And then get in touch with your stories of immigrant integration, park access and park use. How do you use your local park? What might make you use it differently or more often? Have you recently been practicing Hanafuda, Tai Chi or Capoeira in public? Are you a recent immigrant, a community organizer, a parks enforcement patrol officer, a jogger or a dog-walker with stories to tell? We want to hear from you. -C.S.

Urban parks can be vibrant mixing grounds and places for expression, or isolating spaces of oppression. Their success or failure depends on both their physical design and the networks of community members who use and support them. New York City is often celebrated for its distinct neighborhoods, but traditional civic organizations do not always reflect current neighborhood demographics, and input processes for park planning are often not designed with immigrant communities in mind.

New York’s Immigrants and Parks Collaborative
Immigrants make up 36% of New York City’s population and disproportionately experience high levels of housing overcrowding, making parks New Yorkers’ living rooms and backyards. The city’s uniquely busy streets, sidewalks, subways, and parks bring together immigrants and non-immigrants daily in shared public spaces, making broad, inclusive involvement in those places all the more crucial. Immigrants use and enjoy parks, but encounter language, knowledge, and social barriers to involvement in civic organizations and the parks decision-making process.

The New York City Department of Parks & Recreation manages over 29,000 acres of parkland – 14% of the city’s total landmass. The agency depends on hundreds of local civic organizations and volunteer-run “friends-of” parks groups to help maintain, program, and advocate for these 1,700 parks, from urban playgrounds to old-growth forests. The Parks Department struggles to meet the changing physical design needs of park users as populations shift and park activities change, as do languages spoken, programming interests, and foods served. Parks staff is often comprised of seasonal hires with no special language or outreach skills. Without adequate resources or knowledge to do effective immigrant outreach, the Parks Department depends on community-based organizations to help engage immigrant communities.

The Collaborative has provided resources to approach the challenges of immigrant engagement with creativity, focus and support.The Immigrants & Parks Collaborative allows its members to experiment with methods for immigrant engagement, with more focused staff time, resources, and support than are usually available. Funded by The JM Kaplan Fund, it is a joint project of an advocacy organization, a nonprofit, and a City agency: the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC), City Parks Foundation (CPF), and the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation. The Collaborative’s ten community-based organizations are working to increase immigrant engagement in eight parks in New York City. Most have a dedicated staff person, funded by the grant, who carries out the day-to-day work in each park, such as planning programs and conducting neighborhood outreach. The Collaborative works to understand issues unique to local context, while identifying systemic barriers to immigrant access and participation. The aim is to use lessons from this privately funded project to inform the Parks Department’s and other organizations’ efforts to foster more inclusive park engagement.

Two cases exemplify these efforts. In Lower Manhattan’s Chinatown, two of the Collaborative’s constituent organizations, the Hester Street Collaborative (HSC) and Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), teamed up to create and employ a more accessible public input process for the redesign of a city-owned playground. In Jackson Heights, Friends of Travers Park approached the Queens Community House (QCH) to partner in efforts to increase immigrant representation in Travers Park activities and programs.

Lessons Learned: Involving Immigrants in Parks Processes and Civic Organizations
The Collaborative has provided a unique opportunity: resources and dedicated staff time that allow small organizations to approach challenges of immigrant engagement with creativity, focus and support. Their activities offer practitioners in local government and civic organizations lessons on rethinking parks as opportunities for integration, regardless of resources:

• Parks are tools for immigrant communities. It is a myth that worries about housing, employment, and financial security prevent immigrant involvement in parks and community life—inadequate outreach and improper public processes do.

• Immigrant social networks are tools for government and service organizations. Government agencies want to allocate resources effectively and provide relevant public services, but they need help from local leaders and service organizations to access immigrant communities. Outreach and policy implementation that connect to existing social networks are more effective than independent outreach through traditional methods, and secure broader input on park programming, services, and improvements. This leads to better suited, well used investments, and builds trust.

