Last week, New York City Commissioners Amanda Burden, of the Department of City Planning (DCP), Adrian Benepe, of Parks and Recreation (DPR), and David Burney, of the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), convened at the Great Hall of The Cooper Union for the third in the Architectural League’s series of Conversations on New York.  Moderated by New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger, the discussion focused on the two major questions posed by the League exhibition The City We Imagined/The City We Made: how has the physical fabric of New York changed in the last ten years, and what is the legacy of this decade for the future of New York?

Goldberger opened the conversation with a question about the recent Active Design Guidelines, an initiative of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene that ultimately involved the DDC, the City Department of Transportation (DOT), DCP and the Office of Management and Budget. How did such a cross-agency collaboration come about? Burden credited this kind of approach to the Mayor, who from the start questioned why things never seemed to get done in city government. Dan Doctoroff played a significant role in increasing effectiveness by consolidating all City agencies with an impact on economic development under his authority, thereby allowing such agencies as DCP, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Economic Development Corporation to report to one deputy mayor. The result, said Burden, has been a coordinated and broad approach to planning that benefits both the agencies and the public.

Goldberger asked if New York City is inherently a fitter city than most, in the same way that our density makes us an inherently greener city — a question that drew attention to a voice missing from the table, that of DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. (A last-minute schedule conflict prevented Sadik-Khan from participating on the panel.) Benepe “wore the Sadik-Khan hat” and spoke of her well-known work with bike paths and bike safety as a significant contributor to the city’s overall health. Despite controversies, Benepe said, the bike paths work and they are safe. “But we,” Benepe, a cyclist himself, said, “are our own worst enemy.” The missing ingredient for the bike lanes’ ultimate acceptance is better cyclist behavior: running red lights and close swipes to pedestrians and drivers diminish non-cyclists’ openness to expanding the program.

Goldberger asked each panelist to take a step back and consider the overall evolution of the built environment of New York City over the last ten years. What, he asked, will be the legacy of this decade?

According to Burden, the legacy of the Bloomberg administration will be its focus on the public realm, vibrant street life, and quality design. She focused on the massive rezoning efforts undertaken by City Planning, the goals of which were to focus development around transit hubs in all five boroughs, recapture the waterfront for the public, and protect low-density communities that don’t have the transit infrastructure to grow from disproportionate development. Ultimately she hopes that the administration has allowed the city to “grow in place,” enabling each neighborhood to accommodate the new while retaining the assets it already had. “We plan on a Robert Moses scale, but judge ourselves on Jane Jacobs standards.”

For Benepe, this era will be remembered as “the most exciting period of park design and expansion in decades,” a time when appreciation of the landscapes of Olmsted and Vaux did not preclude pushing the envelope of park design. This administration has insisted that municipal architecture be of the best possible quality. As for the legacy of the Bloomberg administration overall, Benepe surmised that the way in which various City departments worked together, in a fashion that may never have existed before, will prove to be a landmark of these ten years.

Burney remarked on the undeniable influence of 9/11, and the way in which it “triggered a fundamental change in how we think about cities in general.” In the ‘70s, cities were going bankrupt and people questioned the value of cities on the whole, an uncertainty that resurfaced after the 2001 attacks. Ultimately, cities survived these losses of faith because our ideas of ‘what cities are’ changed. Burney stated that people live in cities now because they want cities’ “multiplicity of choices:” culture, educational opportunities, safety, recreation, quality of life – not necessarily because they are mercantile or industrial hubs, their primary attraction in earlier eras. If those offerings and opportunities are sustained, New York City will continue to be a place where people choose to live.

Goldberger, returning to parks, questioned Benepe on the increased privatization of public space and parks. While strained public budgets make this appear beneficial, is it “a Faustian bargain in the long run?” Benepe reminded the audience that the private conservancies and alliances in question were formed because the Parks Department had allowed the City’s parks to become frightening, decrepit places. Citizen participation and investment in the maintenance of parks is an energy the city wants to encourage, as long as “public interest always [remains] paramount.” Besides, Benepe asserted, the existence of conservancies and friends groups for the City’s most visible parks makes more city funding available for the ones without private support.

