CityBench | photo via streetsblog.org

BENCHES!
Weary pedestrians take note. This week, DOT commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan introduced CityBench, a PlanNYC project to install 1,000 new benches on the sidewalks of New York City. The benches will strategically be located adjacent to major transportation nodes that mostly attract seniors and mobility impaired or physically disabled individuals. They also will enable social encounters across local communities and will bring people together in a collective effort to improve their own neighborhoods, as local residents can help determine the location of the benches simply by calling 311. Meanwhile, as part of their “Building of the Day” series, the folks at the Archtober blog reminded us of the Rogers Marvel-designed flood mitigation streetscape installations, already in place in certain locations around the city. In response to subway shutdowns caused by intense storms back in 2007, the MTA and the DOT were charged with finding a way to prevent similar service interruptions in the future. The benches serve a utilitarian double function as they manage overflow depths and provide outdoor seating for pedestrians.

Photo by Flickr user SpecialKRB | via secondavenuesagas.com

7 TRAIN TO SECAUCUS
Mayor Bloomberg has generated some buzz this week with his apparent support of a proposal to extend the 7 line, under the Hudson, to Secaucus, New Jersey. The plan was first floated after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie killed plans for the ARC Tunnel last year. Details are still fuzzy, with the city’s plan only in draft form and not yet formally released to the public, and though city officials claim funding could be shared by the City, the State, NJTransit, the MTA and the Port Authority, some of those parties are already distancing themselves from the idea. The $10 billion plan is already drawing criticism and skepticism, even though nothing concrete has been announced. Check out Second Avenue Sagas, which has been keeping a close eye on the topic, for the latest.

PARKING REFORM
Streetsblog has been reporting this week on some potential parking reforms under consideration at the Department of City Planning that would tighten loopholes in the policies that determine parking maximums in Manhattan’s core. Parking maximums were implemented in response to a series of lawsuits brought against the city after the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970. But the research studies come from DCP appear to be flawed, weakening the agency’s argument, and any proposed parking reforms will no doubt be challenged by opponents, such as the Real Estate Board of New York, which lobbies for the removal of parking limits already in effect. Meanwhile, in a seemingly contradictory move, the DCP has also expressed interest in removing the link between the existing parking maximums and the Clean Air Act, a connection that Noah Kazis describes as “the ultimate guarantee that the parking rules will remain in place and be upheld.” For more about parking reform and the potential future of the DCP plan, stay tuned to Streetsblog.

EVENTS AND TO DOs

The Civilians — Tonight at Joe’s Pub: Tonight, Friday, October 28, theater company The Civilians (whom Omnibus readers might remember from Brooklyn at Eye Level, a production about Atlantic Yards in 2009) will perform a one-night-only cabaret of monologues and songs on the topic of Occupy Wall Street. The Civilians team has been down at Zuccotti Park “talking to the 99% about the current demonstrations, our government, the economy and the future,” and tonight they’ll turn those conversations into a performative investigation of “the current exercise of democracy that will mark our nation’s history.” Buy tickets here or watch a livestream of the event here.

Urbanized at IFC: Last month we spoke with Gary Hustwit about his new film Urbanized on the eve of its US premiere at the closing night of Urban Design Week. For everyone who was unable to make that screening, the film is returning to New York for a week-long engagement at IFC Cinemas, until November 2nd. Don’t miss this chance to see this inspiring overview of some of the innovative thought and action addressing some of the most complex challenges facing our cities and our planet.