• Precedent-setting affects policy. The types of partnerships the Collaborative supports illustrate ways to use local knowledge and existing social networks to promote inclusivity and integration, rather than creating new programs that may not be as effective. When HSC and AAFE facilitated their participation, immigrants in Chinatown provided input for their playground and pedestrian malls because the process was made accessible, engaging, and relevant. These methods were a striking contrast to the traditional process of presentations followed by a feedback session. The Parks Department is now incorporating more “listening sessions” and opportunities for public input into appropriate park projects. Practitioners can learn from experiences like these to improve existing processes, or learn where obstacles to engagement lie and provide more guidance, transparency, and clarity around them.

Integrating new arrivals into existing neighborhoods are crucial social integration efforts that maintain cities’ vibrant, diverse community life. Linking immigrants to civic life has real effects in public space; when people see each other face to face in parks, distant “immigrants” become the neighbor planting next to you, and threatening “government,” your park’s gardener. By making public processes and established civic structures accessible, practitioners encourage immigrant participation that in turn helps create parks and public spaces that reflect the unique character of their neighborhoods.

The Immigrants & Parks Collaborative is:
Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice
Greater Jamaica Development Corporation
Asian Americans for Equality
Hester Street Collaborative
El Centro de Inmigrante
The Center for Family Life
Queens Museum of Art
Queens Community House
Centro Hispano “Cuzcatlan”
& Riverside Park Fund

For more information please contact Silvett García at the Immigrant and Parks Collaborative

Video produced by the JM Kaplan Fund and Supermarché.

Text written by Neerja Vasishta and Hillary Angelo, adapted from an article of theirs which was originally published in Progressive Planning, No. 179, Spring 2009. Neerja Vasishta is the former coordinator of the Immigrants & Parks Collaborative and parks advocacy coordinator at the New York Immigration Coalition. Hillary Angelo is the former director of the technical assistance program at Partnerships for Parks and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at New York University.

Images courtesy of the Hester Street Collaborative.

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.

Making Policy Public (MPP) is one of CUP’s programs: a series of fold-out posters that use graphic and information design to explore complex public policy issues. Collaborations between graphic designers and community advocates are commissioned by CUP through a juried process. The series aims to make information on public policy truly public: accessible, meaningful, and shared. CUP has recently issued the call for proposals for the next round of MPP’s. You can download it here.

This is the second Making Policy Public process narrative we’ve featured on Urban Omnibus; check out the first one here. Below, Glen shares his recollections of the process of making the Predatory Equity Survival Guide.

But first, CUP provides some context:

In the spring of 2008, we put out a request for proposals to advocacy groups to participate in Making Policy Public (MPP). One of the first submissions we received was from Amy Chan, a tenant organizer at Tenants and Neighbors (T&N). Her proposal was about a recently discovered but at the time almost totally unreported phenomenon, risky private equity investments in New York City’s housing stock. When the jury met in the early summer, the proposal was an immediate standout. The issues were complex, misunderstood, and it seemed like an MPP poster could be a vital part of an organizing and education campaign. That summer 2008, we posted the four policy briefs that the jury selected and issued a call for designers who were interested in collaborating with these advocates to create fold-out posters addressing public policy concerns. Again, Glen Cummings of MTWTF sent in a standout submission. At 2×4, prior to founding MTWTF, Glen had produced a lot of complicated infographics that maintained a sense of playfulness. The jury felt that the predatory equity issue was so complicated that having an experienced designer like Glen would be critical to making the project succeed. Glen worked with Amy of T&N and Dina Levy of Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB) to battle the predatory equity takeover of affordable housing in New York City.

And now, here’s Glen in his own words, images and – crucially – in the teams’ strong and effective word-image relationships:

I’ve been interested in interdisciplinary collaborations since around 2001, seven years before I started MTWTF, and I always try to facilitate them whenever possible. I was excited to be invited to collaborate as part of Making Policy Public.

What I liked about the MPP series was its inherent multidisciplinary focus, and the chance it offered to learn about the subject and then actually create an impact.

