The Future History of New York City | View of Manhattan Looking South | Muchan Park, Luc Wilson, Leigh D’ambra and Scott Hayner

Late last year, Vishaan Chakrabarti, whose passionate rallying cries for infrastructure investment and urban density are familiar to regular readers of Urban Omnibus, unveiled a radical proposal (dubbed LoLo, as in Lower Lower Manhattan) to connect the Financial District to Governors Island through a land bridge made of landfill, replete with a new mixed-use, high-rise, green infrastructure community.

The setting for his presentation was a conference called “Zoning the City”, convened by New York City’s Department of City Planning and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and Chakrabarti’s premise was how to zone for a modern Central Business District, for affordability, for livability, for energy and waste, and finally for resilience. He armed his argument with planning instruments and infrastructure developments, such as the transfer of air rights and the provision of waste-to-energy facilities, and he closed with a bold vision to create a projected “88 million square feet of development and generate $16.7 billion in revenue for the city” in a neighborhood that is currently harbor.

Even if all the proposal provokes is discussion about the crucial intersection of waterfront planning, densification and big ideas for New York’s growth, it is notable for its provenance. LoLo was conceived by students in a Columbia University graduate studio, led by Laurie Hawkinson with the collaboration of Chakrabarti,  for which students of architecture and real estate worked together on a site – Governors Island – and a topic – ’speculation’ – that have both gotten a lot of play in the past few years and whose implications and possibilities are far from exhausted. The historic significance of Governors Island and its protected status as a park need not preclude the intensification of its use as an integral part of New York City’s infrastructure and landscape. And as for ‘speculation,’ the term has distinct and specific definitions in both architecture and real estate, but with the common meaning, according to Hawkinson, of “taking a really big risk.” For Chakrabarti, ‘speculation’ is a word that “aptly describes the prerogative that designers and developers share, which is to imagine that which does not yet exist.” Hawkinson directs the advanced studios at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Chakrabarti directs Columbia’s Real Estate Program and has recently launched The Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE), an independent think tank at Columbia that aims to “redefine sustainability as dense, mixed-income, mixed-use, transit-based urban development.” The LoLo project has progressed from a student project to the basis of serious study on land creation by the team at CURE, which is engaging experts and City officials to explore the hurdles — from environmental concerns to marine navigation concerns — and the possibilities of the scheme.

The point of Urban Omnibus studio reports is to redress the tremendous intellectual loss that occurs when a student project is completed and young professionals are unleashed into the world. Very seldom do the hard work, dogged research and often revelatory design schemes that students produce ever make it out of the studio environment and into a wider, real world conversation. LoLo is a rare exception, finding its way into the “Zoning the City” conference, The New York Times, CBS Local News and ongoing conversations throughout New York and beyond.

The Speculation Studio marked the first time students from these two programs worked together on a design studio, and signals an overdue evolution in architectural education. The boldness of the schemes and the cogency of the accompanying financial analysis explode the myth that considering financial implications in a student design process will constrain creativity and innovation. Read on for a conversation with Hawkinson about the studio’s theme and site, about the nature of the collaboration between architecture and real estate students, and about the return of big ideas.

-C.S.

The Future History of New York City | Plan | Muchan Park, Luc Wilson, Leigh D’ambra and Scott Hayner

Tell me about the idea for this studio.
Laurie Hawkinson: We did this studio in the fall of 2010. Vishaan and I had been discussing collaborating on a studio that brought architecture and real estate students together to work on a joint project. Governors Island seemed timely and not completely exhausted as a subject of study. We also felt that the present constraints placed on Governors Island by local, state and federal authorities – its edge cannot be altered; permanent housing is prohibited – were something that should be questioned.

Given the desire to bring together students from architecture and real estate, we wanted to choose a topic that grew from the common ground between the two professions. That’s how we came up with “speculation.” Even if architecture and real estate look at the topic differently, it’s something both groups of students can engage. In architecture, we’re always speculating because we are making; we’re speculating on conditions that aren’t here yet by projecting into the future. And in real estate, projecting into the future takes on a financial aspect. We talked a lot about value: where you create value, how you create value. When you speculate, you also have to establish certain assumptions that you take forward. The students’ initial research led them to statements of “we’re assuming that the population will be X, or that the value here is Y, then we can do Z.” We made ground rules and set stakes, and we wanted students to consider issues of density, of energy; we wanted them to ask where and how is this city going to grow? 

Farm Park | Six plans | Breanna Carlson, Peter Katz, Georgina Lalli, Pedro Zevallos | Click to enlarge

Did you find any differences between how real estate students and architecture students talk about creating value?
It was amazing to observe how much they traded hats all the time. When the groups were presenting, you might not be able to tell which student was studying in which program.