Turning to Burden, Goldberger challenged her characterization of the rezonings as intending to retain the fundamental character of city neighborhoods. What about the shiny glass towers that transformed certain areas and the complete demographic shift of some neighborhoods? Burden acknowledged the strength of the real estate market pre-crash and claimed that some out-of-character development shot up because developers saw the rezonings coming. But she did not apologize for certain noticeable changes. “The Bowery is a fantastic corridor,” she said, “It is exuberant, which is good for the city.” The city does, and should, change, and though the lasting appeal of certain styles will be a test of time, architecture helps keep a city young and important. “If we want to remain a global city, we have to compete. Architecture is one component of that competitiveness.”

In a question directed at Burney, Goldberger asked what the city is doing about affordable housing. Burney emphasized the challenges, pointing to the deficiencies, historically, of federal housing policy, which contributed to the fits-and-starts development of the city’s housing program. He acknowledged the good work being done by Shaun Donovan (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and former commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development), but noted that any advancement on the supply side, which is already hindered by budgetary constraints, is overwhelmed by the extraordinary demand. Burney called out Via Verde for commendation as a new kind of housing program that is worthy of attention, one that is creating a complete neighborhood in one piece – with mixed typology, mixed income, retail, and gardens.

Goldberger concluded the panel by asking how New Yorkers will look back on this period fifty years from now.

Burden hopes that they will talk about the waterfront and how the water’s edge is part of their lives. She hopes that they will think about the quality of life in the streets, the integration of nature into the urban environment, and improved walkability. And most importantly, she said, she hopes that the city is considered a truly five-borough city.

Benepe also focused on the waterfront, though he characterized the accomplishment as “taking it for the first time.” The waterfront, he reminded the audience, has been a location for business since the Dutch arrived. This is the first time the waterfront is being given to the people for recreational purposes. Overall this administration’s large-scale public works projects will be remembered as ushering in a new ethos of landscape architecture, one with more sensitive engineering and an increased integration with nature. Benepe also pointed out, to put the time frame of large-scale public works projects in perspective, that in fifty years, New Yorkers will just be seeing the completion of Freshkills Park.

Burney concluded the panel discussion on a cautionary note. We are at a crossroads regarding climate change and its impact on the world, he said. “Fifty years from now we might be in a Ridley Scott situation,” and it’s not looking good that we will turn things around. Citing failures of policy on both the state and national level, Burney called for action: “It’s the cities that are having to step up and take the lead to face these issues. What we do in the next ten years will determine what we’ll be seeing in fifty years.”

A podcast of Conversations on New York 3: Adrian Benepe, Amanda Burden and David Burney will be available soon on the League’s website.


Varick Shute is the Project Manager of Urban Omnibus.

Tomorrow, Saturday, July 24th, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is hosting the third annual City of Water Day Festival. Head to Governors Island, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Liberty State Park and the Atlantic Basin for free harbor boat tours, a children’s festival, live music, and a film expo. (If you find yourself on Governors Island, don’t forget to visit the League’s current exhibition, The City We Imagined/The City We Made, on view in Building 110 through August 15!)

Park development and renovation has been a recent topic of interest for cities worldwide. Next Tuesday, July 27th, there will be a Freshkills Park Talk on that very subject. Entitled “Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities,” the lecture will feature Peter Harnik, Director of the Center for City Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land. Reading from and talking about his book of the same name, he will discuss how these new parks are revitalizing previously unused public space and how city planners can add green space in built-out cities. In anticipation of the talk, check out Gotham Gazette for a piece on Harnik, his book, and the politics and planning behind open space in New York City.

New York City is becoming an easier and safer place for senior citizens to live. A number of small, “age-friendly” adjustments are already being implemented, such as increasing the duration of walk signs and providing school buses for trips to the grocery. But that’s just a start. The New York Times reports that the city is in the midst of establishing two “aging improvement districts,” an initiative presented to the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg’s office by the New York Academy of Medicine. The details are still in the works, but it sounds like the planning team should take a look at Interboro’s research into NORCs (Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities) in NYC.

