In a deceptively modest-seeming exhibition hall on the first floor of the Museum of the City of New York is a show titled The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011, a history of the 1811 plan for Manhattan’s grid, now celebrating its 200th anniversary. The size of the exhibit is cleverly misleading. Upon closer inspection its historic scale and range are immense and provide that rare feeling that one has discovered the secrets of the city.

One floor above the historical exhibit are, fittingly, projections for the future of Manhattan’s grid in the companion exhibit The Unfinished Grid: Design Speculations for Manhattan – eight proposals chosen from over 120, in a call for ideas sponsored by the Architectural League in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York and Architizer. [For more information about the two exhibitions, see this piece by Unfinished Grid curator Gregory Wessner. -Ed.]

At the Museum last Saturday afternoon, the Architectural League’s Gregory Wessner, the curator of The Unfinished Grid, moderated a panel discussion with Amale Andraos of WORKac, Ken Smith of Ken Smith Landscape Architect, and Mark Robbins, Dean of Syracuse University School of Architecture (Andraos and Robbins had served on the jury for the Unfinished Grid competition). The group discussed the living legacy of the 1811 plan and the new proposals imagining Manhattan’s infrastructural future.

L-R: Gregory Wessner, Ken Smith, Mark Robbins, Amale Andraos

The grand scale and defyingly disciplined solution that the 1811 Plan imposed on the map of Manhattan (in most instances keeping to the original plan within a hundredth of an inch) has had a humbling and inspiring effect on many architects and designers, including those on the panel. When asked to explain this enduring influence, Amale Andraos pointed out that, “Compared with the Roman grid, the Manhattan grid was created to create difference and expressiveness on its own. It’s funny that it seems so inevitable, so straightforward.  It’s also [a] very egalitarian ideology, not like the Continental grid. There’s no preferred access.” Indeed, as early as 1877, Frederick Law Olmsted made a similar observation, as provided in the exhibit along with quotes by other memorable observers: “Such distinctive advantage of position that Rome gives St. Peter’s, Paris the Madeleine, London St. Paul’s, New York, under her system, gives to nothing.”

While neutralizing and egalitarian in this respect, and in its use of a numbering system rather than the Continental preference for important names, the grid also presents to many as oppressive and constricting. Ken Smith noted that “it was criticized for its relentlessness at first; [but it also presented the] the genius of pure infrastructure – it frames and then individuates.” Mark Robbins then fondly recalled the tag line for The Naked City: “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This is one of them.” The panelists pointed out this expressive effect of the grid, that most of the individual expression and innovation occur within the interstitial spaces in the city, the ones the grid gives rise to and organically encourages.

Of course, not everyone feels the grid’s oppressiveness as a catalyst to greater flourishing of city life. One member of the audience felt quite dismayed at the unanimous adulation the panel seemed to give the grid. He echoed a not unpopular sentiment when he said, “I’m a little disheartened that you are so cheerful about the grid. For example, every street is a through street — you can’t find respite, can’t get away from it.”

Andraos countered that what he perceives as problems natural to the grid may actually have more to do with how we conduct daily life in the 21st century — garbage collection, street cleaning and traffic issues. She pointed to Barcelona’s new pneumatic trash management system that helps reduce garbage truck traffic as an example of how creative solutions can address many of these issues. When prodded by another audience member, an Englishwoman who bemoaned the lack of green space, especially as compared with London, Andraos pointed out the immense environmentally adaptive qualities of the grid. Although it was created in the first half of the 19th century, when the city could only count a population of 100,000 on the island of Manhattan, the grid made possible an efficient future sewage system, subway system, and pedestrian traffic. Within its rigidity it provided a flexibility that could accommodate this ambitiously growing and densifying city.

One of the central questions of planning in New York did creep its way into the discussion when someone asked about he pros and cons of landmarking in New York City 200 years into the future. The panelists agreed that, as Andraos replied, “We can’t and shouldn’t turn the entire city into a museum.” It’s also a question of allowing for the life of the city to continue. Wessner added that “Preserving the spirit of New York as place of change and new ideas, and balancing that with the city’s past – it’s a big question. Also, there’s a difference between preservation for historic value versus preservation efforts that are meant to keep development from happening.” This tension between development and preservation seems to underlie almost every discussion about planning, those about grand scale projects especially. Mark Robbins acknowledged this “anxiety about fabric going away in New York,” but, he pointed out, “(it) seems to be remarkably resilient.”

The panel did appraise some of the eight projects on display that project the grid’s potential into the city’s future. However, the panelists and jury members seemed a bit surprised by what they saw as a common “back to the future” sensibility of many of the entries and a relatively timid approach to thinking 200 years ahead. For example, they noted that none of the environmentally-oriented submissions were chosen as winners, partly because they were not radical enough or because many of their plans for the future are already a contemporary reality. Green plans for rooftops in Manhattan and urban farms, for instance, have been sprouting for a while now.

Maintaining New York as a place that inspires big ideas and gives them traction seems a bit more difficult 200 years on. We may recognize that planning of such sweeping scope can’t or won’t happen today, but this show serves to kindle the desire to imagine on a grand scale — the resilience of the grid speaks well to the impact of ambitious spirit. Thinking big might be okay again.

Yael Friedman writes about art and culture, and often about sports. She lives in Brooklyn and grew up in Tel Aviv and Rockaway (Bauhaus heaven and unapologetically homey beach town, respectively). You can check out more of her stuff at Ida Post.

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.