For instance we had one project that was a vertical farm. The students figured out the cost of the tomato they were going to sell there and how they were going to make it work; they were so precise about all of the metrics and that really galvanized them around the power of the knowledge that they mutually brought to the table.

Flux City | Renderings | Eun Kyoung Kim and John Phinney

“To propose these Metabolist, Archigram-like forms and then to run a pro forma on them and make it work was amazing to see.” -Vishaan Chakrabarti Tell me about some of the other projects in this studio.
Another project added a lot of vertical density in the East River, creating a kind of archipelago of islands going from Governors Island up the river, mindful of shipping channels and other factors. Other projects included a proposal for an Olympic Park that transforms into housing over time, an educational institution, a major convention center. The infrastructural logistics are what become very interesting about these projects. You have to get large numbers of people there in very short periods of time. The real estate students helped define the metrics: if you build a new subway line, where would it go? Or if we are going to rely on ferries, how many will there need to be? As architects, we tend to simply draw a little dotted line and say, “we’re going to put a ferry line here.” But in this studio we were able to delve a little deeper to ask what is really involved in creating the kinds of infrastructure to support large-scale interventions.

Flux City | Section | Eun Kyoung Kim and John Phinney

Take the example of the Olympic Village proposal for 5,000 units of housing: you have to consider how an Olympic athlete can get within 20 minutes to any venue. So you have to think about the network when you’re working with that kind of a scale. If you’re doing 23 units on, say, Wooster and Grand it’s a different story – you may have parking issues, but you’re not going to have to deal with major infrastructural issues like water and energy.

A history of landfill in Lower Manhattan

Of the six projects that the student teams designed, the scheme entitled “The Future History of New York City” which proposed what we are calling LoLo — by Muchan Park, Luc Wilson, Leigh D’ambra and Scott Hayner – was the most extreme. It was also incredibly thorough and realistic. They began by looking at environmental issues, and the topic of dredge started to direct their project: the metrics of dredge, where it goes, and how to project that into the future and assign it value.

In addition to looking deeply into dredge, they were also working with a parametric model. And, for me, the most powerful aspect of the project is the way they created a new zoning protocol that takes into account energy and rising water levels to make a responsive system. In other words, instead of just caring about the setbacks and the shadows on the streets and things like that, they were calculating energy points people would get for acknowledging solar orientation or surface area.

The Future History of New York City | Parametric models used to calculate zoning protocols for density and for projecting value | Muchan Park, Luc Wilson, Leigh D’ambra and Scott Hayner

If you bundle all of your intentions and speculations together, it’s much more powerful, especially at this scale. The proposal explained how to get water from the city (there’s no water on Governors Island currently), how to create a wastewater treatment plan, how to capture rainwater. They thought about how to build the new land with a slope that would retain water and would also anticipate flooding in the future. They thought about how to create conveyance and transport systems. They also staged it in a very smart way: it’s much cheaper to build a subway system by dropping a concrete tube into the water and then building landfill around it rather than burrowing through hundreds of years of Manhattan. Again, the real estate students helped us think through these issues.

The really brilliant part is that way the landfill connects existing Lower Manhattan to Governors Island. The real estate angle is the strong feeling that the proximity to – the extension of — Lower Manhattan is what will maximize value. And they did this without compromising the landmarked park space on the Northern end of Governors Island. So it makes for a kind of Central Park green space.

The Future History of New York City | The phases of creating LoLo | Muchan Park, Luc Wilson, Leigh D’ambra and Scott Hayner

“Capacity creation  – adding landfill, decking over railyards, upzoning around transit corridors – is fundamental to our future.” -Vishaan Chakrabarti

So what happens next with this project? It has gotten a lot of attention. Vishaan presented it at the “Zoning the City” conference and then there was an article about in The New York Times.
The students that worked on it have now graduated, but have continued to work on it as alumni. Vishaan has taken the project to the Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE) for additional study and we are organizing a roundtable discussion about the proposal this month. Vishaan and I are dead serious about it. We have invited some expert guests to whom we will present of the project and then discuss how to think about it more seriously.

Given the amount of work done on zoning protocols alongside an actual scheme for the infill and design and development of that infill, it seems there are a lot of things that can be learned from the project – whether or not it goes anywhere.
It’s kind of funny when you propose extreme or seemingly impossible conditions, and then you realize that there are other people who are thinking along similar lines. And then there is a plan from the turn of the 20th century, a proposal similar to this one. It turns out that it’s not so unreasonable of an idea and we’d like to engage the City in discussion about it.

How rare is it for a project that emerges in the context of a graduate architecture studio to get put out there to generate discussion?
It’s pretty unusual, I would say. There are certainly exemplary student projects, and sometimes they might submit to a competition and receive some notoriety. And I think more and more students are becoming more entrepreneurial about their work at school. But it is rare for a project to have an afterlife such as this. And perhaps the collaboration with students of real estate enabled this project to live on beyond the studio. But there are other ways that the public might engage with a proposal such as this beyond the real estate implications.