Meeting
I met Rosten Woo and John Mangin of CUP as well as the team of advocates I was going to be working with: Dina Levy from UHAB and Amy Chan from T&N, at CUP’s offices in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Dina and Amy told us all about their recent research, and gave us printouts of the slideshows and handouts they had developed for their presentations. They had a deep knowledge of the history, legal aspects and current state of NYC subsidized housing that they needed to transfer to CUP and myself before we could begin. I introduced myself by showing a range of related design projects and describing why each was organized the way it was, and looked the way it did. Although no two projects are the same, showing related solutions can jumpstart a discussion about project’s structure and tone: Rosten and John presented the collaborations’ structure, which they had established. They had already begun setting up a schedule and a basecamp site for the project, taking on the organizational responsibilities that normally are the designer’s.

Underway
At out first working meeting, Dina and Amy staged a teach-in and brought us all up to speed on the finer points of predatory equity. To understand predatory equity we needed to know aspects of NYC housing law, finance, and federal banking regulations. Their knowledge was endless but because Dina and Amy were experts, I knew I’d be able to focus on the big picture knowing they would let me know if I was off track.

Here’s what I learned: predatory equity is when speculators aggressively buy up buildings that are covered by government programs that keep rents affordable. They evict tenants, convert the apartments into market-rate rentals or condos, and then resell the building for a big profit.

That’s only half of the problem. Most of these deals were made during the real estate boom for way too much money. The loans were huge and unsustainable. If the speculators can’t evict the tenants and sell the building quickly they default on their mortgages, putting tenants’ homes at risk, and leaving banks, insurance companies, and the federal government holding all the debt. It is a second sub-prime crisis ready to happen.

Just as we were beginning our collaboration, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, a predatory equity building in the Bronx widely recognized as the birthplace of hip-hop, was being overleveraged by a predatory developer.

This was not only a case of people potentially losing their homes; but also of New York City losing its heritage and culture. The threats are social and cultural as well as economic.

Through their work helping tenants organize and speaking to lawmakers and media sources, Dina and Amy knew that the poster would have to address two different audiences: 1) Tenants who wanted to know how the law and predatory equity practices could directly affect them and 2) decision-makers who would need inside information to take action. They imagined the publication’s goal was to mobilize tenants in affected and at-risk buildings and to convince politicians and banks to recognize the problem and take immediate action. We agreed finding a way to visually explain predatory equity was the best place to start.

Comic by Chris Ware. Used without permission.

Progress?
At the start of our next meeting I presented some visual material for discussion. I hoped this discussion would help us decide how the booklets’ content would be organized, and that would help us determine what visual language would work best.  For example, if the information could be organized as a story, a narrative explanation, a comic strip format would work.

images from “Graphis Diagrams 1970”

If we thought that decision-makers would respond to numerical data we could create a vivid set of information graphics.

Of course it’s a porous situation. You could relate a set of facts and figure as a narrative, and you could relate narrative as a set of information graphics, but you have to start somewhere. It’s a reciprocal relationship between the information and the design. You move back and forth between saying “What format can deliver this information?” and “What information can be be delivered by this format?”

Rosten felt the tenants would respond best to something direct like a comic strip. Amy and Dina though the decision makers would respond best to words, but might be turned off by the tone of a comic strip. It seemed that combination of strong main text and a serious comic-strip could work.

I also had created a dozen rough sketches for the project. The idea was not to pick a final direction, but just to make visuals part of the discussion as early as possible. We looked at the sketches and discussed how the graphics worked and which ones were communicating  better than others.

Sketch no. 1 uses a simple narrative format to personify the different actors and institutions involved in predatory equity. It proposes two stories: why predatory equity is bad for tenants; and why predatory equity is bad for banks, the federal government and the general public, all in an extremely brief 12 frames.

Sketch no. 2 compare the usual flow of money between landlord, tenants and banks in an affordable housing scenario with the flow in a predatory equity scenario.

Sketch no. 3 addresses both sides of the situation through an imagined dialogue. The back features a poster.

Sketch no. 4 explains predatory equity then provides message templates to inform neighbors, local government, banks, and the news media about the impending crisis.

Dina and Amy thought the sequential images and iconic characters really helped explain some of the technical parts of the story, but that that a cartoony feeling would alienate the decision-makers who would receive the publication.