On November 20, Nathan Kensinger, in collaboration with UnionDocs, presented “Block by Block,” a panel discussion with four of New York’s most active street historians. Author Kevin Walsh, location scout Nick Carr, urban explorer Moses Gates and guide Cindy VandenBosch exemplify a vital and contemporary iteration of the long-standing New York tradition of “un-official,” “informal,” “underground,” and “alternative” histories. The event presented each individual’s work, methodology, adventures and stories, and in so doing managed to challenge many of our assumptions about how history is traditionally written, and how subverting those traditions can open up new avenues of urban exploration.

Kensinger, no slouch in the business of New York underground documentation himself, began the panel by framing the practice of street history in New York. Kensinger described the explorations of George G. Foster, a pioneer of nonfiction urban sensationalism. In the 1800s, Foster was working to document the whole of the rapidly changing city, through books such as New York by Gas Light and Other Urban Sketches and New York in Slices. His writing laid the groundwork for many writers of the early 20th century known for their exploration of New York’s underbelly, including Joseph Mitchell (McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon) and St. Clair McKelway (True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality), both also known for their contributions to the early years of The New Yorker. Like Foster before them, these writers opened doors for other 20th century talents like columnist Meyer Berger and audio documentarian Tony Schwartz. Just as each of the previous generations of New York historians felt a duty to expand public understanding of the breadth and diversity of urban experience in New York, the panelists Kensinger invited to this event exhibited a sense of wonder, responsibility and anxiety about representing the city they call home.

The first presenter of the evening was Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York. Walsh, by his own account, is now an author, but has always identified himself foremost as an urban explorer. A New York native, he came of age investigating the streets, fascinated by the stories they tell. And in 1997, when the Internet, as he said, “started getting popular,” he saw an opportunity and a platform upon which he could finally share his explorations. By 1998, he was out every weekend, photographing all along the way. During his many journeys, he has found the few remaining red-brick paved roads and some rare two-light stoplights that flash only red and green, explored New York neighborhood institutions like Red Hook’s Sunny’s Bar and Narrows Coffee Shop, and exposed the bucolic beauty of Park Slope’s Webster and Jackson Places with equal excitement as the gruesome history of Atlantic Terminal’s prior life as a meatpacking plant.

5 Beekman Street | Photo by Nick Carr/Scouting New York

Nick Carr is a location scout for the movie industry is the author of Scouting New York. After graduating from college, he wanted to work in film production. Following a couple twists and turns that involved figuring out where to locate trailers on the set and how to run telephone lines to them, he managed to find regular work in the locations department and worked his way up to being a scout. Working on films like Spiderman 3 and The Taking of Pelham 123, one would expect that Carr’s work has taken him to some of New York’s most inaccessible rooftops and abandoned buildings, but it has also found him in the last arcade in Chinatown and rooftop beach houses. He has tracked down rats in Grand Central Station and owls in Hearld Square. His words of advice on scouting the next spot? Keep your eyes open, New York is always changing.

Census Tracts, Current Progress | Courtesy of Moses Gates

Moses Gates of All City New York presented next. An urban explorer, planner and demographer, Gates has taken on a number of ambitious urban adventures goals. First, he decided to climb every bridge in New York, then to explore all of New York’s abandoned subway stations and most recently to walk all of New York’s census tracts. Gates began by showing some stomach-jolting photos of his bridge climbs and curiosity-sparking images of his subway explorations. Then, he dove into his census tract exploration. As of November 20th, Gates had walked 83.5% of New York’s census tracts as outlined by the census conducted in the year 2000. Over the course of his walks, he began to wonder about the totality of New York in contrast to image of New York. Does Chelsea or Ridgewood offer a more “real” New York? Jackson Heights or Bayside? Using census microdata, the demographer in him decided to figure out which neighborhood’s statistics most closely match the citywide averages for income, racial composition and other census categories. The winner? Pelham Parkway in the Bronx.

Cindy VandenBosch of Urban Oyster was the final presenter. Drawing on her background in anthropology, she wanted to create a tour company that would not just simply showcase a space, but allow the participant to experience it as a place. With topics ranging from food carts to churches to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, her tours expand the traditional visual tour experience by drawing in locals for discussion, tastings and oral histories. She took us through the makings of her Immigrant Foodways tour. In 2008, when a signature campaign stopped its repurposing, the Moore Street Market drew VandenBosch’s attention. The Market, she explained, was originally formed under the LaGuardia administration in an effort “to turn the peddlers of yesterday into the merchants of tomorrow,” by centralizing them indoors. With the market as a starting place, VandenBosch’s investigations expanded into the neighborhood. She found a wealth of food-centric stories from the butcher shops that once lined Moore Street to the steer drive that took place on Johnson Avenue. Through her connection to the neighborhood and communities with whom she works, her tours are filled with resident’s personal histories in equal amount as urban history, offering a well-rounded rendering of the places rather than simply the spaces through which she leads tours.

Co-owner of Anibal Meat Market, Angelo Santiago, offers up some pernil and roasted chicken to attendees of one of VandenBosch's tours | Photo by Andrew Gustafson, courtesy of Cindy VandenBosch

Following the presentations, Kensinger opened a question and answer session with audience. It took no time at all for the issue of change in the city to take over the discussion. Walsh lamented the loss of architectural individualism and the resulting aesthetic homogenization of the built environment. Carr took on the frequency of construction, adaptation, renovation and demolition. Gates discussed the city’s demographic changes — the city is more expensive than ever before, but remains socially diverse. VanderBosch queried the way in which the landmarking process occurs: should it be with reference to the narrative of the place or the structure?

Walsh summed up the crux of his argument with an anecdote. He was out walking and photographing when met a friend, to whom he complained that a beautiful old baroque building had been torn down and replaced with standardized box apartments (what he calls “Fedders,” in reference to the air conditioners that adorns their windows). His friend told him to stop complaining; this is what people can afford; this is what makes sense for the neighborhood as it is now. Her scolding was based in economics, demographics and practicality, while his sensibility lay in aesthetics and nostalgia. Hence Walsh’s question: where is the line? What amount of historic or aesthetic value is sufficient to justify deterring or slowing physical change, even when rapid change makes the most economic sense?