The revival of many New York City neighborhoods was tied largely to the renovation and refurbishment of thousands of apartment buildings in the city. However, given the current economic climate, many of these buildings are falling back into disrepair, as tenants are unable to pay their rent, or owners their mortgages. The city once owned many of these properties as a result of tax delinquencies and was widely criticized for how it managed their care, and has no interest in taking them over again. New owners for such buildings are scarce right now, and residents of central Brooklyn, the South Bronx and Harlem in particular are feeling the impact as their neighborhoods, after a period of revitalization, are deteriorating once again.

The Gowanus Canal, recently named a Superfund site by the EPA, has been fitted with a oxygenation system, temporarily replacing a flushing tunnel that is under repair. Part of a $140 million, four-year plan by the EPA, the added oxygen, which determines the water’s ability to sustain life, and repaired flushing tunnel will allow the Gowanus to meet recreational regulations for boating and fishing by the project’s end.

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Photo by Flickr user cyu06.

This week New York City was fascinated by the unearthing of a portion of an 18th Century ship during excavation at the World Trade Center site. CityRoom provided an account of the discovery and of the urgency of its archaeological documentation, noting that the 30-foot segment of the wooden vessel began deteriorating as soon as it was unearthed, “no longer safe in its cocoon of ooze.” Archaeologists state that it was most likely discarded as part of an intentional landfill that lay ground for what, by 1800, had become Washington Street. That conclusion inspired BLDGBLOG to dig up a 2007 post about San Francisco’s ship-hull foundations, in which another history buried in New York City landfill is reference: the FDR Drive is built atop rubble from World War II Britain.

Relics of more recent histories can be found in cities worldwide, often in the shape of industrial infrastructures left abandoned or deteriorating. Few (so far) have been able to come up with a successful solution for adaptive reuse, but eyes are turning to New York for inspiration. The success of New York’s High Line has prompted calls and visits from public officials and planners from Chicago, Memphis, Rotterdam and Hong Kong, just to name a few, who hope to create similar public amenities back at home.

Record heat has been hitting New York City, but, compared to during heat waves in years past, power outages have been noticeably few. GOOD credits smart-grid technology and demand-response initiatives that alleviate consumption during peak usage to avoid brownouts and blackouts. Two-way digital connections between power providers and consumers’ thermostats or air conditioners can slightly reduce or cycle on/off air conditioning when a threat of an outage occurs. Meanwhile smart meters that allow residents to monitor their usage are becoming more common, a technology that is also being implemented by New York City to track individual water use.

Another way to reduce energy consumption is to turn off the A/C and go outside. New York Magazine has compiled a list of the top nineteen New York City playgrounds for your summer enjoyment. And on three Saturday mornings in August the Department of Transportation will again bring Summer Streets to Park Avenue — but this time with dumpster-style swimming pools!

On Wednesday, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled an electric car charging station in a parking lot near the Lincoln Tunnel. The mayor was joined by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, who explained that the pilot program is about more than reducing our reliance on fossil fuels: “By creating jobs manufacturing and installing charging stations for electric vehicles in nine metropolitan regions around the country, we are partnering with industry to provide a low-cost transportation option for tens of thousands of families.”

A few weeks ago we featured Kirsten Hively’s visit to the Candela Structures at the World’s Fair Marina. If that piqued your interest, she just uncovered a research paper from 1966 dealing with the design and construction of those structures themselves.

Plans for a mixed-use development — set to include 600 housing units, 420,000 square feet of commercial space, a YMCA and a park – in what is currently a 1,100-car parking lot is stirring up ethnic tensions between Chinese and Korean business owners.  The businesses surrounding the lot are predominately Korean and rely on the lot for customer parking, while the majority of the Chinese businesses are blocks away, and many Korean owners fear that without nearby parking, their customers will simply turn elsewhere.

And finally, happy 75th birthday to the parking meter!