We also agreed that our goals weren’t ambitious enough. In addition to explaining the situation, we had to propose specific solutions, and convince people to act, if anything was going to get done. We moved forward without discounting anything. We knew we’d have several sections- an introduction, an explanation and a call to action- and that each section would address two audiences: one liking visual narratives one liking textual facts.

Crash
In October Dina and Amy told us the predatory equity situation was shifting. We’d been working on a poster to stop predatory equity, but the financial crisis seemed to be changing the nature of the challenge. This was the absolute trough of the financial crisis hysteria. Everybody thought the world was ending.

Dina and Amy asked that we pause for a month until they found out how the government would respond to the crisis and how that would affect predatory equity situation.

A month or so later our mission was clearer.

The predatory equity mortgages were like giant versions of the single-family mortgages that had crashed the economy and trashed the banking system.

The federal government had committed to bailing out the banks, and those bail-outs meant the federal government would have some leverage to tell banks what to do, and perhaps to keep them from foreclosing on at-risk buildings.

Dina and Amy had been working with a coalition of housing experts and federal elected officials on a plan to save buildings at imminent risk of foreclosure.

So now we would also need to promote viable short- and long-term solutions and tell all parties how best to proceed.

The short term solutions had to do with saving buildings that were already overleveraged. How could these buildings be saved from foreclosure? with loan modifications and a strategy we called “preservation short sales.” (Download the PDF at the end of this article if you want to get more details). With loan modifications, the federal government would press banks to modify loans to allow speculators to continue paying their mortgages and providing services. In a preservation short sale, the federal government would offer tax incentives for speculators to sell the buildings at a loss to responsible owners. The key goal in both scenarios was to keep the buildings affordable for current tenants.

Long-term solutions would involve new loan standards for banks that would dry up money for huge predatory equity deals.

The political and financial viability of these solutions kept shifting as Dina and Amy met with the various coalitions and elected officials so we had to develop language and a visual design that was general enough to be accurate in 6 months, but specific enough to deliver real information.

Establishing The Design
The publication design was developed around the outline below. Each section would provide a terse executive summary flanked by an illustrated narrative that either clarified the text or gave further information. This design established how much space was allotted to each part, how much text would fit, and what it would look like.

The front is divided into four panels that act as a booklet. The acts as a poster, so I consider that one panel as well.

Panel 1 cover and back cover
Panel 2 explains predatory equity
Panel 3 explains the short term problem and solutions
Panel 4 explains the long-term problem and solutions
Panel 5 the poster, shows solidarity and tells how to engage the situation

The pamphlet had to be inviting enough to suck a reader in but also contain a good amount of density. We wanted the cover to stand out on an elected official’s desk and really look nothing like something you’d expect a “policy brief” to look like.

The first spread breaks down the basics of the problem in a simple précis and cartoon narrative. But, when you open the gatefold, you are hit with a great deal of information. We thought the seriousness of the content here offset the playfulness of the graphics, hopefully hitting that space where it can be both inviting and taken seriously.

The other audience for the publication is of course tenants and tenant organizers. Instead of using the poster surface to contain a complicated diagram, we decided to keep it simple and graphic: something that could be read from 40 feet or more. (as in a window on a 2nd story. The poster would help create a visual “identity” for the issue.)

Development
Next Dina and Amy refined the language, finding the right balance of specificity and crafting it to fit in the allotted spaces, while Rosten, John and I worked together to finish the narrative graphics.

Rosten, John and I worked on the narrative graphics developing both the content and visual approach for each panel, and trying to find the right balance of clarity and personality for each illustration. You can see the details in various stages of completion above.

My favorite detail, and I believe John’s favorite too, is the “Eye of Providence” put in place to re-regulate banks.  We had a long discussion about whether or not we were somehow either promoting the freemasons with the ominous eye, or perhaps making the government appear too big brother-ish.

Each additional information panel was built up as an argument. This panel illustrates how federal underwriting standards could prevent future predatory equity deals.