Not all development dilemmas are this clear-cut, and the discussion brought to mind the complex challenges of shaping the city’s future in a way that respects its past. Both economic development and historic preservation play important roles and, while it is impossible to single-handedly predict or determine the future, we can be sure that this group of street historians and urban explorers will remind us of the best of the past. In just a few hours, they led us through some of New York’s “secret” spaces, shifted the mythologies we believe about the city, and opened our eyes to the complex historical narratives that we pass by everyday. And, at the end of our exploration, they raise key questions about which of New York’s spaces, places and mythologies will continue to be preserved. What vestiges of this New York will we find in the next version of New York? It will be up to the next generation of street historians to explore, document and share.

Meg Kelly is a researcher and designer. As a Fulbright Fellow, she recently completed “Tracing Shifts of Place: Migration, Identity and Landscape in Dharavi,” a year-long oral history project that investigated and documented the physical, political and cultural landscape of one of Asia’s largest and most complex informal communities through the eyes of its youth. She is a former project associate of Urban Omnibus and a current collaborator at UnionDocs.

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.

Mapping #whOWNSpace | Photo by Jessica Cronstein

#whOWNSpace: An Introduction
by Jessica Cronstein

The occupation of Zuccotti Park unintentionally brought attention to the nebulous rules that govern New York City’s privately-owned public spaces (POPS). In 1961, the city was changing. Advances in building technology meant office towers could be built higher than ever before, and developers had an interest in making use of this additional square footage. A revision of the zoning laws offered a trade: in return for creating public open spaces — perhaps most importantly, for the Occupy Wall Street movement, spaces “accessible to the public at all times,” unlike city parks which close at dusk — the developers would be allowed a higher floor-to-area ratio (FAR). The idea was to allow for more light and air in dense, vertical areas, and to have developers give back to the city a little bit for what they were gaining by building bigger. The rules governing the design of the POPS, though, were incredibly vague, which led to the creation of inaccessible, inhospitable spaces with little or no public benefit. Revisions were made, including requirements for shade trees, seating and lighting, and zoning amendments were added, allowing owners to apply for permission to close the spaces at night. But still, the laws dictating the management and use of these spaces are vague, and often come down to unspecific semantics.

To address questions of ownership and use of open space in New York City, members of Not an Alternative, DSGN AGNC and DoTank: Brooklyn launched the project #whOWNSpace. Their stated intention is to reveal and question conflicting rules and ownerships of public space, advocate for and propose uses and designs in accordance with their Call to Action for the Rights of Neighborhoods, and to turn ideas and research into material action through intervention in urban space. Earlier this month, the collaborative partnered with The Public School New York to hold a class, in three locations simultaneously, that investigates power dynamics in urban open space.

The class visited three neighborhoods: the Financial District, Midtown and the Upper East Side. Each section was given two public spaces to visit, observe, diagram and discuss. Afterwards, all groups convened in midtown to share ideas and results.

Mapping a POPS at WTC-7. The POPS was barricaded by NYPD and closed to the public by its owners, who feared the space would be overtaken by the Occupy Wall Street movement. | Photo by Mercedes Kraus

#whOWNSpace: Financial District
by Mercedes Kraus 

Guided by Rena Mande and Amanda Rekemeyer, DSGN AGNC collaborators, my class walked through the western part of the Financial District.

The route took us from Battery Park City ballfields (a well-maintained, pay-to-use, privately managed public park) to the Goldman Sachs World Headquarters (no POPS), a park at 7 World Trade Center (a new POPS with a Jeff Koons sculpture, funded by the 9/11 recovery monies), 101 Barclay Street (an indoor POPS, as listed by the city, that in reality doesn’t exist) and, finally, to two publicly-owned open spaces (POOS): Washington Market Park and Duane Park.

Our stop at the Goldman Sachs HQ was particularly interesting. Because the firm received extra incentive from the city to stay in the Financial District after 9/11, the only “public benefit” the fortress-like building gives is a mural inside its lobby, to be viewed from the outside, on a sidewalk only for walking (security guards ensure that no other activity takes place).

Upon arrival at the small plaza adjacent to WTC-7, closed by the owner and barricaded by the NYPD (for fear that OWS might occupy it), we mapped the POPS, observing lighting, seating, use, access, etc. Sarah Williams, of the Spatial Information Design Lab, introduced us to the idea that “maps allow us to read places in a different way … mapping is marking reality but also how you observe reality.” I did, in fact, feel more engaged with the levels of meaning and use of the space once I had marked it and also looked at the markings of my peers. Making maps, then, serves as means of conversation, for which reason #whOWNSpace will soon launch an open-sourced map of NYC POPS and POOS on the project’s website.

When we left the tall towers and regulated POPS of the WTC area, we visited Washington Market Park, which, besides having one small, slightly hidden entrance and a short list of rules (its own form of security), is a rather large space designed and used for diverse activities. It has a large playground, public bathroom, pavilion, and community garden, and I felt more welcome here than at any other site the class visited. Our last stop of the day was Duane Park, also a POOS. No rules were posted regarding use or hours, and most of the (small) walkway was lined with good benches, making it a good, though simple, public space.