Photo by Flickr user misplacedparadox.


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Pier 62 | Photo by bradyfontenot.com | Click image to view more photos of Pier 62 and Corona Park.

I recently spent time skating the Pier 62 and Corona Park skateparks, two new recreational areas opened by the Hudson River Park Trust (Pier 62, a 15,000 sq. ft “flow” course) and the New York Parks Department through its “Adopt-A-Park” program (Corona Park, a 16,000 sq. ft. “street” course). The timing couldn’t be more accommodating and it’s refreshing to see a city respond proactively to the ever-growing demand from the skateboard, inline, and BMX communities, especially in light of the recent loss of two sites that had became staples for the progression of these communities. As both a designer and a skater, I was eager to test the new parks for myself and share my thoughts on them as a follow-up to Design and the Urban Skatepark.

In January of this year, use of a site known to insiders as the “Brooklyn Banks” (resting under the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge) was scaled back to accommodate a need for staging areas for scheduled bridge maintenance. The banks were effectively closed to the public on June 2nd, with the potential relocation of the free standing obstacles found within. The second recent loss for the skating community was the Unisphere Fountain, originally constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair and appropriated by skaters as early as 1990. The site is currently closed to skaters while it undergoes renovation to become a working fountain again. These two locations have informed innovation in skating for over two decades; the Brooklyn Banks was host to some of the most iconic moments in East coast skateboarding history.

With these locations coordinated to close as the aforementioned parks opened, we have to thank various activists that lay far and wide, three of the most outstanding being: Open Road, a non-profit organization working to develop and expand spaces for youth recreation within the five boroughs; Steve Rodriguez, owner of 5Boro Skateboards; and the late ambassador of New York skateboarding, Andy Kessler.

Pier 62 | Photo by bradyfontenot.com.

At the Pier 62 skatepark (BMX prohibited) there is hardly a thing to change. It has an interesting and high variability within a relatively small space without being congested, the attention to speed control is acute, as is the mediation between planes, and the occasional cool breeze whipping off the river is a relief. While there, I had the chance to speak with professional skateboarder Zared Basset, of New York based skateboard company “Zoo York,” who concurred: “It’s one of the best parks the city has ever had. The lines are endless; two thumbs up.” During that visit I also had the opportunity to speak with Christopher Gates from the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh, architect of record for segment 5 of the Hudson River Park development. I raised question about some early fracturing occurring in the parks “pocket feature” and was assured it was being monitored. Otherwise, the only change I could envision would be the addition of shading planes in a few key locations that have (since opening) become launching points and resting areas.

Corona Park | Photo by Buck Jackson.

Corona Park skatepark is filled with near replicas of some of the cities most skated terrain — with the wise omission of the Amsterdam Ave. feature, as it disrupted a greater circulation pattern and had a poor approach. It is, for the most part, a well-planned and well-constructed piece of architecture, but some noticeable problems have already surfaced. The curb that delineates the Exchange Place gap is a bit awkward, providing narrow opportunity to address it as a “gap.” Instead, it becomes a hindrance, making approach to a few other obstacles unnecessarily (although slightly) difficult. In addition, there is widespread chipping of what seems to be a veneer on these curbs; granite (found in two locations) should have been omitted as a material, as it too is quickly chipping; and a finish that was applied to the darker areas of concrete (whose frictional coefficient could not be battled with the softest wheels available) is an annoyance, if not a hazard. On top of all this, there are no shade planes or access to water on the premises, a problem that users of the park are creatively addressing themselves.

In both of these projects California Skateparks is to be credited with the design (skatepark design/build firm “SITE” was initially in charge of Pier 62 until they were bought by California Skateparks during the project’s development), which makes the lesser quality of the Corona Park skatepark all the more surprising. It seems to me that Corona Park was designed primarily for the Maloof Money Cup, the organizers of which constructed the park for their June 5th and 6th event before donating it to the Dept. of Parks & Recreation’s Adopt-a-Park program, with prolonged use by the public as an afterthought.

