Everyone knows that the rooftops of New York are the city’s most underutilized real estate asset. But while convincing your landlord to install that bamboo roofdeck might be a challenge, telling her to paint it white should, in theory, be an easy sell. Climate change implications aside, it saves money. According to Crain’s however, New York is behind on this simple energy-saving measure. Hopefully Mayor Mike and enviro-VP Al donning some rollers in Queens yesterday will kick it up a notch.

If thinking about climate change gets you down, then indulge in some informed optimism from genius illustrator and urban enthusiast par excellence Maira Kalman. Not only does the journey she details in this blogpost reveal the complexity of city process and the innovation that goes into making its systems work, it also shows that she shares our love for the Newtown Creek Nature Walk and Polshek Partnership’s design for the upgrade of the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility. (In other Newtown Creek news: the EPA has officially proposed adding the site to the Superfund National Priorities List.)

Making Policy Public – the excellent program of the Center for Urban Pedagogy that we’ve showcased in two kick-ass work-process narratives here and here on the Omnibus – has just announced the new list of collaborators. And, proving that the kind of collaborations between designers and advocates that this program fosters can extend beyond the program itself, one of the designers from last year’s MPP – Omni-favorite Candy Chang – has a whole truckload of flashcards she developed with Tenants & Neighbors that explain tenants’ rights.

Candy’s all about making information more accessible and public space more useful, so imagine she’d approve of the instinct behind the Bus-Tops program in London, which invites artists to repurpose bus shelters by installing LED screens that create “a shared visual canvas that would encourage artists, designers, and any other interested parties to upload images, words, video onto the screens … via the web or mobile phone.”

And since everyone’s talking transit, let’s get together and explore a fascinatingly complex subway station next Wednesday. Meet at the northwest corner of 4th Avenue and Pacific Street at 6:30 p.m. RSVP to rsvp@archleague.org.

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

So, CUP’s Nehemiah talk last night was dope. Reverend Dr. Youngblood and architect Alexander Gorlin delivered on their promise to share some of the fascinating back-story of how they teamed up to design and built the Spring Creek Nehemiah Houses and how, against the odds, East Brooklyn Congregations built almost 3,000 units of owner-occupied, single-family housing in East New York, Brownsville and other areas of East Brooklyn affected by years of disinvestment.

Gorlin doesn’t just do East Brooklyn, however. Today in the Daily News, he opines on the rare instances of modern architecture in the Bronx, most of which find their expression in community service buildings such as the courthouse by Rafael Viñoly Architects or the Bronx Charter School for the Arts by WXY (designers of the NYC Info Center featured recently at the Architectural League).

Gorlin and Youngblood spoke within The University of Trash, an installation by Michael Cataldi and Nils Norman, billed as “an experiment in alternative architecture, urbanism, and pedagogy taking place in SculptureCenter’s main space.” Check it out before it closes on August 3rd.

And speaking of our friends at CUP, last week their Making Policy Public jury convened to select the advocacy groups and issues they will be addressing in their next season of posters. Now they’re putting the call out for policy-friendly artists and designers who want to collaborate on the new editions. If you aren’t familiar with this excellent project, a series of foldout posters that use graphic and information design to explore and explain complex public policy issues, or if you’re curious to know more about past designers’ experiences, check out Candy’s piece on Vendor Power! and Glen’s on Predatory Equity. Then, check out the five briefs, get your portfolios and statements of interest ready, and get involved! This season’s topics are:

1. Keeping parks public with FIERCE
2. Participating in public housing with Community Voices Heard
3. Redistricting reform with the Brennan Center for Justice
4. Navigating the juvenile justice system with the Center for Court Innovation
and
5. Mapping the tomato supply chain with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and Just Harvest USA

We’ve been talking about public space a lot lately, but Metropolis points out a different angle on the topic. Secure Cities is a website that maps out how heightened security measures in a post-9/11 world have affected urban public space in terms of increased surveillance, reduced accessibility and mobility, and restricted activity (via either physical or legal barriers).

Since it’s a Friday afternoon — Look! There’s a video game about controlling gridlock! (via Streetsblog)

And wait! Who knew the Manhattan Bridge was so wobbly?

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