What architects do is make ideas visual. The real estate component on its own wouldn’t necessarily produce imagery that makes viewers say “Wow!” Architects think about how people read and understand information and therefore are able to encourage people to imagine something as outrageous as a land-bridge to Governors Island, and see that maybe it’s not so outrageous after all.

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Laurie Hawkinson is principal of Smith Miller + Hawkinson Architecture. She received her Masters in Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley, attended the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York and received her Professional Degree in Architecture from the Cooper Union. Professor of Architecture with tenure at Columbia University, she is currently the Director of the Advanced Studios at the GSAPP; and has served as visiting professor at SCI-Arc, Harvard University, Yale University, Parsons School of Design, and the University of Miami. Significant completed projects include the Corning Museum of Glass, the Wall Street Ferry Terminal and “Strategic Open Space” Public Realm Improvement Strategy for Lower Manhattan. Projects currently under construction include the new Land Ports of Entry at Champlain and Massena, New York and a new Emergency Medical Services building for the City of New York. Collaborative projects include the North Carolina Museum of Art Amphitheater and Site Master Plan, the Museum of Women’s History and the NYC2012 Olympic Village. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Wooster Group and serves on the Contemporary Arts Council of the Museum of Modern Art.

Among the major initiatives spearheaded by the Urban Design Group was a rethinking of density bonuses for the provision of public space, the so-called plaza bonuses. As a result, in New York, privately owned public space has become a category of place unto itself, so much so that Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design worked with the Municipal Art Society and DCP to to catalogue the sites in his book Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience (Wiley, 2000). Kayden profiled 503 POPS — outdoor seating areas, through-block arcades, interior plazas and other pedestrian spaces across Manhattan. His findings revealed the inconsistent quality of execution and maintenance of these public spaces, and DCP used his analysis to develop new design standards adopted in 2007, with further amendments added in 2009.

Next week, Urban Omnibus and the Design Trust for Public Space are offering an opportunity for you to come check out one of these privately-owned public spaces for yourself, and continue this conversation. For more information about our April 7th Public Space Potluck at the IBM Atrium, click here.

40 West 57th Street through-block arcade

What do you do?
My company, Raquel Ramati Associates, works on urban design, planning, development and consulting projects. Much of our work concerns site feasibility, primarily in New York. And the rest of the work is master planning projects around the world. Most of my consulting work deals with partnerships between the public and private sectors. I also teach in the real estate programs at NYU and Columbia.

In both of these roles, consulting and teaching, I am a great believer that we have to bridge the interests of those of us who are concerned with urbanism and architecture with the interests of real estate developers. Because too often there is a tension between architecture and real estate development. I think it’s crucial to understand and to respect the needs of the client. The best projects that we see are those with good clients who understand what makes architecture, what makes urban design.

How did your thoughts on the relationship between the public sector, the private sector and design form?
I started my career at the Urban Design Group. When I started, I was very junior on the staff, doing the Zip-a-Tone and Xeroxing. At that point in time, I’d say real estate developers were vastly uninterested in architectural quality. And as architects, we felt that real estate developers were “the bad guys” and that we had to educate them. At the time, architecture and developers working together effectively was a rare occurrence. Even today, it still amazes me to see an article in the Times that mentions who the architect of a project is. Of course, these days architecture is branding, and the architect is one of the most important marketing tools real estate developers have. But when it came to urban design, our interest at the Urban Design Group was in how we could affect the city, not necessarily by dictating architecture or attracting a brand-name architect, but by creating rules and objectives with a cohesive vision. The Urban Design Group started with the approach that unless you involve the real estate developers, the city will continue to be built without any thought towards urban design whatsoever. As a result, there were two or three major interventions that I think were very important.

General Motors Building Plaza, 5th Avenue at 59th Street

One was special districts. Lincoln Center, the Theater District and Fifth Avenue are some early examples of how the Urban Design Group was able to create master plans of these distinctive areas. On Fifth Avenue, the goal was to push back against the fact that the avenue was starting to be a street only of banks and travel agencies by mandating the inclusion of other kinds of stores that bring life into the city. In the Theater District, there was a danger of the theaters themselves disappearing, so the master plan included the transfer of air rights to ensure that certain kinds of buildings, certain kinds of uses, were retained.

Another significant initiative was plaza bonuses. Previously, density bonuses for public space had been mostly unsuccessful. We sought to translate the idea into a more organized, comprehensive urban design plan.