All the panels fit together like this, because they are eventually printed on one side of a sheet.

At the last minute to we added a crowd at the bottom of the cover and poster that protests particular predatory equity speculators. The idea was to introduce a second level of information here to match the two levels throughout.

The “snake squeezing two towers to form a dollar glyph” remained the same throughout the process, but it shifted color several times, starting out red (too weird?), moving to bright green (too friendly?) and eventually becoming black (nice and scary).

Rosten and I were both particularly interested in how the colors conveyed the content, so we spent a lot of time looking at the color pallet of the publication and in the end, I believe, developed something unique. Rosten was excited about the prospect of using more than 2 colors, so we developed a palette with four. Even though the paper is quite basic, the printing itself is luxurious. It’s not often you see anything printed in 4 spot colors given away for free. We hoped people who received it would think it was attractive and hang it up.

CUP, T&N, and UHAB reviewed the final designs and after a few slight adjustments we were off to press, and then into the hands of the people who would use them.

The Process
One of the interesting things about the project was that the development of the content was 90% of the project, which is not always the case. That’s not to say that we sat around waiting for a master text to be written before beginning the visual design. Early visual designs helped us establish a structure that the content could be developed to fit.

It’s a particularly strong way that designing can act to prefigure the content, instead of waiting for content to be completed which in this case could have never happened without narrowing the parameters. The predatory equity situation was ever-changing and way too complex.

Dina and Amy were amazing to work with. Having a constant open dialogue between the content development and the publication design helped us reduce a complex set of information into an approachable publication.

The Launch
Advocates handed out The Predatory Equity Survival Guide as part of a crucial tenant association meeting in East Harlem where new plans to combat predatory equity were announced. Tenants were trying to educate themselves ahead of a big City Council meeting on predatory equity that was happening the next week.

Amy, Dina, and tenant leaders delivered charged presentations to the attendees. One part teach-in, one part pep rally. Several hundred people turned out. Attendees seemed enthusiastic about having concise information and a new tool to help them fight predatory equity.

Tenants took home stacks to distribute at their own tenant meetings. Plans are already underway to distribute a Spanish language version this summer.

We checked in with Amy and Dina this afternoon for a late-breaking update.

Amy says:

We have since distributed the survival guide through Stuyvesant Town, Riverton, and the City Council and we constantly get tenant requests for more.

And, according to Dina:

We’re advancing the campaign on individual buildings, primarily those run by Putnam, SG2, and Ocelot. All three have loans held by Fannie Mae. All are in decaying condition, some of the worst conditions in the city. We’re working to convince Fannie Mae to take responsibility for the maintenance of the buildings and to bring the debt back to a sustainable level. Meanwhile, the Federal Government is starting to pay attention to the multifamily housing crisis and is looking at strategies for preservation. To get more information or get involved contact me at Levy [at] uhab.org.

Glen Cummings is a graphic designer and writer based in New York City. He is a partner at MTWTF (Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday) and a lecturer in design at Yale University School of Art.

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.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit organization that uses art and visual culture to increase the quality of public participation in urban planning and community design. CUP specializes in creating interdisciplinary collaborations that bring together designers, educators, advocates, and community residents to improve urban life in New York City and beyond.

Making Policy Public (MPP) is one of CUP’s programs: a series of fold-out posters that use graphic design to explore and explain public policy. Each poster is the product of a commissioned collaboration between a designer and an advocate. This series aims to make information on public policy truly public: accessible, meaningful, and shared.

This winter, the MPP jury paired designer Candy Chang with Sean Basinski of the Street Vendor Project to work with CUP staff to demystify the rules and regulations of street vending in New York City. Here, she shares the process and product of this endeavor. In doing so, she makes a strong case for further extending the kinds of collaboration that Making Policy Public embodies, and for establishing more peer-to-peer platforms – identified by advocates and communicated through good design – for information exchange between citizens.

Stay tuned to the Omnibus for a process narrative of another Making Policy Public poster, Predatory Equity, coming up in a couple weeks.