The group discusses the lack of public space at the Goldman Sachs World Headquarters, adjacent to the Hudson River Greenway. The only public amenity offered is a mural in its lobby, publicly viewable from outside the building. | Photo by Mercedes Kraus

#whOWNSpace: Upper East Side
by Jessica Cronstein 

My group met in front of the offices of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation at 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, where we were given blank maps with inset plans of the two spaces we were to visit (both Trump buildings). Each member chose one element to diagram while at the sites: access, edge conditions, seating, lighting, activities, signage / graphics, design / branding, circulation or demographics.

Our first stop, the public space attached to Trump Palace, was designed to appear as part of the building, giving passers-by the impression that it is only for residents. The gates that demarcate the space — beige-painted metal, not likely to be part of the plaza’s original design, which is predominantly marble —  seem to be permanently closed. The plaza looks, from the outside, like a maintenance entrance for the building. The space is shady, which, in November, means cold seating. While there, though, we saw it used by a group of construction workers eating their lunch and an elderly woman who stops in every day on her walk through the neighborhood.

The second space we visited, Trump Plaza, feels like an extension of the lobby of the building. It is directional and ends at the main entrance to the building. Some of the problems are the same as before: cold seating in a shady plaza, and a feeling (amplified by the watchful eye of the nearby doorman) that you need an invitation to use the space.

The problems built into these two spaces were problems of management and design: they were designed to be uninviting, to feel like private spaces for the residents of the towers above. The beauty of the small parks that exist only blocks away is that they are rarely crowded and are perfect lunch spots. But they will never have the identity of a full-fledged park. They are always associated with the building or the block. In the residential neighborhood of the Upper East Side, the character and expectations of the spaces were different than those of Midtown and the Financial District.

Trump Plaza at 167 E. 61st St. | Photo by Jessica Cronstein

#whOWNSpace: Midtown
by Max Podemski 

Amidst businesspeople, tourists and a pair costumed as Shrek and Elmo at the northwest corner of Bryant Park, my group met Quilian Riano, an urban design professor at Parsons and co-founder of design collective DSGN AGNC, and Phillip Grimaldi, a designer and also a member of DSGN AGNC.

Before the class even began a security guard demanded that Quilian take down a poster taped to a sign for the Citi Pond Ice Skating Rink. This is “private property,” the guard told us, who then proceeded down to the corner to kick out Shrek.

Mapping the 1095 Avenue of the Americas POPS | Photo by Max Podemski

The current incarnation of Bryant Park is the result of a Project for Public Spaces (PPS)-led renovation in 1981. However, rather then finding a vibrant, democratic, public space, our group found a park that more closely resembles a rotunda inside a mall. Every usable inch of the park has been programmed, ranging from ping pong tables to corporate marketing tents to a New York-themed tchotchke bazaar. The pure domination of the space by monetized interest leaves little room for its use as a democratic public commons.

After visiting Bryant Park, ostensibly a publicly-owned private space, we visited several privately-owned public spaces or POPS. The first “covered pedestrian space” we examined was in the Phillip Morris building at 120 Park Avenue. At one time this space housed a Whitney Museum affiliated sculpture galley. Today it is an antiseptic room, reminiscent of an extremely luxurious DMV office. A guard at a flimsy desk stood watch over the three people sitting at tables in the plaza, which is sunken below the lobby of the building that looks down on the space through enormous windows — a panopticon, one participant called it. The consensus of our group was that this was, by far, the creepiest of the POPS on the tour.

The second stop was the Grace Plaza on 43rd Street. This outdoor space is connected to the W.R. Grace Building, named after a chemical company famous for its more than 200,000 asbestos-related lawsuits. In spite of two qualities often associated with successful public spaces, moveable chairs and a programmed use via a small gallery for the International Center for Photography, our tour still found many flaws in this plaza such as the open, windswept nature of the space and the cold hard material of the oddly-configured seating area.

The third and final of the POPS we visited was affiliated with the 1095 Avenue of Americas Building, which recently underwent an extensive renovation. Rather then occupying the front of the tower facing Bryant Park, this plaza is sequestered behind it, lying in a narrow canyon between the massive buildings of midtown. Pleasant wood benches stand in rows facing small trees. However, flanking the entire east side of the plaza is a large window looking into the lobby of the tower, in the center of which sits a guard who soon came out and ordered one person in our group not to stand on a bench. With that, our investigation of who owns space in midtown concluded.

Photo by Jessica Cronstein

#whOWNSpace: Wrap-up Session
by Jessica Cronstein 

At the end of the day, the three groups converged on the Verizon POPS between 41st and 42nd Streets, east of 6th Avenue, before moving to another POPS, the Philip Morris covered pedestrian space at 42nd Street and Park Avenue. We compiled our research to create a master map, and representatives from each group shared their diagrams and described the qualities of the spaces they visited.

The characters of the three neighborhoods became apparent. In the Financial District, the management of each space was on red alert, security guards were conspicuously present, looking out for another Zuccotti Park incident. These POPS are designed to be shortcuts, they aren’t meant to be oases within the city. In Midtown, the plazas are interior spaces or between buildings, used differently by two distinct demographics: office workers during the week and tourists during the weekend. They are more conducive to enduring visits, but are still less than welcoming. On the Upper East Side the plazas are attached to residential buildings, giving the appearance of more privatized ownership.

Who were these spaces designed for? And how were they designed to be used? What constitutes the public? What is the value of small public space? And to whom? What are the rights of the management? And how do they infringe on the rights of the public? The questions raised by #whOWNSpace are ones the city has contended with for 50 years, and will continue to for years to come. They won’t be answered in one afternoon.

Photo by Jessica Cronstein

Correction: an earlier version of this article referred to the Battery Park City ballfield as a POPS, when in fact it is a POOS, or privately owned open space. 

Mercedes Kraus is a Brooklyn-based writer and editor. She co-founded and publishes Womanzine and has worked to engage the public in the built environment at both Van Alen Institute and the Institute for Urban Design. She loves pizza, outer space, and .gifs of both. 

