson Yards area, an “under-utilized” neighborhood in Manhattan roughly bounded by West 43rd Street, West 28th Street, Eighth Avenue and the Hudson River, with commercial, residential, cultural and public space development. The area is currently served by buses — including the M42, which received the shameful Pokey Award last year for being the slowest bus in New York — but subway access is as far away at Times Square or Penn Station. But in a time of limited financial resources and other pending transit projects that would serve already-bustling communities with comparable transportation expansion needs, how was the decision made to extend the 7 line?

In spring 2011, Alexandra Woolsey Puffer and Jeff Maki, as teaching artists for the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), posed that very question to a group of ninth, tenth and eleventh graders. CUP is a nonprofit organization that uses art and design to improve public participation in shaping the places where we live. Fast-Tracked is the latest in CUP’s “Urban Investigations,” a series of project-based after-school programs that ask high school students to explore fundamental questions about how the city works and translate their findings into multimedia teaching tools for audiences in the arts and social justice professions. For Fast-Tracked, they worked with students from the New Design High School on the Lower East Side of Manhattan who are participating in College Now, a free City University of New York program designed to prepare New York City’s public high school students for success in college. Over the course of 15 weeks, the students, led by the team from CUP, investigated how transportation planning works by talking to stakeholders, researching policy and financing, and pounding the pavement. Here, Woolsey Puffer and Maki share their students’ story of the 7 line extension and what they learned about who determines the shape and flow of our public transportation. — V.S.

Students design a subway system for aliens (L) and for pirates (R)

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES A SUBWAY MAKE?
What’s the connection between subways and (re)development? Which comes first, the subway or the people? And why doesn’t the bus get any love? These are the questions that formed the basis of our CUP Urban Investigation in collaboration with ninth, tenth and eleventh grade students who are part of the College Now program at the New Design High School.

We began our investigation by exploring the fundamentals of mass transit. We posed the question to our students: is a subway system built for aliens the same subway system a pirate would want to use? Different riders want to visit different places, and everyone has his or her own idea of the path the subway should follow and the stops it should make. With 8 million people living in New York, there is no easy solution. Because transit needs to serve so many different types of riders, the name of the game is tradeoffs.

Access to transit, for businesses and for residents, is access to opportunity. Subways bring people to places they need to go — for work, for fun, to eat, to get home — and living close to transit increases options for all of those activities. But the longer the journey takes, the less practical it becomes, especially early in the morning or late at night, when transit service is less frequent.

By analyzing where subway stations are located in their own neighborhoods, how they are used and how they impact their surroundings, the students recognized the importance of efficient, reliable public transportation in everyday life. From that basic understanding, we began to look closely at one new subway development currently underway in New York: the extension of the 7 train westward, from its current final stop at Times Square to 34th Street and 11th Avenue.

By December 2013, this $2.1 billion 7 line extension will take riders to Hudson Yards, a 26-acre “under-utilized” area on the far west side of Manhattan. If you visit the area today, you’ll find check-cashing stops, parking lots, car repair garages, the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel and the Javits Convention Center. Few people live there and at first there does not appear to be strong demand for a new subway station. “This is the middle of nowhere,” summarized Shadiq Williams, a student at New Design High School. But a proposed redevelopment of the area will transform the MTA’s West Side Rail Yard into a multi-use residential and commercial complex — and improved access to transit is a key part of the redevelopment plan.

The Hudson Yards redevelopment area. The current/future route of the 7 line (solid/dashed yellow) and the newly redeveloped High Line (green).

WHO DECIDES WHERE THE SUBWAY GOES?
So, did (re)development follow from the plan to extend the subway, or did the subway follow the development? We turned to four people with markedly different viewpoints on transportation planning and real estate development to find out how the decision was made to extend the 7 train to Hudson Yards — and ended up with many different answers to the questions of who decides where the subway goes and how those choices are made.

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and a former deputy mayor of economic development, told us about the tradeoffs politicians are required to make when allocating limited financial resources. “Do we spend it on police? On education? On infrastructure? You spend it on all of them,” he explained, “but in what proportion? It’s a judgment call, but that’s what government people are elected to do.” When deciding how much to spend on improving mass transit, politicians must consider the broader implications of the proposed project. For Spinola, the redevelopment of areas like Hudson Yards and improved subway access to the neighborhood help create what he referred to as “another infrastructure” — namely, office space — and can generate construction jobs during a tough economic climate.

