In the past, keys to a city were reserved for the heroic and the honored. Now, thanks to artist Paul Ramírez Jonas, you can bestow a key to New York City upon your own personal hero. Through June 27th, “Key to the City” will distribute 35,000 free keys from their kiosk in Times Square that will unlock 20 sites scattered throughout the five boroughs. What these keys allow you to see has not yet been revealed – some may open up special exhibitions, others to sites rarely made available to the general public.

For a public art piece that has more instant gratification, Miranda July, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, and now sculptor, has recently installed her “Eleven Heavy Things“ in Union Square, which is making its American debut after premiering at the Venice Biennale. The eleven pieces encourage interaction from all park users, and will be up until October 3rd.

While Queens may be the largest borough in size, and second largest in population, it is often overlooked by tourists or even by city residents in the other four boroughs. City Councilman Daniel Dromm is hoping to change that with a new month-long initiative entitled “June in Jackson Heights.” Throughout this month, the diversity and cultural energy of the neighborhood will be showcased through musical performances, a poetry festival, exhibitions in vacant storefronts, and informal events to be determined — local artists and performers have an open invitation to join in the festivities.

Traffic congestion and what to do about it is a never-ending struggle in New York City. But one man, Charles Komanoff, has an idea for how to increase efficiency on Manhattan’s streets — and he has done his homework. Komanoff has spent the past three years studying the patterns and intricacies of every mode of transportation in the city and created an immense spreadsheet documenting his findings. His research and calculations led to a sophisticated plan involving tiered payment for cars and subway riders, increased taxi fares, and free bus service. But we’ve seen how congestion pricing has been received in the past, and we know full well that the various modes of transportation in our fair city are far from integrated. But even if the implementation of Komanoff’s ideas is out of reach, his impressive body of research is worth our attention.

Speaking of alleviating transit congestion, Rachel Maddow recently satisfied her “inner infrastructure geek” by visiting the Sandhogs working on the Second Avenue Subway line, which will eventually help relieve the crowding on the 4/5/6 line — a line that serves, according to Maddow, more riders every day than the subways of Chicago, Boston and Washington D.C. combined! Check out her look at the boring machine, the “launch box” and her interview with Michael Horodniceanu, the president of capital construction for the MTA, below: (via Planetizen)

Among all the various fairs and markets that pop up in the city throughout the summer, this weekend is your only chance to check out the Renegade Craft Fair in McCarren Park, which features over 300 indie artists. After that, head a bit further into Brooklyn for for the Bushwick Open Studios festival, featuring another 300 shows in 150 locations throughout Bushwick and the surrounding neighborhoods. One place however that you’ll no longer be able to check out is the BKLYN Yard, which announced that it had been forced out by their landlord, after four years of hosting parties, shows, and food trucks at their site along Gowanus Canal. Notified at the beginning of May that they had to vacate the premises and cancel their summer schedule, they are hoping to take their party elsewhere in the city.


Top photo: Eleven Heavy Things, photo by Spike Jones via Deitch Projects. The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Update: You can now view Archipelago, an original Urban Omnibus video production, exhibited in The City We Imagined / The City We Made, that explores a day in the life of five New York neighborhoods: Hunts Point, Jamaica, Mariner’s Harbor, Downtown Brooklyn, and Chelsea, here on Urban Omnibus.

From tomorrow until June 26th, we are bringing you a unique opportunity to take stock of the range of design and planning activity that has reshaped New York City over the past ten years. The City We Imagined / The City We Made is the sixth in an ongoing series of Architectural League exhibitions about contemporary architecture in New York City. This installment chronicles the transformation the physical city in light of the convergence of an array of powerful forces: the events of 9/11, the policies and priorities of the Bloomberg Administration, the volatility of global and local economies, advances in material and construction technologies, and a new interest among the public in contemporary architecture. The exhibition consists of a chronological display of major projects, proposals of the past ten years; an installation of one thousand photographs, taken by a volunteer corps of nearly one hundred design professionals, that depicts New York today; video interviews with leading New Yorkers; and an original Urban Omnibus-produced video about the city as experienced in five neighborhoods that we’ll share with you guys in the coming weeks.

You should definitely come check it out. The show is at 250 Hudson Street, entrance on Dominick Street. Exhibition hours: Wednesday to Sunday, noon to 7pm. It’s quite an undertaking, and installing it has prevented us from rounding up the week’s worth of news and updates. But, nonetheless, here are some links to check out:

The Brooklyn Grange finds a site in Queens for its 40,000-ft rooftop farm.

A competition for data visualizations to “make government data more accessible and comprehensible to the American public.”

Speaking of data visualization, while we may have exhausted the Icelandic volcano eruption, check out this amazing visualization of what happened to plane traffic.

And also check out MIT’s progress on printable solar cells, MetroCard art in Williamsburg, and a simpler, safer Grand Army Plaza which reminds us of our detailed look at the plaza and the design competition to reinvent it. Check out the video we made about it below:

It’s been a week of big projects, big plans, and big ideas.