Max Podemski is currently a graduate student studying urban planning at Columbia University. Previously he was the coordinator for the Pacoima Wash Initiative and served on the board of CicLAvia in Los Angeles.

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.

View from Red Hook, Brooklyn, 1978 | Photo by Camilo Jose Vergara

Last Wednesday evening, Paul Goldberger, author of Up From Zero: Politics, Architecture, and the Rebuilding of New York, spoke with Camilo José Vergara at the Museum of the City of New York, in conjunction with the MCNY exhibition of Vergara’s photographs of the Twin Tower, The Twin Towers and the City: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara, currently on display. Vergara is known for his photographs of some of America’s poorest neighborhoods, returning year after year to shoot the same building or site over time. His method involves an extraordinary amount of patience, commitment and prescience: he began photographing cities in the process of disinvestment and resulting decay in the 1960s and ’70s and has been following them ever since. Traveling again and again to cities throughout the United States — including Detroit, Chicago and Gary, Indiana — his photographs tell the story of a country in flux and the deterioration of the American city in the latter half of the 20th century.

The Twin Towers and the City makes apparent the changes to Vergara’s interest in the towers throughout their life span. When Vergara came to New York City in 1965, the poverty that had insinuated itself into many aspects of urban life had risen to the surface, ready to be photographed. When construction began on the Twin Towers in 1968, Vergara was fascinated by the way they symbolized what he sees as the misplaced priorities of American culture: the desire to build giant, shimmering monuments to capitalism in the face of an ailing city. One photograph in the show, “View of the World Trade Center Under Construction from Duane Street, Manhattan, 1970,” is an especially poignant juxtaposition: in the foreground, a man lies asleep on the sidewalk next to a trash can, surrounded by detritus, while in the background the gleaming, modern towers are busily being constructed, cranes visible at the upper reaches. As the years progressed, Vergara became more focused on documenting the state of degraded living conditions and the dilapidation of the built environment throughout New York City, and he became less concerned with the towers as a symbol. They became part of the scene, visible from every point in the city. That ubiquity recurs throughout the show: the towers are in the background of photographs from every part of the city, as well as New Jersey; as one approached Manhattan from the north, south, east or west. They became a geographical anchor for Vergara’s photographs in much the same way as they did for the city itself.

View of Lower Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, October, 1979 | Photo by Camilo José Vergara

View of Lower Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, November, 1979 | Photo by Camilo José Vergara

When a visitor first enters the gallery, the first six photographs she sees are the only in the exhibition with the Twin Towers as the primary focal point. The title of each clinically describes the view, the photographer’s location, and the date shot, beginning with “View of Lower Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, October 1979” and followed by the same composition photographed in November 1979; on September 11, 2001; in September 2001; on September 10, 2010 (showing the Tribute in Light); and in May 2011. The photographs serve as an introduction to the show, documenting the changes to the landscape from the towers’ opening through their destruction, but they are the anomalous sequence in the exhibition; the rest of the exhibition functions as a single portrait of the city’s experience with the towers, rather than multiple portraits of those specific buildings. When the Twin Towers were first built, they were criticized for their hugeness, for their a-contextuality, and for their erasure of the existent fabric. Gradually that hatred became acceptance of their inescapable presence on the horizon. Finally, in the face of destruction, they became symbols of loss and, for a time, sacred. During the moment of mourning, Goldberger referred to them as Modernist “martyrs.” It took their destruction for the city, as well as the rest of the country, to love them. The exhibition, ultimately, documents the gradual change in the city’s attitude toward the Twin Towers from hatred in the face of new construction through “martyrdom” with their destruction.

The conversation also tracked decades of shifting attitudes, referencing Vergara’s and Goldberger’s changing relationships to the towers throughout their careers. Vergara opened the evening with the memory that Goldberger had reviewed his first show at Parsons favorably, and this praise had opened the door to more opportunities and exhibitions. In this way, Vergara placed the beginning of two speakers’ careers in time, specifically beginning when the towers were first introduced to the city.

View of Lower Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, September 11, 2001 | Photo by Camilo José Vergara

View of Lower Manhattan from the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn, September, 2001 | Photo by Camilo José Vergara

Vergara spoke generally about his own work and process, about the necessity of returning to a space, an address, a building or a neighborhood, multiple times over the course of years of capturing or understanding that space. He touched upon what he saw as the power of sequencing images, how they begin to take on meaning through that sequencing. Goldberger stipulated that the true subject of Vergara’s work was time. Vergara agreed: he had set out to capture images of a ruin, of monuments falling apart, but was totally surprised that New York City ”didn’t go the way of Detroit.”

The loss of the towers was felt not only in the context of New York City, but throughout the rest of the country as well. Goldberger pointed out that, outside of New York, the towers were depicted as entities in and of themselves, often alone, without the surrounding city. They were monuments to the event, with the towers as the symbols of the loss. In contrast, remembrances in the New York metropolitan region often focus on specific people that were lost. While rebuilding on the site itself has been fraught with logistical, political and emotional difficulties, the rest of the city has continued to function; for the rest of the country, the towers remained the symbol, unchanging over time. That differentiation is made explicit by Vergara’s series of photographs depicting murals from around the country slightly separated from the photographs of murals from around New York City.