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“2010 will bring New York City’s first Comprehensive Waterfront Plan in a generation. Will this plan be adequate? How will we implement it? A world-class waterfront is an expensive but worth-while investment. How can we secure the necessary capital dollars to build it and maintain it? How can New York and New Jersey get its share of funding for the restoration and improvement of our neglected estuary?” –Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance

This past Tuesday, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance convened a diverse array of organizations and individuals to attempt to answer some of these questions and to dance around the elusive idea of a collective vision for the New York-New Jersey Harbor, home to the largest port on the Eastern Seaboard. The Department of City Planning will soon release Vision 2020, the City’s first comprehensive waterfront plan since 1992, yet the real future of New York’s waters appears considerably less in focus. Obscured by diverse cultural narratives and interests, shifting global trade mechanisms, transitioning regional economies, floundering ecological systems, pending sea level rise, limited funding, and rampant uncertainty, the path towards collaborative consensus among the diversity of stakeholders invested in the harbor — what many were amiably calling New York City’s “sixth borough” — is difficult to discern.

The choices of breakout sessions in the morning included workshops on ecology and economy and plans to get New York’s two million children on and in the water. I attended a panel titled “Future of the Port,” and learned that some parts of this puzzle resemble a giant game of Risk, with enormous plastic pieces. Robert Yaro of the Regional Plan Association presented the changing global dynamics of container shipping. Boats the size of the Empire State Building, called the Super Post-Panamax fleet, sit somewhere in the waters that sandwich Central America and wait to squeeze through that formally US-owned slit that is currently expanding, at great expense, to embrace them. In New York and New Jersey, many in the maritime industries hope to make similar accommodations in the harbor by dredging the existing beds (15 to 20 feet deep in most places) to a depth of 50 feet and adding at least 10 more feet of clearance to the Bayonne Bridge. Joseph Curto of the New York Shipping Association explained how the new depths will make New York sexier than competing ports in Norfolk, Newport News, Baltimore, and others that already have the appropriate depths, cheaper labor costs, and resolved locations for dredge material deposition. At least that is the hope. By seducing new ships to New York, we could see “an increase of 200,000 blue collar jobs,” an important and threatened form of well-paid employment that doesn’t require a graduate degree. However, there is a risk. After the dredging, upgrades and expansions, trade dynamics might still send all the ships to Los Angeles’ Long Beach port, or to the incredibly more sophisticated ports in Rotterdam and Hong Kong, as pointed out by Manju Chandrasekhar of Halcrow. There are also the dramatic ecological effects that such processes have on the harbor estuary — which was also once “world class,” as consultant Andrew Willner pointed out. I became anxious just thinking about it. One thing seems clear: after the first of these extremely large boats passes through the canal, predicted for 2015, the cargo business in New York Harbor will change. How it will change depends on who rolls the right dice and wins the battle.

For the first of the afternoon sessions, I attended “The Rising Tide from the Bottom Up: Climate Change Resiliency at the Community Level,” which reminded New Yorkers that residents in every borough are among the most vulnerable to adverse and unpredictable climate events predicted for the near future. The panel’s focus was how to prepare, equitably and appropriately, for such events. Following a choppy live feed from environmentalist and author Bill McKibben, panelists from the government, including Amber Greene from the Office of Emergency Management and Aaron Koch of the Mayor’s Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, presented the familiar and requisite evocative and poorly animated maps conveying the parts of the city that would experience a storm surge given a variety of storm strengths and potential sea level heights, with data grids and charts to validate the visuals. The images, however, as many activists and officials fail to recognize, lack a personal immediacy for many audiences. A mother living on a block a mile inland in Brooklyn, for example, might not see the value in taking educational courses that teach flood preparation, regardless of whether her apartment falls inside a line that is yellow, orange or red. Elizabeth Yeampierre, from the Sunset Park community-based organization UPROSE, stressed that integrated and customized plans that cater to specific communities are essential for ground level buy-in and viable emergency response mechanisms. Whereas in Florida boarding up and sandbagging a home is as natural as covering a pool, in New York we have to take specific steps toward disseminating critical knowledge to empower individuals and families with the capacity to address crises as they arise.