Of course, incentive zoning really started earlier on, when the influence of the International School and Le Corbusier influenced the city to develop “towers-in-the-park.” The term “Towers-in-the-park” refers to the inclusion of open space around a high-rise building to create access to air and light. In order to accomplish that, you allow the developer to increase the density of the high-rise by 20%. The idea was that these open spaces would be provided for public use and enjoyment, with landscaped areas and so forth.

Citigroup Center sunken plaza, Lexington Avenue at 53rd Street

But the language was written in a way — “you create the open space, and we will give you the 20% density bonus” – that never really defined what this open space should be or how it should work. Developers, of course, will want to build 20% more because, since the buildings already have foundations, it’s much less expensive to build more, and the units you build at the top of the building become the most valuable space.

But ultimately, developers didn’t really want to provide amenities for the general public. Instead, those mandated open spaces often became dead areas, sometimes consciously designed to discourage anyone sitting on anything. And sometimes the plazas were sunken, which were even less attractive. A lot of these plazas had blank walls with no retail, because the idea of having retail in a corporate or residential building was not what the developer was looking for. Even when well-designed public space was promised, there was no way to enforce its implementation. Developers would bring plans for beautiful plazas, filled with trees and flowers, to the Department of City Planning, but once approved they were never built that way. The way the plaza bonuses were implemented turned a good initial idea into spaces that were quite anti-city, actually.

William H. Whyte: The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces – The Street Corner from MAS on Vimeo.

When the plaza legislation was changed in the early ‘70s, the rules became very strict. William H. Whyte had been analyzing pedestrian activity in the plazas and his results greatly influenced these revised mandates [see video excerpt above]. The plaza’s location relative to the sun was specified, as was the maximum amount (3 feet) it could be above or below street level, and the need for retail and for easy access (it could not be fenced). In every plaza there was a plaque that said exactly how many trees, how many seating areas, and what kind of amenities must be provided. And if the public space was not being maintained the way it was supposed to be, there was a bond that said that if, let’s say, trees die, then the developer has to replace them.

General Motors Building Plaza, 5th Avenue at 59th Street

The City also introduced other pedestrian amenities. Legislation was implemented for covered pedestrian space, which you see in the old IBM building on Madison Avenue; through-block arcades, which you see in the Sony building; and sidewalk cafes, to increase street life in the city – today sidewalk cafes are all over the city, but when we started, I think there was only one, on Central Park South, and it completely changed the life of the surrounding area. Then we also legislated subway easements, which required certain developments to incorporate transit access into the building, so that the entrance is in sight and not just a hole in the sidewalk.

Advancing interest in the street — in the continuity of street walls and in creating public spaces that are usable — is a major part of what the Urban Design Group accomplished. Looking back on this period, I think it was really the approach of public-private partnerships that was key to the creation and refining of these spaces so that they work.

590 Madison (IBM Building) atrium, Madison Avenue at 57th Street

For example, I think the covered pedestrian space and through-block in the IBM building (now owned by E.J. Minskoff) are extraordinary. If you go to that space, you will see that it’s a very big accomplishment and it works very nicely. Most cities don’t have the financial resources to purchase that kind of central real estate to use for public space. There’s no way. It would cost them millions of dollars. Public-private partnerships are the only way to do it and I think it has worked well.

But I have mixed feelings about it today. On one hand, I think that having green, open space in the city is a very important thing. But on the other hand, I see the problem of having plazas that don’t really work. Contextual zoning has changed a lot over the years. It’s difficult to legislate how often public spaces should occur along a particular street because the city is not owned by one person. It is a living thing, and it grows organically, and not necessarily the way that you want it to grow.

Have your thoughts on what makes for “good” urban space evolved over the years?
Now more than ever, I believe in opening up the waterfront – I always have, but I see now, on the Upper West Side for example, the influx of young people moving there because of the public space improvements on the West side, the pedestrian pier and so forth.

I still like interventions of open space and public spaces. Of course, everybody talks about the High Line, which is one way of intervening to create a public space. But there are many strategies. I hear people say things like ”Oh, I love Manhattan! I just walked 20 blocks and it was so great!” as if the excitement of walking through Manhattan was the result of ad hoc activities rather than the result of coordinated plans and policies.

For me, urban space is like an urban room. It needs to have some borders or some enclosures in order to work. And it needs to have some life! Whether that life comes exclusively from retail or not, I don’t know. But I do think that when it is all open, without borders of any kind, then it doesn’t work as effectively.

It seems like a big principle that you’ve been trying to enact in a number of ways has been street life and pedestrian life. So how do you feel about some of the more recent interventions, like the pedestrianization of Broadway?
I like the idea, but I’m not sure I like the execution. Instead of closing the middle of the street, I would have liked to see widening the sidewalks while creating lanes for buses. Which they did very, very well in Barcelona. There is something very strange about having Times Square a little closed and a little open. It looks temporary. I like the idea of people having the space – the pedestrian as king — but I’m not sure I love the way it’s done. I’m not a great believer in closing streets to cars altogether. I can see the benefits of how it has been done in Europe, like in Rome, where the city center is closed to private cars, but buses, taxis and people who live in the area are still allowed.