Students interview REBNY President Steven Spinola (L) and Pratt Center for Community Development Director of Policy Joan Byron (R)

We got a very different perspective on the issue when we talked to Joan Byron, Director of Policy, and Elena Conte, Organizer for Public Policy Campaigns, at the Pratt Center for Community Development in Brooklyn, where transportation is a social justice issue. “The short answer is that the MTA decides. But the bigger question is, who wields the most influence over the MTA?” Byron said. “Who has power over legislators? Those folks have the most input.” Byron and Conte noted that lower-income residents of the city typically don’t have a strong voice in transportation planning issues, particularly in comparison to real estate developers, and are often left with slower, less-reliable transit options.

An imbalance in efficient transit access is one of the reasons Byron and Conte are strong supporters of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). BRT is bus service that acts like a subway, with dedicated travel lanes and platforms for efficient entry and exit. Just like the subway, you pay your fare before getting on the bus. BRT is more practical and cost-effective to build and operate than the subway — $1 million per mile to build here in New York City, as opposed to an approximate $1 billion per mile cost to build a subway — so why isn’t there more BRT in New York?

To investigate why the MTA prioritizes specific transit modes for certain sites we turned to Mark Schiffman, vice president of MTA Capital Construction, the department responsible for “mega projects,” such as the 7 line extension, the Fulton Street Transit Center and the Second Avenue subway. Mark showed us renderings of the proposed development for Hudson Yards and maps of where the subway is being extended underground, and addressed some of our questions about the new station and the process of deciding where the subway goes.

Students meet with MTA Capital Construction VP Mark Schiffman (L) and DCP consultant Sandy Hornick (R)

“It used to be that one individual, such as Robert Moses, would determine in large measure where a public works project would go,” Schiffman told us. If that one person preferred highways and bridges to public transit, for instance, then priority was given to building roads. Today, it’s harder to figure out exactly who decides; it is a process with many players and multiple steps. One key piece of the process is the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), which, as its name suggests, identifies the potential effects a project will have on the environment of the city — traffic flow, patterns of light and shadow, ecology, infrastructure and more. An EIS is required by the federal government for any project that receives federal funds. But, Schiffman pointed out, no federal funds are being used for the 7 line extension. The MTA saw an opportunity to fast-track the development by financing the project with bonds. Yet the MTA still chose to undergo the EIS process, a decision made, Schiffman told us, “to prevent one individual from playing king.”

Sandy Hornick, a consultant to the New York City Department of City Planning, elaborated on what Mark Schiffman introduced to us: the EIS process, ULURP (the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, a public review process for zoning changes), and the “creative financing” of the project that, as Schiffman described, would “fast-track” its development. Hornick explained that the 7 line extension is being funded through municipal bonds rather than state or federal monies, which come with restrictions and long-term financial unpredictability. Distilling the complex financial processes down to their essence, Hornick summarized: “All of this development will generate a lot of revenue. And we can borrow against this future revenue and use those bonds to pay for the subway.” Other transit projects that are funded by the federal or state government receive money over a certain period of time, after which they have to hope that funding will continue so that they can proceed with construction. With this project, as Schiffman said, “the money is in the bank, so we have certainty that we’ll be able to build.”

Creating the timeline

BACK IN THE CLASSROOM AND OUT ON THE STREET
Back in the classroom, we had our field notes, the recordings and transcriptions of our interviews, and an understanding of a new vocabulary we had encountered when talking to our interviewees. Now, we had to make sense of it all. What did our stakeholders tell us about the decision-making process? What are the issues at play? The alternatives? What can we do as citizens to affect the process?

To put things in perspective, the students created a timeline. From the transcripts, we cut out process-related quotes from each of our four interviewees and sorted them chronologically, from the very beginning of the project to the present, to help us understand what actually happened across organizations and from different perspectives.