The final afternoon panel I attended was titled “Show Us the Money: New Advocacy and Funding Mechanisms for Federal Dollars.” Whether a massive and centralized construction project like face-lifting a bridge or a decentralized educational program concerning the boarding of windows, most of the projects that touch the harbor come with substantial price tags if they are to achieve the scale of influence and effect required for success. Not surprisingly, project financing was the however-many-billion-pound gorilla in every room at the conference that day. The panel, representing a mix of government civil servants and environmental or conservation-driven NGO representatives, did not have any easy answers. The primary points they stressed were: 1) the importance of a collective and organized voice through collaboration, and 2) a clear agenda of well researched solutions. Curt Johnson of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment cited the organization’s achievements in the Long Island Sound while Chad Lord of the National Parks Conservation Association pointed to the success of the Great Lakes Coalition in capturing $475 million for the restoration of the Great Lakes’ waterways. Leveraging the statutory capacity of the Clean Water Act to funnel all the funding from the EPA enabled the coalition to realize a variety of projects through many different government agencies. The golden ticket again was the coalition’s success in establishing strong alliances by finding common interest among disparate organizations and advancing with a unified voice. When I left, I had yet to hear effective strategies on how to galvanize such strength.

What I did hear was that the institutions and individuals represented are the beginnings of the group that must come together with a collective vision. Overall, I imagine most of the attendees would agree with me that the event was a success, with progress made towards coming up with some shared, actionable answers to the questions the conference posed. However, as community organizing consultant Lee Stuart pointed out, those attending the conference are already a part of the “fifteen percent” that she considers “easy-ins.” That fifteen percent will participate in the movement regardless. That of course leaves the challenge of locating and incorporating the opinions, knowledge, and ideas of the remain 85%. Fifteen percent does not a social movement make. To achieve the inclusive strength required to realize a truly collective voice that might be sufficient to enact appropriate and sustainable responses to the issues facing the NY/NJ harbor, we need a participation model that moves beyond the conference, with its almost requisite structure of snapshot panels and pay-to-play participation. What that model might be, hopefully time will tell.

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Image: Super Post-Panamax via E.R. Schiffahrt.

Will Martin is a designer, media artist and a continuing resident artist in the UnionDocs Collaborative program for the research and production of non-fiction art. 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.

TAXI OF TOMORROW
Want to pick the taxi of tomorrow? The ubiquitous yellow cab is being revamped, and the City is asking New Yorkers to make the final call. At a news conference on Monday, Mayor Bloomberg announced that he is seeking the advice of the project’s “most important stakeholders” — New York City residents — to choose between three design prototypes. The City selected Ford, Nissan and Turkish manufacturers Karsan Otomotiv Sanayi & Ticaret AS as the final three contenders to redesign the entire fleet of cabs based on feedback from taxi drivers, owners and passengers. The winning design will be on the streets for the next ten years, though, because the average life span of a taxi is three to five years, cab owners fear that sourcing from one manufacturer could present problems if they fail to steadily supply replacements and parts. Survey takers are asked questions about what they think the priorities of the taxis of the future should be, from fuel economy to electric outlets to accessibility. Need more incentive? Not only will participants be able to influence the design of one of the most iconic symbols of New York City, they will also be in the running to win a year of free cab rides, sponsored by the Design Trust for Public Space.
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OPPORTUNITY, MAPPED
The American Human Development Project has created an interactive map (designed and built by Zachary Watson and Omnibus Advisory Committee member Rosten Woo) charting what they call the Human Development Index. Considering factors of health, knowledge and standard of living, the index computes wellbeing and opportunity on a scale from one to ten. The index can be sorted by state, congressional district, metro area, ethnic identity or zip code to find stats on life expectancy, school enrollment, population demographics, income, and much, much more. New Yorkers should be pleased to note that the City’s Congressional District 14 ranks highest on the overall Development Index, with a score of 8.79 (Kentucky’s Congressional District 5 comes in last at 2.82). Well designed and informative, the maps let users explore the facts of interrelated economic diversity and standard of living geographically, and compare their own opportunities with those of other Americans.
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Subway to Secaucus proposal by Steve Lanset and Ralph Braskett | via subwaytosecaucus.com