World Trade Center seen from St. Paul's Churchyard, Manhattan, 1970 | Photo by Camilo José Vergara

Discussing the towers as physical entities, Goldberger pointed out their beauty as “minimalist sculptures.” That the facades consisted of more metal than glass allowed for a play of light, shimmering differently throughout the day. Vergara maintained that there was something wonderful in their simplicity, that they became almost a three-figure composition, with the space between bearing as much visual weight as the two towers themselves. He lamented the loss of the slivers of space between the buildings in Lower Manhattan as the neighborhood has been built out and that space has been eaten up over the years. Goldberger pointed out the irony of all the ways that they were criticized at ground level, as being anti-urban, contextless, as a podium disrupting the streets, that they became so much a part of the city at the larger scale, from everywhere but directly below them. Now, ten years later, the biggest change, to Goldberger, is how much we’ve accepted their loss: now the strange pictures are those with the towers in them. The question and answer session at the end of the evening gave the speakers a platform to express fears that the new buildings would not be great, and lament the lost opportunity that rebuilding offered to utilize the lessons learned from the last forty years about how cities work.

What’s most remarkable about Vergara’s work is that he tells the story of the American city in the wake of Modernism not by photographing the big interventions, the large scale monuments to efficiency that completely reshaped cities, but by documenting the untouched neighborhoods. He shows the viewer those neighborhoods that were allowed to devolve without intervention, and therefore tell a story of civic disinvestment, suburbanization, population shifts, economic downturns and urban poverty. If Vergara’s real subject is time, as Golberger suggests, it is through returning to the same site throughout decades that reveals the process by which the built environment adapts or decays. Thus, his most powerful photographs approach an understanding of a large and incomprehensible whole — a city — through the documentation of one aspect, a building or a block, as it ages.

All images courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Jessica Cronstein is a designer and writer interested in the point at which the social, cultural and physical growth of a city intersect. She has just completed her M.Arch at Rice University and lives in New York City.

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.

On Saturday, October 8, Cinebeasts presented Gowanderlust!, an event combining a neighborhood walking tour with quick, guerilla-style film installations. Just after dusk, a group gathered at the Bell House, a bar in Gowanus, Brooklyn, where we met Nathan Kensinger, photographer, documentary filmmaker, festival programmer and our tour guide for the evening. Kensinger is best known for his work documenting off-limits spaces along the industrial waterfront of New York City. After many years living and working in Gowanus, he knows the neighborhood well and our walk was enlivened by his tales of neighborhood’s politics, environmental issues and urban legends.

Photo by Matthew Caron

Moving towards our first stop, a truck depot at 5th Street and 2nd Avenue, we took a moment to discuss the industrial history of the Gowanus Canal, its designation as a Superfund site and why, unlike many of New York’s other post-industrial waterfront areas, it has yet to be redeveloped (extreme pollution combined with the economic downturn was the group consensus). After a quick turn, we rambled across railroad ties to a vacant lot, the site of our first screening. On a screen tacked to an unsuspecting van, we viewed Silo and Camera Roll for Taylor. Silo is a single-shot time-lapse of ISSUE Project Room at its former location in a converted silo alongside the Gowanus Canal. Camera Roll for Taylor is what director Joel Schlemowitz calls a “camera roll city cine-poem.” Made as a filmic postcard to a friend, Schlemowitz refracted his frames through a crystal, shooting only sites in the vicinity of the canal.

Our second stop landed us just across from Dykes Lumber Yard on 6th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Projected just below the Dykes sign, we viewed SSS by Henry Hills. Shot in 1988, the film is composed of footage of instances of dance-like spontaneous movement in the streets of the East Village. SSS provoked conversation about ways to inhabit and appropriate under- and un-used urban space — and, it turns out, the film was the inspiration for the Gowanderlust event.

Photo by Matthew Caron

Our third stop landed us across from The Old American Can Factory, at 3rd Street and 3rd Avenue, facing a long abandoned landmarked building. Built in 1872-3, the Coignet Stone Company building was built entirely of cast concrete as a prototype to demonstrate the material’s versatility. The building sits at the edge of what was once an industrial park and is now an expansive, locally-infamous vacant lot. It has housed squatters, provided space and inspiration to artists, been termed a part of “Brooklyn’s biggest toxic playground,” and is now owned by the Whole Foods Company. Projected onto the doors of the Coignet building, we viewed Autumn Leaves, a short film by Brooklyn-based artist Donna Cameron. Cameron uses a unique method that combines photo emulsion and paper to create her work. In Autumn Leaves, she recreates the beauty of autumn by ripping, tearing and rustling the papers, simulating both the sounds and appearance of falling leaves.

A short walk across the 3rd Street Bridge brought us to our fourth stop, at the edge of the canal by the Gowanus Dredgers’ boat launch. Founded in 1999, the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club is dedicated to providing waterfront access and education along the canal and throughout other waterfront communities in Brooklyn. Just next to the launch site, we screened our final film, Kevin T. Allen’s What the Sea Left Behind. Depicting a “journey above and below one of America’s most polluted waterways,” Allen used a homemade hydrophone and binaural contact microphones to record the sounds of a canoe on the canal.

Photo by Matthew Caron

On our way back to Cabinet magazine’s offices for a final slideshow and some Brooklyn Brewery brew, we took a break on the Carroll Street Bridge. Built in 1888, it is the oldest retractile bridge in the United States. Instead of rising up, the bridge swings to the bank to allow oncoming boats to pass. From the silo in Joel Schelmowitz’s film to the vacant lands and, of course, the canal itself, the view from the bridge perfectly linked all the pieces of our walk together and offered us a moment to discuss the past and the future of the canal and Gowanus.

Hosting everything from off-the grid communes turned drug houses, to houseboat pioneers, to innovative work spaces, to dumpster swimming pools, post-industrial Gowanus has acted as a refuge for the artistic and the eccentric, for the communal enthusiast and the anarchist. And so, the days when the police would comb the canal for bodies, and the density of toxic waste would cause the canal to self-ignite now seem both long gone and not so long gone. With a massive rezoning complete, construction and development efforts stalled, and the Superfund clean up just beginning, I was left wondering what the future will hold for Gowanus. Are the days of dumpster pools and guerrilla film exhibitions on their way out, soon to be replaced by condos and nondescript commercial development? Or, thanks to the economy, are they just warming up?