Newly informed, we decided to revisit Hudson Yards and visualize the complete process of the 7 line extension in real space. We identified “six steps” to the project: Planning, Analysis/Scoping, Financing, Rezoning (ULURP), Agreement/Memo of Understanding, and Construction. With student-drawn placards that illustrated these six phases in hand, we organized a “process-ion” along the path of the subway extension — starting at 8th Avenue and 41st Street, continuing across 41st Street to 11th Avenue, and then turning south to 11th Avenue and 34th Street. We marked each of the six steps above ground, while tracing the path of the new subway tunnel beneath our feet.

Walking the Line, the 7 line process-ion

Fast-Tracked “Process-ion” by the Center for Urban Pedagogy

The final installment of our Urban Investigation was to share the story of the 7 line extension with a larger audience. We created a newspaper to inform others about what we had learned. We included quotes from our stakeholders, our own thoughts on the project, and the drawings we created to represent the six steps of the process. The newspaper — “This is a Story of the 7 Line Extension and the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project” — will be distributed along the 7 line and beyond. (Click here to download a PDF copy.)

Printing the newspaper

Our exploration of transportation planning in New York City was full of surprises. What surprised our students the most was the fact that there is no public vote. The messiness of real-world politics, as we learned from each interview, was a lesson in the constraints and tradeoffs that need to be made in government and public policy.

More, though, than the process of figuring out who decides, we learned that behind government process there is an entire team of dedicated public servants (and lobbyists and advocates) who are willing and even excited to talk about their work. At a stage in life where the students are trying out their adult selves, it is important to find ways to practice the role of “engaged citizen.” Elected officials really do owe us all their time and accountability — especially in cases where public input is often limited to community boards composed of appointed officials.

One student remarked that transportation issues became more legible to her when she traveled from Queens to Red Hook for a summer internship at Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez’s office. She said that the trip took longer than she had hoped it would each day, and there weren’t adequate transportation options. Her participation in this investigation into transit planning had heightened her awareness of the gaps in efficiency in her own commute and helped her imagine how to create change. We hope that by helping our students understand public process a little better, they will be more likely to take an active role in their own communities and help ensure that a diversity of voices and interests are represented as our city’s policies and plans are made.

Fast-Tracked is a collaboration of CUP Teaching Artists Alexandra Woolsey Puffer and Jeff Maki with CUP staff and students from College Now at New Design High School: Sarai Arroyo, Kharee Boyd, Lawrence Daise, Juan Garcia, Steven Meijas, Isaiah Ortiz, Dahyana Santos, Aldo Sorcia, Ronex Tse and Shadiq Williams. We’d like to thank our student crew who spent 15 weeks after school to find out who decides where the subway goes.

Creating materials for the newspaper

Presenting the final newspaper at the High Line

All photos courtesy of Jeff Maki and Alexandra Woolsey Puffer for the Center for Urban Pedagogy.

Jeff Maki is an artist-programmer in New York City and a principal collaborator with Publicworks Office. Jeff writes about the legibility of urban infrastructure and advises public and private organizations on the future of digital cities.

Alexandra Woolsey Puffer is an artist-designer in New York City and a principal collaborator with Publicworks Office. Her interests include social systems and symbolic capital.

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

50 Ideas for the New City | Photo by Will Martin

THE OMNIBUS BOOTH We hope you’ve caught sight of our 50 Ideas for the New City Posters around town on fences, scaffolds and storefronts from Jamaica, Queens to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Tomorrow, Saturday, May 7th, get an up-close look at them at the Omnibus Booth (Bowery and Rivington) at the Festival of Ideas for the New City StreetFest, where Urban Omnibus staff will be out all day to chat about the future of the urban landscape with whoever will listen. Come on down and say hi, and submit your idea for the new city in person!

FLASHLIGHT: NYC  Check out some of the temporary, site-specific, illuminated art that Flash:Light NYC is bringing to the festival. LET US MAKE CAKE is tapping into the creative potential of recent innovations in light, sound and projection mapping with a three-part installation: On the Street, on Mulberry between Prince and Houston; In the Cathedral, in St. Patrick’s Basilica on Mott St. north of Prince; and On the Museum, on the façade of the New Museum on the Bowery. All three get underway at 8pm and run on a 20-minute loops until 11pm or midnight, location depending. But that’s not all! The projections will be followed by a midnight organ concert in St. Patrick’s! A collaborative project by Nuit Blanche New York, and Light Harvest Studios, participants range from established artists such as Vito Acconci, Jon Kessler and Marilyn Minter, to emerging artists such as SOFTlab, Chris Jordan, Mia Pearlman, Dustin Yellin, Z-Collective and Brooklyn-based street artists.