SUBWAY TO SECAUCUS
There was a lot of talk this week about an idea to extend the 7 train to Secaucus, New Jersey. Planners hoped the 3 billion dollars that was freed up after Governor Christie tanked the ARC Tunnel last month might go to the project, but, according to Jeff Zupin, transportation fellow at the Regional Plan Association, the funds have disappeared and the extension is now being deemed financially unfeasible by local government. Though a popular topic this week, the subway to Seacaucus is not a new concept. The New York Times interviewed Steve Lanset and Ralph Braskett who proposed the idea five years ago. Though not involved with the recent proposal coming from City Hall, Lanset and Braskett “had a hunch that the new plan had borrowed from his older one.”
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SEXTON AS MOSES
Make way for NYU. New York Magazine profiled the school’s president John Sexton this week, boldly comparing him to Robert Moses. Sexton’s expansion plan, known as NYU 2031, will add 6 million square feet to the campus, substantially altering the built environment of Greenwich Village and putting the core of downtown New York on the path to becoming a college town. His idea for the school goes beyond new dorms and research labs – he sees the city and the university as a connected entity and believes the project will catalyze economic and cultural development. This comes to the chagrin of many neighbors and preservationists who don’t see the proposed 38-story hotel and residential hall fitting in with the Village’s historic buildings, and who won a victory last month when the City Council rezoned parts of the West and East Villages instituting an 80-foot height limit. The new code poises both camps for a debate on the character of the Village and the impact of educational institutions on culture in the city.
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SMART SYSTEMS
The Economist recently published a special report on Smart Systems, heralding the “virtualization of the real world.” Though the comparison of these systems to a 1990’s sci-fi movie is an easy one, the idea of information-linked objects has practical ramifications in growing cities, and potential for a more participatory urbanism. Roads and bridges can be equipped with sensors that update data mainframes, alerting agencies when repairs are needed. Through smart phone applications, citizens can download information about services in their area just by snapping a picture of the street, or report on needed improvements throughout the city. And that’s just a start. Though concerns about privacy, security and surveillance make many users nervous, smart systems are on a path to transform our cities, streets, infrastructure and buildings, and the more informed we are about the technology, the better we can engage it. “The biggest risk is that smart systems become black boxes, closed even to citizens who have the skills to understand them. Smart systems will make the world more transparent only if they themselves are transparent.” For more ideas on participatory software in the city, look back at Adam Greenfield’s Omnibus feature on citizen responsiveness and a “read/write urbanism.”

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VOTE!
Tuesday, November 2nd is Election Day — don’t forget to vote! For the procrastinators among us, Gotham Gazette has an election guide, with who’s running, ballot questions, and when and where to show up.

DEATH OF A TUNNEL
It’s final – the ARC tunnel project is dead. New Jersey Governor Christie announced his decision this week, refusing to “hand over a blank check” for the tunnel, which supporters estimated would have provided thousands of jobs, decreased congestion for commuters, increased property values for New Jersey residents living close to the rail stops, and doubled the number of Jersey residents living within a 50-minute train ride of New York. Meanwhile, the $3 billion that the Federal Transit Administration had in line for the project is now up in the air. Streetsblog has some suggestions for how it could be redistributed to fend off future transit cuts, noting that New York City Council transportation chair Jimmy Vacca has already sent requests to US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood.

THE SUBWAY ISSUE
The New York Times published a special “Subway Issue” of the Sunday Metropolitan section this week, with a look at 100 years of the subway in pictures, a chance to design your own subway map, and a commuter’s secret library. Headlining the section is Michael M. Grynbaum’s piece on MTA Chairman Jay H. Walder’s first year on the job. Walder, who has quite a successful reputation as a transportation executive, has worked to cut the agency’s budget in the face of near-collapse and has dedicated significant effort towards making the NYC transit system more tech-friendly. With a new governor coming into office, there is no guarantee that Walder will be kept on board. Though he says “I hope to stay and I expect to stay,” to offer stability to an already-weak MTA and execute more ideas he has for the City. (Not to mention that if he is let out of his six year contract early, he would receive a pretty large settlement – one more thing that the MTA cannot afford.)
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Photo: Tim Sohn. Click here for more photos of Long Beach West and Pleasure Beach.