Photo by Matthew Caron

Meg Kelly is a researcher and designer. As a Fulbright Fellow, she recently completed “Tracing Shifts of Place: Migration, Identity and Landscape in Dharavi,” a year-long oral history project that investigated and documented the physical, political and cultural landscape of one of Asia’s largest and most complex informal communities through the eyes of its youth. She is a former project associate of Urban Omnibus and a current collaborator at UnionDocs.

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.

L-R: Jeremy Soffin, JP Chan and Chi-hui Yang at Telling Transit Tales | Photo by Aubrey Gallegos, courtesy of UnionDocs

On Sunday, September 25, UnionDocs and the Metropolitian Transportation Authority (MTA) co-hosted a screening and discussion of videos from the MTA’s YouTube channel. Since its launch last January, the channel has logged over 900,000 views and now features nearly 100 videos surveying MTA operations from many angles. Sunday night’s discussion, titled “Telling Transit Tales,” was organized and moderated by curator and film scholar Chi-hui Yang and included MTA Director of Media Relations Jeremy Soffin and Manager of Strategic Initiatives and Chief Videographer JP Chan.

Soffin and Chan have integrated the role and purpose of the YouTube channel with the MTA’s larger public relations overhaul. Working on a modest budget, they conceptualized and created what they term “leaner” videos. Moving the MTA away from more corporate documentary styles, Chan and Soffin replaced the talking heads with whomever was in charge of the specific project, be it disaster clean-up or changing the lights in the ceiling of Grand Central Station. They place an increased value on cinematic aesthetics, shooting only in HD and at 24 frames per second, and capitalize on the MTA’s expansive resources both in content and dramatic location. They hope the feel, length and watchability of these pieces will set them apart from other video content that the MTA has produced in the past, and corporate video more generally, expanding the audience and increasing transparency into the bureaucracy of the MTA.

The conversation was arranged in three sections, each following a large theme within the MTA’s body of work. The first section of films was entitled “Why Things Are.” These offer an opportunity for the MTA to visually explain new policies and introduce new key-figures to the public. When Jay Walder, the new (at the time) CEO took charge, he used an MTA video as a way to discuss both his background and his specific vision for the future of the MTA. This type of video is also used for direct and at times apologetic explanations for shifts in service. A recent example came after Hurricane Irene, when Chan traveled north to meet with Frederick Chidester, the line superintendent for Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson and West of Hudson Lines. The visual narrative paired with Chidester’s explanation becomes an incredibly successful method of explaining why the tracks on the Port Jervis line will take months to fix.

The second section, “How Things Work,” explores unsung and inaccessible spaces and topics by tapping the knowledge of MTA employees. This ranges from an animated short that explains the origins of the subway annotation system to a number of city symphony-style pieces that explore the city. This series, Chan noted, is where he tries to bring a narrative bend to the films. For example, by closely documenting the progress of the Second Avenue subway, Chan reveals the nuts-and-bolts story of how subway construction happens while also informing viewers about the MTA’s broader service expansion plans.

The final section, “The Culture, History and People of the MTA,” includes archival films, character studies and event pieces. Whether atop the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge banding young Peregrine falcons or tracing the route of the New York City Marathon, this series opens windows into the wide variety of activities that take place in MTA-controlled spaces. When asked about these pieces, Chan lit up, promising that more character studies are in the works and will explore topics in greater depth. He listed the archival films as his personal favorites, citing their ability to let the MTA show a lighter side, and noted that they are among the most popular videos on the channel — an educational video about the consequences of graffiti vandalism from the 1980s is the second most-viewed entry, and has been frequently re-blogged (often by pro-graffiti websites, and often commenting on its near-ridiculous message and soundtrack).

At the end of the day, the MTA’s YouTube channel is all about being “cheap and cheerful” and bringing a more intimate understanding of one of New York City largest and most important agencies. That importance was something both the audience and the panel spoke of often, and not just because so many of us rely on the system to travel through the city. New Yorkers identify themselves with the subway lines they use, and track neighborhood transition by when they’ve frequented which stops. What does it mean to live off the L line today as opposed to 20 years ago? How do you experience the city differently if you travel across a bridge every day rather than take the train? The MTA helps define how we live and move in our city, and the agency’s effort to make the mechanics and motivations of their work accessible through a platform like YouTube is worth noticing.

Meg Kelly is a researcher and designer. As a Fulbright Fellow, she recently completed “Tracing Shifts of Place: Migration, Identity and Landscape in Dharavi,” a year-long oral history project that investigated and documented the physical, political and cultural landscape of one of Asia’s largest and most complex informal communities through the eyes of its youth. She is a former project associate of Urban Omnibus and a current collaborator at UnionDocs. 

Correction: An earlier version of this article misattributed comments about past video content produced by the MTA to JP Chan. 

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.

On September 10th, a group of about forty-five students, design professionals and bloggers gathered at the School of Visual Arts in NYC for an “Iconathon,” a collaborative design charrette aimed at creating a set of graphic symbols that can be applied across sectors to communicate commonly recognized urban concepts. The event was organized by Code for America [for more about Code for America, revisit our feature about the program. -Ed.] in partnership with The Noun Project, a group dedicated to contributing to and disseminating the world’s collection of visual symbols. Each Iconathon event, held in cities across the country, has its own civic theme. The theme was “311″ in San Francisco, “Food and Nutrition” in Los Angeles, “Democracy” in Chicago, “Neighborhoods” in Seattle and “Education” in Boston. In New York, the event series closed out with a focus on designing icons for “Transportation.”