What other things have you seen from your work abroad? How are other countries and cities thinking about some of the issues we’ve been talking about: public-private partnership, street life, ways to use public policy as an instrument of good design principles?  Have you seen any lessons? Or cautionary tales?
New York is a pioneer, in a way. A lot of cities have copied us. Not design-wise, not architecture-wise, but urban-design-wise, in the sense of getting developers to engage in certain ways. The problem in other places that I’ve found, like in Israel for example, is that urban design is done on a lot-by-lot basis. And that doesn’t work. That’s how it was in New York before we started thinking about urban design systematically, through policy.

Rockefeller Plaza

One thing that worries me is the branding of architecture, in the interest of getting all these great architects to work here. For some of them — I won’t say all of them, but some of them — urban design is secondary in their thinking, and the architectural form is predominant. And that’s not limited to New York City, it’s all over the world, because developers want an icon, a signature building. Therefore, if the city doesn’t create linkages between the buildings, or pay attention to the linkages between the buildings, then the city is going to be like a cocktail party full of women wearing different hats.

How would you characterize what urban design is?
Urban design, to me, is the connectivity between buildings and places. It could be the subway or a building, but it’s those places that connect, whether vertically or horizontally. And it’s not just in urban centers. If you look at villages around the world, I think what makes a good rural or suburban public place is the relationship between the village and the natural environment. In cities, I think the relationships between open spaces and buildings is what makes more “urban-ness.” It’s like a necklace — if you don’t have the string that threads in between, the necklace falls apart.

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Raquel Ramati, architect and urban designer, is president of Raquel Ramati Associates Inc. She has earned an international reputation as an urban designer and planner, first in New York City’s government, and later as a private consultant working with developers, government agencies, not-for-profit organizations and community groups. The author of a signature planning book How to Save Your Own Street, she is presently teaching at the Real Estate Graduate Program at the Columbia University School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.

All photos by Jessica Cronstein.

This week brought news that Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty are handing over Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village to creditors to avoid bankruptcy. The Wall Street Journal lists the estimated value of the properties at $1.8 billion, just three and a half years after the $5.4 billion deal to purchase the site in 2006, and lists a few of the investors facing losses, ranging from the California Public Employee’s Retirement System to the Church of England. The New York Times explains why this is “a big black eye…but it’s not the end for Tishman” and investigates what this all means for the tenants. And the Post takes a look at who is thinking about buying the property now.

In waterfront news, $8.9 million in grants is being awarded by New York’s Department of State to waterfront revitalization projects in New York City. The Waterfront Alliance summarizes what projects will receiving funding — including the installation of MWA Eco-Docks, the implementation of the Bronx’s Shoelace Park Master Plan, Brooklyn Navy Yard improvements, climate change education programs, $1.5 million for the Randall’s Island Living Shoreline, two Jamaica Bay projects, and a seed farm and tree nursery at Freshkills — and points out that the announcement is also noteworthy for demonstrating “a major commitment to urban waterfront access” by the State. Check out the complete list with more details on MWA’s Waterwire.

The Make a Difference in Two Days lovers out there will appreciate this DIY intervention in Astoria that helps pedestrians cross a filthy pool of water that has submerged a heavily-trafficked sidewalk. An artist who goes by “Posterchild” constructed the “Astoria Scum River Bridge” out of an old work bench found on a curb as a gift to the neighborhood and was recently awarded a commendation from the office of Councilman Peter F. Vallone, Jr. (which came with a promise to help get the leaking pipe fixed).

Downtown Brooklyn residents: plan ahead. In 2019 your stretch of the BQE will be closing for a complete reconstruction. While it’s a bit early to start planning alternate routes, this announcement gives us occasion to think about the challenges of tackling significant infrastructure reconstruction projects in the middle of densely populated and highly-traveled neighborhoods. Streetsblog attended the stakeholder advisory council meeting for the project where the discussion often focused on how to balance neighborhood quality of life with the need to address the existing hazardous roadway conditions.

Outside of New York, high-speed rail is the hot transportation topic of the week now that details have been released about where the $8 billion of stimulus money allotted for HSR is headed. Much of the money is going to California, Florida and Illinois, with the Northeast receiving just $485 million to upgrade 7 major corridors in the region. The Infrastructurist points us to a post by Robert Puentes at the Brookings Institute that explains why prioritizing the Tampa-Orlando route makes sense and how this program is “nothing short of a sea change for how Washington thinks about infrastructure investments.” Meanwhile Wired digests it all in their feature about the history and future of “superfast bullet trains” in the U.S.