AUDI URBAN FUTURE Go see the beautiful 50-foot long architectural model of Manhattan: Audi Urban Future – Project New York at Nolita’s OpenHouse Gallery (201 Mulberry Street), curated by Architizer. This long-term project examines how mobility, urban living and the role of transportation will change in the coming years. Based on the award-winning concepts from the inaugural Audi Urban Future Award — hosted at the 2010 Venice Biennale — the model includes the winning entry by J. MAYER H. Architects from Berlin, and five NYC practices (LEONG LEONG, Matter Practice, Abruzzo Bodziak Architects, labDORA and THEVERYMANY) who will present their vision for 2030 New York at a roundtable Monday night, 7-10pm.

CRONOCAOS Cronocaos, an exhibition presented by OMA / Rem Koolhaas on the growing urgency of preservationism in architecture, is now on view in the New Museum’s partially-renovated, ground floor space at 231 Bowery. In the exhibition, which debuted at the 2010 Venice Biennale, Koolhaas seeks to find “what the future of our memory will look like, and how our obsession with heritage is creating an artificial re-engineered version of our memory.” Check it out to see historic objects and photographs, analysis of the rapid growth of preserved urban and natural territories, and a timeline of OMA projects that have confronted the issue of preservation over 35 years of practice, including the 2001 proposed extension to the Whitney Museum of American Art and the curatorial master plan for the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

AFTERHOURS: MURALS ON THE BOWERY  The New Museum is presenting Afterhours: Murals on the Bowery, an installation of 17 international artists’ site-specific paintings on commercial spaces’ security gates along the Bowery between Houston and Grand Streets. In celebration of non-traditional public art, check out these seen-at-night-only murals for yourself, or get a taste of what you’ll find in this NYTimes.com slideshow covering the unique series.

CUP DOWNRIGHT SYSTEMS Join CUP for an evening of videos about the inner workings of NYC’s hidden systems by viewing three of CUP’s hidden infrastructure documentaries at the Anthology Film Archives for the Festival. Films shown include Garbage Problems (2002), The Water Underground (2006), and The Internet is Serious Business (2008). Tickets are $6. Sunday, May 8, 6:30 pm at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue.

——————————-

TAXI OF TOMORROW
The City of New York has selected the design for its future taxi cabs: the Nissan NV200. For some, this is a roomier, more convenient choice. But many others (including some government officials) say the design looks outdated, ugly and is inaccessible for the disabled. Assemblyman Micah Kellner expressed disdain over the new cabs, saying “Who knew that the ‘Taxi of Tomorrow’ was the delivery van of yesterday? Just because you paint a van yellow doesn’t make it a taxi.” His view is representative of several city officials, including NYC Public Advocate Bill De Blasio and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.

The result of the design competition ends a 5-year long bid for visions of New York’s taxi cabs of the future initiated by the Design Trust for Public Space. The competition was set to find a design to replace the classic Ford Crown Victoria, the most common taxi sedan seen lumbering up and down the streets of the city. In 2009, the competition was made official by the Bloomberg administration who will offer the winner an exclusive 10-year contract on the city’s taxi design and manufacturing. The competition came down to three designs:

Taxi of Tomorrow Nissan NV200

THE WINNER: Nissan NV200
PROS: Legroom, outlets, anti-bacterial seats, sliding doors to avoid dooring cyclists
CONS: Looks like a minivan, bulky, not handicap accessible

RUNNERS-UP:
Karsan (top)  & Ford Transit Connect (bottom) | Images courtesy of Taxi of Tomorrow

Read more on the cabs of tomorrow at The New Yorker and NY Daily News.

PROJECT NEON IPHONE APP
Want to see a map of all New York’s neon signage on your phone? Project Neon, which you can read more about in Kristen Hively’s recent Omnibus feature, is running a Kickstarter campaign to bring this soon-to-be free app to you. The app will include searchable information about the hundreds of neon signs in the city, a “view signs closest to you” map, and other features for signage junkies out there. Check out the project’s Kickstarter video and consider supporting this awesome future digital guidebook.

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

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.

.