Six pairs of sunglasses, five hand bags, two scarves, seven books, one DVD, six magazines, two hats, two umbrellas, one necklace, three photographs, one wallet, four t-shirts, one notebook, three pairs of ear muffs, eight pairs of slippers, one watch (that I still wear after five years), and countless hot dogs, pretzels, noodles, biryani, crepes, falafel, halal, dosas, rice wraps, roasted nuts, bagels, and coffee: these are some of the things I’ve consumed thanks to New York City’s 10,000+ street vendors. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I realized how much drama they have to endure to make an honest living.

I’m a big fan of CUP and when they posted an open call to designers and advocacy groups to work together through their Making Policy Public Program, I happily applied. Sean Basinski (The Street Vendor Project), Rosten Woo (CUP), John Mangin (CUP), and I collaborated for five months to translate NYC’s complex vending regulations into an accessible fold-out poster. CUP served as project manager and provided working stipends, research assistance, and direction throughout the process. Our goal was to make an educational resource for vendors that clarifies the rules and their rights when confronted by police officers. We also wanted the poster to serve as an advocacy tool that highlights the history of vending, personal vendor stories, and policy reforms to help develop a more just system. At the end CUP would publish several thousand copies of the poster, provide distribution support, and give 1000 copies to The Street Vendor Project for use in their advocacy and education work.

A lawyer and former vendor himself, Sean founded The Street Vendor Project in 2001 as a legal advocacy group for NYC street vendors. The organization has 700+ vendor members who collectively work together to make their voices heard. They publish reports to raise public awareness about vendor issues, file lawsuits to support vendor rights, and help vendors grow their businesses by linking them with small business training and loans. While meeting at Sean’s office to learn more about vending issues and challenges, he pulled out a box containing heaps of pink tickets they’ve accumulated from local vendors:

The violations are mostly for the physical position of vendors’ carts and tables, which must be certain distances from curbs, crosswalks, and building doors. Vendors are also frequently ticketed for not “conspicuously” wearing their vending license and for setting up shop on restricted streets. It’s an uphill battle for vendors, whose interests have often been quashed by the City’s “quality of life” crackdowns. It’s virtually impossible to get a general vending license and the estimated wait is several decades! There are tons of street restrictions, partly due to the leverage of powerful business groups. And the fines are shockingly steep at $1000 – as a comparison, a parking ticket is $65. To top it off, all these regulations are buried in documents full of intimidating jargon and heinous text formatting that would make even the most patient person cry. Here’s an example page from the City’s vending regulations book:

Snap! Can the City be ticketed for bad formatting? These resources not only make it confusing for vendors but for the government too. Sean pointed out several tickets where even the police officers got the rules wrong. And worse yet, what if English is your second language? Ever since the first Jewish, Italian and Irish pushcart markets formed in lower Manhattan in the 1880s, immigrants have made up a large part of the vending workforce. Its low startup costs, independence, and flexibility make it a traditional first stop for small business entrepreneurs. Today over 80% of NYC vendors in lower Manhattan are born outside the U.S., particularly Bangladesh, China, Senegal and Afghanistan. Seeing a document like this makes me wonder how anyone has the moxie to vend at all!

We learned more at The Street Vendor Project’s monthly meeting where vendors join forces to inform each other about current issues and take an active role in making changes. City officials are proposing that vendors can never leave their cart (who needs bathroom breaks?) and that all vendors must display an unobstructed 36″ x 18″ sign that displays all their appropriate licenses. This would take up serious space on their size-restricted tables. Vendor and board member Larry McDonald said, “Forget about your goods. You’re going to be selling the sign!”

I also spoke with individual street vendors like Munnu, who sells hot dogs and pretzels at the corner of Lafayette and Reade. He moved to NYC from Bangladesh and has been a street vendor for 17 years, but it hasn’t been easy. “One time I got a ticket because my jacket covered my license, and then I have to pay $1000 fine,” he said, “Do you have $1000 in your pocket? You don’t have it! I don’t have it! This hand makes money and the other hand finishes it very fast. How do they think I can give so much?”