Finally we send you off into the weekend with a little toe-tapping video we’re calling “Me and Julio Down by the PS1 Pavilion” (aka SO-IL’s winning entry for the 2010 MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program):

SO-IL PS1 Pole Dance from SO-IL on Vimeo.

(Side note: Also on SO-IL’s Vimeo page you can see two quick clips of their installations for the League’s 2007 Beaux Arts Ball, Smoke and Mirrors.)

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Image: Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village by Flickr user Carly Hoskins.

This week, Museum of the Phantom City designers Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder talked about unbuilt city visions and app inspiration with us. We now have word that Irene’s appearance on Morning Edition with Soterios Johnson is set for Monday morning, October 26. So tune in and get your phantom on with NPR, or look out next week for more info from us about our Halloween-day meet-up in Bryant Park with Brett and Irene.

Also of interest to Omni-followers, Design Observer introduces us to Partly Sunny, a design showcase at RISD (the Rhode Island School of Design) highlighting initiatives that are addressing the challenges posed by climate change. The 36 featured projects include a number of urban infrastructure and transit initiatives, including GoLoco, the ride-sharing service developed by Zipcar founder Robin Chase, along with other topics familiar to the Omnibus reader, from urban agriculture to improved water system management. RISD’s Charlie Cannon writes: “To be sure, few of these projects were expressly conceived to combat global warming — but each illustrates how comprehensive thinking can produce near-term results as well as the long-term environmental improvements needed to address the unfolding challenges of climate change.” He adds: “The projects surveyed in Partly Sunny suggest that we need not wait for federal intervention or for the invention of new technologies to make demonstrable steps forward. Nor can we afford to.” Also, My Heart’s in Accra has a nice write-up of Mapping Main Street, the collaborative documentary project of James Burns, Kara Oehler, Ann Heppermann, and Omnibus collaborator Jesse Shapins.

In legal news, the New York State Court of Appeals ruled that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which include Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty, have been wrongfully charging market rents on thousands of apartments while receiving special tax breaks from the city. The ruling could have enormous implications for landlords and tenants of rent-controlled apartments across the city who have raised rents in a similar fashion, particularly as a lower court now decides whether tenants are entitled to back rent and damages.

The New York Times has started a new editorial series called Failed State, calling attention to the ways that Albany has made New York State, as they say, “a national embarrassment [and] a swamp of intrigue and corruption.” The map-obsessed among us will notice that in addition to ethics reform, campaign finance laws, concealed budget information, and pension investment mismanagement, specific mention is made of the strange (some might say ridiculous) way that district map borders are drawn – namely that the lawmakers draw the lines themselves. If the state heeds the Times‘ call for an independent commission to serve as a fair mapmaker, you can bet there will be an Omnibus feature about it.

We leave you with a short video, found via Wooster Collective, of the multimedia duo SWEATSHOPPE’s experimentation with “video painting.” It’s pretty much as cool as it sounds:

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Photo © 2008 Partly Sunny, courtesy of RISD.

Does that sound impossible? Politically unpalatable and financially unsound? Like it will take too long and is just too hard?

Well, we have an example of exactly that kind of accretive process in one of the city’s most beloved places, Grand Central Terminal. Why does it work so well? Listen to Vishaan tell it like it is. First, he reflects on some design details of the spectacular Main Concourse. Next, he wanders down Park Avenue and shares some of the history of how private sector competition led to a major public amenity and transformed the entire metropolitan region. Then he explores the terminal’s tentacular North-end Access and reflects further on how the terminal has transformed urban and regional economies. Finally, as he delves into the food court, he ponders lessons to be learned from Grand Central that could be applied to Moynihan Station.

Main Concourse

Lesson #1: Design matters. Beyond the obvious grandeur of its public spaces, Grand Central relies on a sophisticated layering of uses that has influenced the design of airports and train stations around the world.

Video running time: 3:22

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“It’s more than just the building. It’s about how hundreds of thousands of people move around a region.”Park Avenue and Midtown East

Lesson #2: The building is only part of a larger exercise in citymaking. Grand Central catalyzed the development of some of the most valuable real estate in the world. Running time: 4:27. Right-click here to download mp3.

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All great train stations… have tentacles that reach out into the city. There’s not just a front door. North-end Access

Lesson #3: Plan for phases. Grand Central wasn’t built in a day, and part of what makes it work can be found in the less than glamorous network of pedestrian access passageways. Running time: 2:41. Right-click here to download mp3.

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Train stations still have an openness about them. … as hubs [they] speak to the nature of the city that’s around them.