SHATTERED IDYLL
This week in the New York Observer, Tim Sohn visits a broken beach beautifully overtaken by Swoon and other Brooklyn artists. Long Beach West, near Bridgeport, Connecticut, has been completely abandoned by human inhabitants since 2007, allowing it to be naturally overrun with wildlife. The deserted cottages on the island were scheduled to be demolished, but they had to wait until after the native bird’s nesting season. The artists took this as an invitation to create a temporary community, inspiring sculpture, collage, and other artworks using found objects from the cottages and surrounding environment.

INFRASTRUCTURAL ECOLOGIES
Hillary Brown, architect, professor, and founder of NYC’s Office of Sustainable Design in 1997, has proposed a set of principles to guide development for the “next generation of infrastructure.” The proposal addresses the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, enlisting global and historic precedents for creating intelligent infrastructure, often times intermodal. She also suggests how we can achieve this vision, through tactical means: “we could begin to test innovative infrastructures, and the fiscal and organizational processes that might bring them about, before setting up new and nationwide frameworks…. we will need to demonstrate the capacity for holistic thinking and integrative action.”

PLANYC UPDATES
Earlier this week, Bronx residents met to discuss initiatives that should be added to the PlaNYC update, such as the removal of the Sheridan Expressway, 50% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2030, and more pedestrian friendly access to park spaces. “There is this mentality that we are the dumpster of the city, and that needs to be addressed” contended Juan Carlos Ruiz, deputy director of Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. Queens residents can add their suggestions for PlaNYC updates in next week’s Community Conversation and you can vote online for ideas before it moves on to the community boards.
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via CineBeasts

UNIONDOCS
Our friends at UnionDocs, a Brooklyn based hot-spot for dialogue and discourse in the documentary arts, are presenting several enticing programs as a part of their weekly Bodega series of public events. Friday October 29th, Rotterdam-based artist Tim Leyendekker will curate you may find yourself: Short Films Exploring Urban Landscapes, focusing on films that deal with “the Western urban landscape as a witness to intimate social interactions and the de/reconstruction of the cinematic narrative.” On Election Night 2010, Tuesday November 2, CineBeasts will present an evocative program which spans 50 years of election spots and features the eye-opening, found-footage documentary Spin by Brian Springer. Stay for the panel discussion on the evolution of political media language, featuring David Bushman (curator-in-chief of the Paley Center for Media) and “News Dissector” Danny Schechter.

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SUMMIT FOR NYC
The Summit for New York City is the Municipal Art Society’s “first conference devoted to New York’s livability, examining the challenges the city faces in its seemingly contradictory roles as a growing global capital and as a city of unique neighborhoods.” Under that broad rubric of livability, session topics include When Art Builds Community, People Behind the Screens, Reclaiming the Public Realm, and Vibrant Neighborhoods, with a more focused analysis of the the future of the Garment District the Far West Side through the lens of the Moynihan Station project (all this on the heels of the recent would-have-been 100th birthday of McKim, Mead, and White’s original Penn Station). The Summit will take place on October 21st and 22nd at Penn Plaza Pavilion.

CALLING ALL CODERS
The City of New York is hosting its second competition for web and mobile applications, NYC BigApps 2.0, to “increase government transparency and provide greater public access to city data.” Developers are invited to mine 350 data sets from NYC DataMine as the basis for apps that deliver information about various aspects of the city, ranging from education to transport, in a clear and creative manner. The organizers hope that the competition will help to provide “talented entrepreneurs with the tools to create new products. “We encourage the development of applications that can then be commercialized, spurring job growth and economic development in New York City,” says Deputy Mayor Steele in the competition press release. The submission period lasts through January 12 and winners will be announced in March. Get inspired to participate by browsing through the app gallery of last year’s winners — or by the $20,000 in cash prizes to be awarded this time around.