While learning about the challenges vendors face – and enjoying the best burritos, biryani, arepas and more at the annual Vendy Awards – we started thinking about the content of the poster. How much would be directed towards street vendors as a much-needed resource, and how much would be an educational/advocacy tool about street vendors and regulation reform? How much would be about clarifying the convoluted regulations into clear graphics and how much would be about showing just how convoluted it currently is?

After we established a general scope of content, I made “wire frame” mockups and marked each page of the fold-out poster with titles and image placeholders. This gave us a foundation to discuss the order, prominence, and general layout of the content. We placed vendor-targeted information in the first folds so vendors can easily access it on a day-to-day basis and within the small confines of some carts. We also started thinking about how to make the rules as pictorial as possible and include text translations in Bengali, Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish.

The fully-opened poster was devoted to a few elements, including personal stories from local vendors, historical background (NYC vending started when four Jewish peddlers set up pushcarts along Hester Street), fun facts (Jerry Seinfeld was once a vendor, and Bloomingdale’s, D’Agostino and Macy’s all started as pushcarts), and recommended regulation reforms (lift the license caps, increase street access, reduce the fines, and reform administration and enforcement). While this spread was geared towards educating non-vendors, Sean noted its equal value to vendors so they could feel less informal and take pride in a profession that has been so integral to New York’s history.

I tried different visual styles, from old world LES charm to photographs of actual objects on the sidewalks. The guys were open to anything that best facilitated the content, and Rosten championed as much diagrammatic information as possible. Sean made a good point that, whatever the style, the poster should have a sense of “authority” so vendors could use it as a trustworthy-looking resource when dealing with police officers.

I eventually landed on a friendly Chris Ware-inspired style and had good times illustrating everything from hot dog stands to former Mayor Ed Koch. I printed a lot of homemade versions so we had hard copies to peruse and mark up during meetings. Here’s a look at the poster-in-progress at three stages:

Over the course of our bi-weekly discussions, many elements evolved. Things that were initially little (sidebar of fun facts) became a centerpiece. Things that got tossed to the wayside (John’s extensive timeline research) became useful fodder integrated into the policy reforms. And things that were once separate (vendor types, personal stories, policy reforms) became one coherent cityscape.

We got feedback from vendors about clarity, content, symbols, language and text translations. We tried to challenge all our assumptions – is “>” a universal symbol for “greater than”? Is a green check symbol the opposite of a red x’d circle? Are the abbreviations for feet, inches, and meters clear? Here’s the final version:

Vendor Power! Hopefully this fold-out poster not only saves vendors some headaches but allows the city to direct its energy (and our tax money) towards more pressing issues. In order to put this information directly in the hands of people who need it the most, CUP organized a citywide distribution event where volunteers handed out free copies to vendors across the city. Unfortunately I was way up in Helsinki, but here’s some photos of the big day from CUP:

And here are some first-hand thoughts from John:

“The poster went public with a citywide distribution extravaganza on a Saturday in late March. We got about 20 volunteers to take the posters to vendors on the job. Cheikh Fall, a vendor himself, helped us map the city’s vendor-dense areas and estimate numbers. The weather was iffy, but that wouldn’t matter, he said – April rent was due soon and the vendors would be out in force.

The volunteers met us downtown to pick up Google maps and a big stack of posters. From there they fanned out to Jackson Heights, Fulton Mall, Grand Concourse, Harlem – about 20 neighborhoods in all. (We talked about a Staten Island toe-touch, but it didn’t quite happen.) We put the poster in the hands of about 1,000 vendors. Reactions ranged from enthusiastic to what-took-you-so-long? — more than a few related stories of run-ins with cops or storeowners when the poster could’ve come in handy.”

In this piece, we meet Johanna Willens, the first farmer to sell her produce at the East New York Farmers’ Market in 1998.

For all you budding urban farmers out there, here are some
DIY tips to get you started on your own community garden:
First, the materials:
The New York City Compost Project
Gardens Alive

Then, some community workshops:
Brooklyn Botanic Garden: Gardening Page
Green Thumb NYC

And finally, some tip sheets and online resources:
The City Farms Tipsheet
OrganicGardening.com