In both projects, lowering the dead load was essential. To achieve this, each park was built on top of stacked and pinned polystyrene blocks in place of the traditional compacted earth, so it’s fair to say that both parks are, relatively speaking, anomalies within skatepark construction. The first of this construction type occurred as early as 2005 at Skatepark des Ursulines in Brussels, followed by a few additional parks in between. Hopefully, the future of this construction methodology will lean more towards a responsible product such as Ecocradle (at a larger “per unit” scale), or similar, provided it holds the structural integrity required to support the load.

These new features within the cities recreational planning are (albeit late) highly appreciated and a great push forward for the communities that use them, and in that, it starts a new chapter within New York’s already rich skateboarding, inline and BMX history, that will undoubtedly inspire several generations of youth forward.


Buck Jackson is an artist, designer and educator. He teaches furniture craft and digital design at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn and places most of his studio focus on designing skateboard parks and furniture. He lives in Long Island City with a partner and four cats.

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.

Now that the Times Square pedestrian plazas are a permanent fixture, the Department of Transportation has selected a temporary installation for Broadway before the site gets a major makeover in 2012. Molly Dilworth, a Brooklyn-based artist known by many for her rooftop paintings, was chosen out of 150 entries for her proposal entitled “Cool Water, Hot Island,” set to be installed in mid-July. Based off of NASA’s infrared data of Manhattan, the project brings attention to the urban heat-island effect, while hopefully lessening the impact. By using cool blues and other lighter colors for the painted river, it will absorb less heat and reflect more light than typical pavement, making the plazas a more comfortable place for tourists and workers alike this summer.

Fast Trash! captured the curiosity of many Omnibus readers, but for those of you who missed our Roosevelt Island meet-up and never made it out to see the exhibition, you can at least get a taste of the history and operation of the pneumatic trash system in the video below:

Nature Abhors a Vacuum from greg whitmore on Vimeo.

We’ve heard about SCAPE studio’s plans for oyster flupsies along the Gowanus as one of the Rising Currents proposals, but now it seems that another threatened ecosystem will experiment with the natural cleansing power of the bivalve for real: oysters just might save Jamaica Bay.

Last fall we told you about the Design Trust’s Call for Fellows for Made in Midtown, their study of the Garment District and its impact on the fashion industry. Now, to celebrate the launch of their website, there will be a series of public events in a pop-up space at the Port Authority Bus Terminal on June 3rd. And if you happen to be free and willing to help out, volunteers will get an invite to their cocktail reception.

We’ve talked about the importance of the census and the inherent difficulties of counting urban populations, but some still wonder how answering those 10 questions will really impact them and their community. Our friends at Next American City can help you out – check out this podcast interview with the Brookings Institution’s Andrew Reamer tackling those very issues.

Part of why developers refused to accede to the demands of a well-organized living wage campaign for its proposed Kingsbridge Armory Project was that retailers would simply take their business elsewhere if the living wage were only mandated in a small section of the Bronx. But now two Bronx politicians are taking the fight citywide. The proposed bill – Fair Wages for New Yorkers Act – would require all public projects that receive more than $100,000 in city funds to provide living wage jobs, or $10 an hour with benefits or $11.50 an hour without.

With the next round of subway service changes starting at the end of June, the MTA has decided to update the NYC subway map (again). Changes this time include making Manhattan taller and wider, eliminating the service schedule, and improving the visual contrast. Or, if this new map still isn’t clear enough for you, take a cue from the folks at Kick Map and take the cartographic challenge that is the NYC subway system in their own hands.

The first official weekend of summer is here, and recently opened city parks — Hudson River Park, the High Line, Brooklyn Bridge Park, to name a few — are sure to be packed with visitors. But the Observer looks at the funding crises faced by these public spaces once  ribbons have been cut. Long-term maintenance plans are ill- or undefined, and city officials are noted as simply “betting that some unspecified solution will indeed materialize at some future date.”

If you are sticking around in the city for the holiday weekend, take your camera with you on Sunday evening for this spring’s Manhattanhenge.


Top image from the NYC Department of Transportation. The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.