New York University has announced the NYU 2031 plan, an anticipated 40% growth of the institution in the city over the next 20 years. The university has worked with SMWM, Grimshaw Architects, Toshiko Mori Architect and Olin Partnership to develop what it calls “a strategic framework to guide the University’s growth.” The plans, which address academic, residential and public space, and which NYU President John Sexton says will be strongly community-minded, are broken down into three parts: expansion and development of the core campus, open space improvements, and the establishment of new NYU locations within the city at East River Science Park, in Downtown Brooklyn and on Governors Island. The plans have received a lot of attention and renew the conversation about sustaining competitive institutions in a city so limited in space. Love it or hate it, we’ll all have to wait and see how the big ideas start to play out — the proposals have been framed as the design team’s “recommendations,” and they will continue to review and refine them over the next 25 years. The New York Times reports that Cooper, Robertson & Partners is working on the design of the Downtown Brooklyn site and Polshek Partnership Architects will be tackling the East River Science Park Health Corridor. And all this from the preliminary report — the official strategy will be released on April 14.

Speaking of NYU and planning, NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy this week released the report How Have Recent Rezonings Affected the City’s Ability to Grow?, what they bill as the first comprehensive statistical analysis of the first 76 of the 100 rezonings the City has undertaken since 2003. The New York Times takes a look at some of the findings in more detail, or download the PDF yourself here. (While we’re on the topic of 2003, check out this lovely photo project by designer and photographer Andrew Faris, who shares his photographic wanderings from Spring 2003, when he first arrived in NYC, eager to explore with Polaroid in hand.)

Six acres of Brooklyn Bridge Park opened on this past drizzly Monday, with another 3 1/2 to open later this spring. The long-anticipated project will eventually cover 85 acres, so there is still lots to do, but Metropolis claims that “this first section is any indication, it will be worth the wait.” If the chilly weather doesn’t inspire you to check it out yourself quite yet, Metropolis suggests getting a sense of the new space through a video of the park in progress or by revisiting a 2006 piece by (Omni-friend and collaborator) Andrew Blum about Michael Van Valkenburgh’s design. Or take a look at Curbed NY and Brownstoner, both of whom have photos from the event itself.

You’ve read Carter Craft’s thoughts on the big ideas put forth in MoMA’s upcoming exhibition, Rising Currents. Now you can see them for yourself. The exhibition opened to the public yesterday — though it’s not the first chance the public has had to experience the content. MoMA has been blogging about and has offered workshops and open studios with the teams over the past few months. Now exhibition curator Barry Bergdoll is looking for feedback: What are your thoughts on the exhibition’s emphasis on process?

This week we looked at hard-to-count populations for the 2010 Census. It looks like even the not-so-hard-to-count areas are proving to be more challenging than hoped. New Yorkers are taking their time sending their questionnaires back — some neighborhoods hadn’t yet seen a single response as of Wednesday. Send in those forms! Don’t make us show you the music video again…

If you liked our look back into the archives on Wednesday, you might want to visit the Museum of the City of New York’s new exhibition Cars, Culture and the City, a show that explores how New York City “played an essential role in creating today’s car culture, and [how] the car has helped, in turn, to shape modern New York.” From car showrooms that lined Broadway to the development of infrastructure to early 20th century car manufacturing in our fair city, the relationship between automobile and city offers plenty of food for thought. Then balance the historical reflection with some (unsurprising) statistics about the state of traffic congestion today culled from GPS data collected from city taxis. To put NYC driving in perspective: Between November 2008 and October 2009, “weekday traffic in [Manhattan's business] district moved at an average of 9.5 miles per hour — about the speed of a farmyard chicken at full gallop.” And then find utter beauty in traffic patterns through this gorgeous visualization project by Pedro M. Cruz that maps the routes of 1,534 vehicles over 24 hours in Lisbon (via information aesthetics):

Visualizing Lisbon traffic from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

The aesthetics of Lisbon traffic from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Visualizing traffic jam in Lisbon from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.


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

Calling all architects, designers and artists! Now that the city has made the Times Square pedestrian plazas permanent, the Department of Transportation is launching a design competition to “refresh” the existing temporary treatments while the longer, separate process begins to design the permanent plazas and undergo a capital street reconstruction project. The updated temporary plazas are expected to be in use for approximately eight months and will be installed by mid-July. We’ve been keeping our eye on the Green Light for Midtown program since its inception and are excited to see the responses to this RFP. Check out the competition info below and contribute your ideas.

The DOT press release states:

By refreshing the temporary treatments now in place on Broadway from 47th to 42nd Streets with a series of economical, temporary surface treatments, the City will ensure these places remain vibrant, inviting and dynamic as the longer design process moves forward to transform these spaces permanently. Professional artists and designers may submit designs. Simultaneously, the capital process will begin to design world-class plazas with ample seating, new paving and underground infrastructure able to accommodate and enhance the signature events that are staged at Times Square throughout the year. The project will also completely reconstruct the roadways in Times Square, which have not been structurally repaired in decades.

“New York City is the world’s greatest stage for urban design and streetscape innovation, and no place offers as much energy and character as Times Square,” said Commissioner Sadik-Khan. “As we lay the groundwork for permanent changes, we invite artists and designers to put their own mark on an area that 350,000 pedestrians walk through daily.”

The Request for Proposal (RFP), titled “reNEWable Times Square,” challenges artists and designers living and working in New York City to think boldly about their vision for the temporary plazas, carefully weighing design components along with factors that will enhance pedestrians’ experiences and improve the setting for the many trademark events Times Square houses annually, such as serving as the anchor for New Year’s Eve celebrations around the country. Designs also must accommodate different “use zones” such as fire lanes, crosswalks, seating areas and pedestrian zones.

The deadline to submit proposals is April 16, 2010. The competition is open to professional artists and designers living and working in New York City. For more information, check in with the DOT website — the formal Request for Proposals will be posted by 5pm.


Image: Detail of a photograph by Flickr user m:k.