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.

Photo credits from left to right: Kyle R. Brooks; Steven Yavanian; Frank Guittard; Jason A. Tax.

Be sure to join us on July 8th for the latest in the Architectural League’s Conversations on New York series of public events. This one features former Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Dan Doctoroff, who set in motion many of the most significant urban projects of the past decade, from the Olympic Bid to congestion pricing to PLANYC 2030. Doctoroff will be in conversation with Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for The New Yorker. (Thursday, July 8 | 7:00 p.m. | The Great Hall, The Cooper Union | 7 East 7th Street | 1.5 CEUs).

And that’s not all that’s going on next week. On July 7th, there are two stimulating panel discussions to choose from. Up in East Harlem, a panel discussion and tour of Tapestry, the new mixed-use, green building, will highlight affordable housing and sustainable design. If you’re more up for a debate on what housing in 2050 will look like, the Forum for Urban Design is hosting a moderated discussion of their own. With the American population projected to grow by another 100 million by then, you can listen to two men with very differing opinions talk about how they think the American urban and suburban landscape will have adapted by then.

Speaking of ideas about the future, Crains, in honor of their 25th anniversary, reached out to a variety of New Yorkers from all disciplines and has come up with 25 ideas to create a better, future New York City. These ideas include topics familiar to Omnibus readers, such as how to rethink Governors Island, how to develop the local food chain, and how deal with New York’s traffic.

Back on May 3rd, ground broke on the Via Verde project in the South Bronx, a new mixed-use development that will include a variety of living environments for a multitude of income levels, and is also slated to certified LEED gold upon completion. The project will also help the city get to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of an additional 165,000 affordable housing units by 2014. Shaun Donovan, the U.S. Secretary for HUD was at the ground-breaking ceremony, was recently interviewed by Architectural Record to discuss the effects of the stimulus package on affordable housing, and the role that architects have in reshaping urban communities. With $13.6 billion in stimulus funds allocated to HUD, that money has been critical to the continued construction of multi-family homes, and both HUD and architects have an unique opportunity to create a new sustainable model for lower-income communities.

The former Domino Sugar refinery on the Williamsburg waterfront has long been the source of contention within the neighborhood regarding future plans for the abandoned site. This past Tuesday, the City Council gave its support for the $1.4 billion development plan to turn the site into a 2,000 unit residential development. With this approval, the project is expected to gain final approval from the City Planning Commission next month. 660 of the units will be for lower income and working class families, and the Community Preservation Corporation, the developer for the site, conceded to reducing the height of the two tallest buildings (although the total number of units will remain the same), and will keep the main refinery building and the 40 foot tall Domino sign intact. Shuttle buses to the nearest subway stop will also be provided, but with the large number of parking spots that are planned for, many fear that the development will not encourage sustainable living in any regard, and have a negative impact on the surrounding community.

Making Policy Public, a program of The Center for Urban Pedagogy, has released their latest poster, “I Got Arrested! Now What?,” the sixth in the series that explores complex public policy through graphic design; past topics have included street vendors and predatory equity. This one deals with the juvenile justice system, following “Chris” from his arrest through trial in court, explaining each phase of the process and even giving important tips.

Image by Iwan Baan via Fast Company

The Summer Warm Up begins this Saturday at P.S 1, featuring Pole Dance by SO-IL, winner’s of the Young Architects Program. Constructed of a large mesh net set on a 16′x16′ grid of metal poles, bungee cords connected to the poles allow visitors to manipulate the net and the yoga balls atop the net. Perhaps the most interactive (and fun!) of the past few installations, you can also manipulate the sound of the poles or watch real-time visualizations of the installation from its own website.

That sounds like a great way to kick off what for many New Yorkers is a three-day weekend. Fireworks are along the Hudson River again this year. Below, a time-lapse video of last year’s display on the Hudson:

NYC Time Lapse July 4th, 2009 from BoB Coon on Vimeo.

If you’re staying in the city, take advantage of the summer weather, and check out Time Out’s guide to the long weekend. And for those that want to stay in Brooklyn, there are a few patriotic events there as well, including a bar crawl in Greenpoint that culminates in a “Most Patriotic” costume competition.