ARC REVISITED
After public uproar about last week’s controversial “killing” of the ARC (Access to the Region’s Core) Tunnel, due to a continual increase in budget expectations, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie agreed to take a second look at proposals for the project. But his promise is to reconsider, not to move forward. The New Jersey Star Ledger describes the re-evaluation process as a standoff between the Governor and the US Federal Government in which “neither…seems to have blinked.”  There is a two-week period in which the proposals will be considered, so stay tuned…

IAC MAPPING

Amazing Building Mapping – Vimeo Festival from Dan Ilic on Vimeo.

If you happened to be in Chelsea on Saturday night, you may have noticed something different about Frank Gehry’s IAC Building. British arts and technology collective Seeper orchestrated an impressive digital mapping projection for the Vimeo Festival and Awards. Evan Grant, the founder of Seeper, noted the particular challenges of the “flowing curves, different geometries and different depths” of the site in a video a few days before the event, naming the IAC building as “the most challenging” of all past projects. Their stated goal was to “create a sense of wonderment,” and if the sounds of the crowd are any indication, it seems like they succeeded.

TIDAL POWER
After the announcement of a $1 million grant from the Department of Energy to the University of Maine for continuing tidal power research, WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show hosted Paul Jacobson, Ocean Energy Leader for EPRI, and Michael Peterson, leader of UM’s Tidal Power Initiative. The interview provides a lot of information about the specifics of tidal power efforts, including optimal site placement, environmental impact, technological issues, and fantasies for the future. Jacobsen states that “global estimates range from 11 GW to 400 GW of annual average power available to be extracted… and it doesn’t pollute.”

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Access to the Region's Core Project Map, via www.arctunnel.com

We all of course know the story of Noah’s Ark — of massive floods sent by a disgusted God to wipe out our corrupted civilization except for Noah, who, with his family, builds an Ark to save pairs of animals to eventually repopulate the planet.

The contemporary take on the story has some new twists.

The rains, to be sure, are coming. Last week I took my eight-year-old to see Rising Currents before it closes at MoMA. As he stood below the measuring bar, which showed that in his lifetime the water level on our Tribeca sidewalk may be above his head, he stated the truth in the way that only a child can: “That seems bad.”

But before we even conjure the apocalyptic visions of Greenland ice sheets falling into the Atlantic, we need only look at the crippling effect of the last couple of rainstorms in New York — the flooded subways, the combined sewer overflow, the streets near my office at Columbia awash.

Yet in this version of the story, despite the coming floods, there is no Noah, we don’t build the Ark, and the animals just have fun while they can. In this version, we sink the Ark before it gets built.

Yesterday Governor Chris Christie killed the largest mass transit project in the nation, ARC or Access to the Region’s Core. Planned for two decades and considered vital to the lifeline of the northeast corridor as a new tunnel under the Hudson, ARC clearly answered the question of whether we would simply continue to live off of our predecessor’s infrastructure. Or so we foolishly thought.

Citing costs, the rebellious Republican ruled out increasing gas taxes or surcharges in order to plug the budget gap, instead rejecting billions in Federal and Port Authority funds. Unlike the manner in which we funded the extension of the #7 subway, which is now under construction through debt that will be paid off by the future assessed values on the West Side of Manhattan, no such innovation was sought in New Jersey despite reports that clearly showed increased property values in the towns that would be connected to ARC.

Paul Krugman, in today’s New York Times, put it plainly: “We are no longer the nation that used to amaze the world with its visionary projects. We have become, instead, a nation whose politicians seem to compete over who can show the least vision, the least concern about the future and the greatest willingness to pander to short-term, narrow-minded selfishness.”

Penn Station’s New Jersey Transit Terminal, Thanksgiving Eve. Photo by Flickr user helloturkeytoe.