Lessons for Moynihan
Station

Lesson #4: Think big. If we could make a commuter terminal this nice – and one that’s had such wide-ranging urban and metropolitan ramifications – imagine what we could do with a major inter-city regional rail hub? Running time: 4:36. Right-click here to download mp3.

Six weeks ago on the Omnibus, we listened to Bob Yaro reflect on the destruction of the original Penn Station and imagine a new future for Midtown West. Perhaps realizing that future will require looking carefully into the city’s past. -C.S.

We are seeking information about the archival image of Park Avenue under construction posted above. If you know the source of the photograph, please email us.

Mehta – whose 2004 book Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found set the bar for place-based, narrative non-fiction about urban space and society, and whose forthcoming book about New York and its immigrants is sure to set it even higher – opened the event by invoking a personal memory: after migrating from India to Jackson Heights in 1977, Coney Island was the first leisure outing his family undertook. The image of the Mehta family aboard the Cyclone introduced an important theme to the discussion: the historical openness, accessibility and affordability of Coney Island’s amusements for working class New Yorkers, especially lower- and middle-income immigrants. Mehta was quick to add, however, “Nostalgia is not a sufficient reason to stop change in a city defined by constant change.” Nonetheless, the images that supported each of the presentations took cues from a history of sideshow freaks and the teeming masses along the boardwalk from Coney Island’s heyday – over a century ago.

The first speaker was Amanda Burden, Chair of the City Planning Commission and the Director of the Department of City Planning. She, too, led off with Coney’s legacy of open-air amusements but swiftly contextualized the area under review as a neighborhood of approximately 50,000 people, characterized by vast tracts of public housing (one in six live in NYCHA projects), a population with twice the unemployment rate of the rest of the city and which lacks basic services and retail. Preservation of the amusement district, Burden said, would require some City control of land and year-round entertainment, but the success of any comprehensive plan could only be measured in terms of increased opportunities for housing and jobs.

Burden left the details of the City’s plan to be explained by Purnima Kapur, the Brooklyn director of City Planning. Kapur presented an overview of a five-year process, including intensive community visioning sessions and historical analysis of sixty years of speculative land acquisition and the gradual shrinking of the amusement district from 27 acres to the three acres that remain. City Planning divides the neighborhood into three distinct zones: Coney East, or the amusement zone, between the KeySpan baseball stadium and the Aquarium; Coney North, to the north of Surf Avenue; and Coney West, to the west of the stadium. To revitalize the amusements, Kapur made a strong case for mapping a city-owned park – in perpetuity – in Coney East. To encourage infill retail development, the current maximum retail floorplate of 2500 square feet would be maintained, but restaurants and shops (largely prohibited under the current amusement land use designation) would be encouraged. Hotel development would be confined to Surf Avenue frontage, and new street linkages would be mapped between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk.

Dan Jennings spoke for Thor Equities, a real estate development firm famed for its malls across the country, which has been acquiring land in Coney East since the mid-1990s. Jennings sounded similar notes of year-round entertainments, expanded retail opportunities and rejuvenating the local economy. The major differences between the city’s plan and the developers’ plan lay in the necessity of mapping the amusement district as city-owned parkland and the size of appropriate retail floorplates: Thor wants it increased to 10,000 square feet. Jennings reminded the audience that this is not equivalent to big-box retail, citing the fact that retailers such as CostCo explore real estate with 30,000 square feet as a minimum. The video Jennings presented conjured a vision of mixed-use in Coney Island that was equal parts Las Vegas and Mall of America, where hotel guests, daytrippers to indoor rides and retail shoppers from South Brooklyn rubbed shoulders.

The Municipal Art Society (MAS) presented a third vision of Coney Island’s future. A long-time planning and preservation advocacy organization, MAS – represented by Melissa Baldock, the Kress/RFR Fellow for Historic Preservation and Public Policy – shared the results of its economic feasibility study and its large-scale community visioning process that included a far-reaching online call for ideas. She argued for the largest possible amusement area that would include both preserved icons such as the Cyclone and new ones, along the lines of the London Eye. Because land prices deter amusement development, Baldock said, the City must control the land where amusements are to flourish.

After these three visions were articulated, the presenters shared the stage with Charles Bendit of Taconic Investments, Dick Zigun of the Coney Island Circus Sideshow, Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush of El Diario/La Prensa, and Ahsanullah “Bobby” Khan of the Coney Island Avenue Project.

Taconic’s holdings are in Coney North and Coney West, areas slated for residential and hotel development. Bendit was quick to remind the audience that Taconic’s proposals have caused no controversy; his only recommendation to the City’s land use plan was to use Inclusionary Zoning to encourage affordable middle-income housing, arguing convincingly that this bracket is underserved by the market and the supply of low-income housing in the neighborhood is sufficient, if poorly serviced.