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

“How come it’s easier to find fresh fruits and vegetables in Brooklyn Heights than in the South Bronx?” To answer this question and others, our friends at the Center for Urban Pedagogy worked with local high school students at New Settlement’s Bronx Helpers to produce a 29-minute video that will become available later this month via the organization’s website. Click here to pre-order a copy. Today, our other friends at the journal Places offer an advanced premiere of the video and a thoughtful introduction to CUP’s work (some of which you’ve read about right here on the Omnibus). See Places‘ post to enjoy the video.

Here’s what Places‘ editor Nancy Levinson has to say about this fantastic project:

Where does the food in your bodega – or the corner grocer, the local minimart – come from? Who decides whether to stock tortilla chips or salad greens, and how much they’ll cost? How come it’s easier to find fresh fruits and vegetables in Brooklyn Heights than in the South Bronx? What’s the connection between the incidence of diabetes and the food market supply chain?

Last year, the Brooklyn-based Center for Urban Pedagogy set out to answer these questions, and the result is Bodega Down Bronx, a 29-minute video created by CUP staff in collaboration with local high school students at New Settlement’s Bronx Helpers, a service learning organization focused on civic engagement.

Part of CUP’s Urban Investigations program, which asks basic questions about how cities work, Bodega Down Bronx delves into the politics and players of New York’s network of bodegas. Under the direction of CUP teaching artist Jonathan Bogarín, and working with CUP staff Valeria Mogilevich and Rosten Woo, and intern Sarah Nelson Wright, the student filmmakers researched issues, visited sites, storyboarded scenes, produced props and sets, and conducted interviews. They took their video equipment and question lists to store owners, wholesalers, distributors, drivers, and customers young and old. They met with nutrition professors and diabetes counselors, and with U.S. congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, who sponsored H.R. 5952, the Bodegas as Catalysts for Healthy Living Act (which would have provided grants to bodega owners to install refrigerated cases to stock more perishable produce). Along the way they teased out the cause-and-effect of food cultures, the self-reinforcing cycles (and stereotypes) that have turned some urban neighborhoods into so-called food deserts. Do bodegas stock a lot of snack food because that’s what their customers want, or do customers reach for the BBQ-flavored crisps because that’s what’s available at the bodega?

Like all CUP projects, Bodega Down Bronx is inspired by the conviction that cities and their complex systems and politics can be made legible and transparent — and more, that this transparency is vital for democratic society.

And while you’re over at Places site, check out the wealth of excellent material, including Omni-editor Andrew Blum’s thoughtful essay on two landscape architecture projects by Michael van Valkenburgh and Associates.


Photo by Dan Wiley.

On September 24, don’t miss an opportunity to tour Red Lines: Housing Crisis Learning Center with the artist who conceived and designed the exhibit, Damon Rich, and with Queens Museum curator Larissa Harris. The tour, presented by the Architectural League, will be at 3:30 p.m. at the Queens Museum of Art.

Rich wears many hats. He is the founder of Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) – which uses participatory design practice to create curricular and extra-curricular projects to teach students and adults about places and how they change. He’s the the chief urban designer for the city of Newark. And as an artist, his work is included in Experimental Geography and has been exhibited internationally at venues including the Storefront for Art and Architecture and SculptureCenter (New York City), the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Liepzig), Netherlands Architecture Institute (Rotterdam), and the 2008 Venice Biennale.

Red Lines grows out of an installation Rich made while artist-in-residence at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. It also draws on many of the themes Rich addressed when he lectured at the Architectural League during our Reimagining Risk thematic series of public programs in 2007-08.

Curator Larissa Harris brought the show from Cambridge to Queens, and is delighted to be using the Panorama as it was originally intended, as an interpretive device to advance our understanding of the city:

According to Patricia Cohen of the New York Times:

The museum’s director, Tom Finkelpearl, suggested that Mr. Rich use the Panorama. When first built, the Panorama was supposed to simulate the sense of a helicopter ride over New York. Where the walkway now stands, helicopter-shaped cars on elevated tracks gave visitors a nine-minute tour.

“This was built as an urban planning tool,” Ms. Harris said of the Panorama. “I feel so proud of this because we are using it that way.”