And when it comes to infrastructure, that pandering is all about roads versus rail. With New Jersey’s state budget under water, downstate politicians in the legislature — many of them Democrats — saw an opportunity to re-route the ARC monies for highway funding. New Jersey’s commuters live largely in the north, of course, but despite their vital economic role in our tri-state region, they have no regional representation to fight for their interests. This is true nationwide. In the development and planning process for the new Moynihan Station often it became apparent that for every dollar spent in the City, an equal dollar had to be spent on a roadway project in upstate New York. This is part of why Hong Kong and Singapore are surging — they are city-states without an urban rural divide. Such is the price of a country of suburbs.

To be fair to a Governor who appears to be attempting fiscal restraint, however, one must also ask why ARC costs so damn much. A friend recently pointed out that not only does China spend approximately fourteen times more annually on rail infrastructure than we do, but that factor probably triples when one accounts for construction cost differentials. Anyone who works in infrastructure in America today knows the ugly realities of this — the construction industry continually prices its way into joblessness, as the thousands of workers who were about to be employed by ARC will soon discover.

No one is advocating for the unprotected labor conditions of China, but we must ask how far the pendulum has swung the other way. Imagine if Noah, in enlisting the help of his children to build the Ark, was confronted with protests for higher allowance and more days off, all while thunderclouds formed and the rest of non-unionized humanity scuttled for cover while living on less. Joint sacrifice led this country to its greatest heights, just as joint selfishness could bring it to its knees.

Indeed, the fate of ARC, which one can only hope is reversible, may signal the fate of us all. With the densest state in America opting for roads over rails, for emissions over ozone, for a country of suburbs over a Country of Cities, all I can do in response is throw up my hands and find disturbing amusement in a quote from Jaws:

“We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

New Jersey Transit, Metropark, New Jersey, 18 Nov. 2008. Photo by Flickr user PhilipC.

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This is the eighth in a series of opinion pieces in which Vishaan Chakrabarti casts key current events as rallying cries in his evolving argument for urban density, for a Country of Cities. As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, AIA, is the Marc Holliday Professor of Real Estate and the Director of the Real Estate Development program in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University and the founding principal of Vishaan Chakrabarti Design Collaborative (VCDC, llc), an urban design, planning, and strategic advisory firm based in Manhattan. He is a registered architect in the State of New York and lives in Tribeca. Read more…

Just in time for the warm weather, we wanted to share the process with citizen-designers across the city, in the hope of inspiring some small-scale, local interventions in your neck of the woods. If you stumble across, or initiate, a compelling design action in the public interest somewhere in the five boroughs of New York, we want to hear about it.

Below are descriptions of when the seven teams got up to over the weekend. First, check out a video that shows them in action:

Team NC State
Hans Hesselein, David Moses, Andrew Nicolas, Thomas Ryan
Bryan’s popularity as an educator precedes him. An interdisciplinary group of alumni from North Carolina State – two architects, a landscape architect and a graphic designer – some of whom worked with Bryan as undergrads before moving to New York joined in the fun. After raiding a New Jersey nursery for plants, piping and lumber, the team set about the task of creating sensory linkages across the divide of the Gowanus Canal. The eventual solution – a beautiful set of birdhouses – turned the site’s specific ecology into a point of connection rather than separation. And we weren’t the only ones to notice, check out blog coverage here that also got picked up here. [Update Sept. 15, 2010: For a look at the progression of this project from temporary design experiment to community-driven, multi-disciplinary operation, check out our feature Canal Nest Colony.]

Business Casual
Patrick Candella, Scott Corey, Philip Kuehne, Viren Patel, Mary Polites
This group of passionate young designers met while studying at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and most of them live in Jersey City. As such, they brought a fresh perspective to the sometimes parochial language in which New Yorkers articulate design challenges. Their site was a large parking lot that services several big box stores. The lot is ringed with an invisible and unmarked electric fence that, when crossed, renders shopping carts inoperable. The team observed dozens of paralyzed carts discarded around the periphery of the lot and very few deposited at the official corral at the center. If there were a corral before the fence, then maybe the employee whose job it is to return the carts wouldn’t have to manually unlock each cart one by one. If there were unlocked carts at the most popular points of pedestrian entry to the lot – near the path to the adjacent mall or near the light rail stop – customers arriving on foot could pick them up along their way. To address this problem, Business Casual scrounged around the NJIT woodshop for discarded plywood and built two shopping cart corrals that responded to actual observed use patterns. Imagine that.