Zigun, whose most passionate recommendations were for landmarks designation for Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs, referred to Taconic as the “good developer” and repeatedly asked Thor Equities to sell their land to the City and leave Coney Island alone. But his contribution was notable for articulating the different scales at which the Coney Island site must be considered: from its position in the immediate neighborhood and New York City, to its significance to the US as a whole. Zigun, producer of the Mermaid Parade and other quintessential Coney Island programs, invoked the national legacy of Coney Island. Kapur talked about Coney Island in the context of New York City. Jennings expressed the commercial demands of the site in terms of the South Brooklyn retail landscape. And Mehta had opened the program in the context of working-class Brooklyn and Queens.

Vourvoulias-Bush and Khan spoke to the immigrant experience and the needs of the working class. Vourvoulias-Bush discussed these priorities in terms of access to open-air, affordable family fun. Khan, whose organization primarily works on behalf of the South Asian Muslim community of the area, expressed shock at the relative lack of discussion of general economic development for the area and, specifically, workforce development for the chronically unemployed residents of the neighborhood.

The atmosphere was tense, but nothing compared to the passions that are sure to fly during the public hearing on Wednesday. I recommend attending. You can find more information about the hearing here.

Panelists:
Purnima Kapur, Brooklyn Director of City Planning; Dan Jennings, Thor Equities; Melissa Baldock, The Municipal Arts Society; Charles Bendit, Taconic Investments; Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, El Diario/La Prensa; Dick Zigun, Coney Island Circus Sideshow; Ahsanullah “Bobby” Khan, Coney Island Avenue Project.

Convened by: Suketu Mehta, NYU School of Journalism

Cassim Shepard is the project director of Urban Omnibus.

These days the newsfeed about Atlantic Yards is a little bit quieter than it has been. But, in certain parts of New York City, mere mention of the project still amounts to fightin’ words. For the past six years, it seemed every hot-button urban issue – density, scale, historic preservation, community benefits agreements, eminent domain, the MTA, Olympic aspirations, job creation, gentrification, racism – was somehow implicated in this controversial project. The groups supporting or protesting the project seemed incapable of speaking the same language, much less seeing eye to eye.

Talking to New Yorkers is easy. New Yorkers have opinions. And often, they’re ready to share. When the topic is neighborhoods – those places where buildings, family, identity, money and politics intersect – people have, well, a lot to say. Why, then, is community engagement so tricky? Many attempts to formalize a process of soliciting the advice and identifying the priorities of residents result in frustration and misinterpretation if not outright mutual incomprehensibility and protest. Sometimes it takes artists – unaffiliated with the institutional agendas that drive development projects and often cleave communities into warring factions of stakeholders – to rise above the fray and invite disputing voices into dialogue.

The Civilians is a theater company whose creative process begins with broad-based, face-to-face investigation into real life. They pound the pavement, interview experts and passersby on the topic at hand – current and past Civilians’ productions range from a play about the Evangelical Christian community of Colorado Springs to one about climate change – then they perform monologues culled and collated from interview tapes, and mash the material up with music and dance. For the past year, the Civilians have been looking at all aspects and viewpoints on the Atlantic Yards development proposal as an inroad to broader urban issues of home and neighborhood change in New York City. In December, they transformed their research and interpretations into the multi-disciplinary performance project, Brooklyn at Eye Level. In this piece, two members of the Civilians’ creative team share with us their singular process and offer us a quick peek at the performance. This just might contain lessons for a new paradigm of how to engage and really hear each other.

–Cassim Shepard
Project Director,
Urban Omnibus

For watchdog blogging on Atlantic Yards, going back four years, check out Atlantic Yards Report.

To stay up to date on the Civilians’ process and productions, check out their site.

I’d normally be tempted to dismiss this as the height of San Francisco foolishness (and it is), but at this moment I’m also in awe of the neighborhood’s guts—especially juxtaposed with New York Magazine’s “Freakoutonomics” package this week, about the impact of the economy on this city’s stores and restaurants. The next few years, if not mere months, are no doubt going to remake New York’s retail landscape. But if this cycle is going to be one of “creative destruction,” then it’s potentially an opportunity to get a do-over with what Adam Greenfield calls the “repeating module of doom”– the Duane Reade/bank/DunkinDonuts rhythm that’s taken over the streetscape, making it a less interesting, less dynamic place.

I don’t mean merely to suggest that we should fight American Apparel. (I live across the street from one. It’s always empty.) But I do have a heightened appreciation for the brazenness of that patch of American city’s belief in its ability to influence its environment. I’ve always thought that part of being a New Yorker was a reverence for the physical manifestation of economic forces. But right now those forces are feeble. New game in the city.

Andrew Blum is a contributing editor at Wired and Metropolis magazines, and a contributing editor at Urban Omnibus. 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.