Rich uses the museum’s Panorama to map the homes filed for foreclosure during 2008, drawing attention to entire neighborhoods devastated throughout the city. For each city block with more than three foreclosures in 2008, Rich has placed a fluorescent pink triangle on the model. What results is a view of the city with a wide swath of foreclosures cutting through the predominantly African‐American and Latino neighborhoods of Queens and Brooklyn.

Once again, this is a rare opportunity… and the show closes on the 27^th of September! Sign up now by emailing anderson@archleague.org.   Free for Architectural League members; non-members $10.

Nick Anderson is Program Associate at the Architectural League of New York. 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.

This Thursday, the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is presenting another installment of their excellent People and Buildings series of live talk shows. This one will shed light on the fascinating back-story of the partnership, leadership, reverendship and, er, ‘architectship’ that has, to date, constructed almost 3,000 single-family, owner-occupied homes in Brooklyn. The program will feature a conversation with Reverend Dr. Youngblood and architect Alexander Gorlin about the Nehemiah Homeownership Program. More info is below; I recommend attending. Highly.

The Omnibus’ proud parents, the Architectural League of New York, have a long history with East New York, one of the neighborhoods where you’ll find Nehemiah houses, such as the ones designed by Alexander Gorlin’s firm, pictured above and featured in the League’s 2006 exhibit, New New York: Fast Forward. Way back in the winter of 1994 – the same year that the Nehemiah model pioneered by the East Brooklyn Congregations went national – the League held a design study called Envisioning East New York. The study invited architects, planners and landscape architects to share a variety of urban design strategies with a community that had experienced decades of disinvestment and contained within its borders many lots of city-owned, vacant land. As we’ve seen on the Omnibus, East New York has been entrepreneurial in its use of vacant lots, digging into urban agriculture in addition to experimenting with a variety of housing typologies and financing strategies. According to Envisioning East New York participant Perry Winston – who is also a trusted Omnibus informant from our days spent looking into community farming in the neighborhood – the League’s inspiration to hold the design study stemmed from “disappointment with the lack of imagination shown in the disposition of City-owned vacant land in the neighborhood.” He goes on:

The impetus for the call-for-ideas was … the desire to tap the imaginations of architects, planners, and landscape architects to broaden the range of development possibilities. The Architectural League’s brief challenged entrants to bring current urban design theories and strategies to bear on the problems and opportunities of this low-rise, mixed residential and industrial area of Brooklyn.

The results of the study – submissions from 25 teams of designers – were exhibited at the New Lots and Cypress Hill Branch Public Libraries in East New York as well as the Urban Center galleries in Manhattan. One month after the exhibit, Community Board 16 began drawing up a “197a Plan.”

Curiosity piqued? Then be sure to get to LIC on Thursday to hear the story of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah Spring Creek Houses. Image courtesy of the Capsys Corporation.

People and Buildings: Nehemiah! A Case Study in Radical Pragmatism
A slideshow and discussion with Reverend Dr. Youngblood and Architect Alexander Gorlin about a visionary project made real: the Nehemiah Homeownership Program. We’ll look at how religious leaders, Alinskyites, and architects worked with the City bureaucracy to develop 3,000 single-family homes for low- to moderate-income buyers – and build community in New York’s poorest neighborhoods. This program is presented in conjunction with the University of Trash exhibit at SculptureCenter in Long Island City.

Reverend Dr. Youngblood served as Senior Pastor of the St. Paul Community Baptist Church (SPCBC), located in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York from 1974 to 2009. Dr. Youngblood is recognized on the national political front as a result of his work with East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), the Brooklyn organizing entity of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Dr. Youngblood is credited through EBC with leading the Nehemiah Housing Project, which to date has constructed 2,900 single-family owner-occupied homes in Brooklyn.

Alexander Gorlin opened his practice in 1986 after returning from his Rome Prize Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. He has since created an award-winning, internationally recognized architecture firm distinguished by its commitment to applying Modernist design principles to projects across the social spectrum. The firm designed the Nehemiah Spring Creek Houses on the edge of East New York. His contribution to the architectural field was recognized by American Institute of Architects when it admitted him as a Fellow in 2005.

Nehemiah! A Case Study in Radical Pragmatism
Thursday, July 23, 6 p.m.
SculptureCenter
44-19 Purves Street
Long Island City, NY
Free and open to the public.
Seating is limited, please RSVP to info@anothercupdevelopment.org