Due North
Samuel John Reilly, Koren Sin, Stephanie Vito
These three young architecture students are new to New York. As undergraduates in Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning semester in the city program, the team responded to a simple problem they themselves faced as newcomers: directions. But instead of constructing orientation devices as an end in themselves, they assembled large amounts of discarded cardboard near their Flatiron District Cornell outpost into street furniture that points the passerby on her way while providing a resting spot for the road-weary.

Austin+Mergold and Company
Jason Austin, James Bowman, Alex Mergold, Denise Ramzy, and Sally Reynolds
Wayfinding was a recurring challenge that teams sought to address with simple design interventions. Austin+Mergold and Company closely observed tourists exiting the subway unable to locate themselves (see video below). Their solution borrowed less from street furniture and more from weather vanes, encouraging pedestrians to look upwards to find their way. And their careful consideration of New York’s skyline led them to evoke the horizon’s most conspicuous absence and place of remembrance for New Yorkers and out of town visitors alike, the twin towers and Ground Zero.

watch Austin+Mergold and Company’s site analysis video

General Assembly
Jaime Keeler, Josie Lawlor, Sarah Lawlor, Elle Przybyla, Jonathan Zames
This loose collective includes architects, writers and filmmakers whose research process for this exercise brought each of them home to his or her neighborhood only to discover a city-wide design challenge: too many plastic bags yet never one when you need one (to, you know, curb your dog, or cover your bicycle seat in the rain). Inspired by the practice of taking a penny and leaving a penny, General Assembly fashioned a simple series of perforated cylinders that attach to signposts, allowing citizens to put a ubiquitous piece of litter to good use. Check out more of their work here.

Columbia Students
Christina Akiskalou, Daniya Atta, Anastasia Choli, Elia Karachaliou, Pablo Perez Palacios, Eleni Petaloti, Pietro Todeschini
A group of international students in GSAPP’s Advanced Architectural Design professional program took inspiration from the rain on the first day of this two-day adventure. The rain stopped, the air was still warm, but who wants to hang out on a rain-drenched campus bench? So with rolls of altered bubble-wrap and containers made from takeaway soup canisters, a makeshift, reusable ground cloth was born.

Hester Street Collaborative & Leroy Street Studio
Anne Frederick, Morgan Hare, Dylan House, Marc Turkel, Jess Osserman, Shawn Watts
When it comes to making a difference through design, planning and organizing in the public interest, these collectives are professionals. The Hester Street Collaborative (HSC) is a design-build non-profit that works with schools and community groups in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the Lower East Side. The Collaborative emerged from the architectural practice of Leroy Street Studio, and the two groups took this opportunity to come together and to reconnect with their shared backgrounds in design and construction. One of the Chinatown elementary schools where HSC works lacks the street access to their playground that would make it a genuine public amenity, so the team went about creating a new gate, cutting out the chainlink, and creating a much needed connection point between school and neighborhood.

After 48 hours in the field, the teams reconvened at Cabinet Magazine‘s Gowanus space to share their processes, sites and projects with Bryan and the public. In the presentations, Bryan urged the teams to identify stakeholders affected, issues addressed and materials used. He encouraged all participants to check back on their projects and to continue to observe their sites. Observing real use patterns, talking to people about their needs, working in a community you know well: all these are hallmarks of Bryan’s philosophy of design as activism. The weekend proved that even the smallest-scale interventions can go a long way towards expanding the understanding of what design can do. Now it’s your turn, go out there and make something. The first step, as these designers experienced first-hand, is to watch closely and listen carefully.