Taking its name from “hackathons,” collaborative computer programming sessions, the event coincided with a number of technology-based initiatives aimed at improving the way that transit riders access and interpret information. For example, just the previous week New York City’s MTA introduced its touchscreen pilot program called On the Go!, an iPad-like interface that offers applications and real-time news and weather information for subway riders. This came on the heels of Washington DC’s transit map survey, an effort by the Washington Metropolitan Transportation Authority in conjunction with Greater Greater Washington to obtain rider input on how to best convey information on the metro map during its latest redesign. As metropolitan areas and cities seek new ways to adapt to demographic shifts in language and culture, how that information is visually disseminated and the technology that facilitates this with efficiency and ease have become increasingly important.

Icon Presentations | Photo by Flickr user Josh Clark

The event began with an hour-long introduction by four speakers — Jake Barton, Founder and Principal of Local Projects; Adam Greenfield, Managing Director of Urbanscale; Frank Hebbert, Director of Civic Works at OpenPlans; and Edward Boatman, founder of The Noun Project. This was followed by an all-day, facilitated design workshop, where attendees worked in groups to design transportation-related symbols for cities.

Jake Barton discussed the work of his firm, Local Projects, to demonstrate how media can be embedded in physical spaces. He used the official NYC Information Center as an example of how tourists can create custom guides to the city using touchscreen technology and then email, print or access the information on their cell phones to use on the go. Barton showed how technology can both create localized experiences and be a revenue-generating engine for the city. Defining his work as “interaction design,” he explained how Local Projects is translating advocacy into a visual language and focusing on the everyday user experience — that is, “designing for civic action and for the public, not just for public spaces.”

Adam Greenfield also touched upon this issue of localization, but he approached it from the framework of mobility, specifically transmobility, which he defined as “personal mobility in (and for) the networked city.” Citing Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city, he spoke of the role that technology can play in creating equality of movement, where digitized interactive spaces provide people with agency in the public realm. Greenfield was the first speaker to touch upon the fact that not all symbols or civic concepts are universally translatable, but vary across cultures and demographics. He gave the example of the off-bus fare collection system on the BRT in Curitiba, Brazil, implemented to speed up boarding. A similar program is being piloted in New York City on its Select Bus Service. The system used in Brazil could not be copied in its entirety; it had to be tweaked and readapted to the behavior of New York City riders. He also discussed bike sharing, a trendy topic among urban planners in New York and elsewhere, to explain the importance of interactive technology in creating a system of “on demand, intermodal, point-to-point mobility with beautiful seams.” He argued that transitions between modes, such as from bike to rail to bus, can never be completely seamless because there are unavoidable moments of transition. But as designers we should strive for “beautiful seams,” transitions that are fluid and easy to make between modes. He articulated a larger ambition of the day’s session: to create the visual language that will enable people to get to jobs, places of work, and to explore the city.

Frank Hebbert walked us through some of the examples of crowdsourcing technology that OpenPlans has been involved with, such as the OpenTripPlanner used by the NYC Department of City Planning. Using a web platform created by OpenPlans, city residents can suggest bike share stations or determine the location of the B63 bus in Brooklyn through its real-time tracker. A question that emerged out of his examples is whether or not there is a “right” way to communicate information on a map in such a way that it can be easily interpreted by a large cross-section of people.

Icons from The Noun Project

Edward Boatman elaborated on this idea by homing in on how to most effectively communicate civic messages through symbol designs. His interactive presentation, in which he asked the audience to vote on various design options and select the ones that best conveyed a specific idea, was a particularly compelling way to illustrate some of the challenges that designers face. Setting the stage for the interactive group breakout sessions that followed, he explained that there are two ways to convey a message — through an iconic symbol, in which an object is illustrated, or a narrative symbol, in which more visually complex information is presented, such as the idea of time — and provided examples of each type. It was a successful segue into a discussion of the role that culture and demographics play in understanding civic references.

The issues raised during the workshop — the intersection of technology, connectivity, visual language and user experience — are complex and constantly evolving. Thus, understandably, the discussion raised more questions than it answered, but nonetheless provided critical fodder for discussion and debate for the design session that followed. Is there a universal global language of transport? In what ways are these technologies and visual languages scalable? How can we translate this on a broader scale to improve user experience and minimize disjointedness in transitions between systems? The Noun Project plans to release the symbols created through the Iconathons — you can browse through a series of sketches that create a graphic shorthand for everything from bridges to bus stops to bike share stations here — into the public domain later this fall.

Icons in process | Photo by Flickr user Josh Clark

Manasvi Menon lives in New York City and works in transportation. She is on the board of Young Professionals in Transportation-New York, New York chapter.

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.

New York Next panel (L to R): Guy Nordenson, Rob Rogers, Betty Chen, Richard Olcott and Claire Weisz

Last week, a group of leading New York City designers met to discuss the future of New York City at New York Next: The Future City, hosted by the Architectural League and Architectural Record. The panel consisted of Betty Chen, currently a member of the New York City Planning Commission, formerly the Vice-President for Planning, Design and Preservation for the Trust for Governors Island; Guy Nordenson, of Guy Nordenson and Associates Structural Engineers and Commissioner and Secretary of the New York City Public Design Commission; Richard Olcott, founding partner and design principal at Ennead Architects and former member of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission from 1996 to 2007; Rob Rogers, principal of Rogers Marvel Architects, a firm whose portfolio includes streetscape design for Manhattan’s financial district, and flood mitigation strategies and street furniture for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority; and Claire Weisz, founding partner of WXY Architecture + Urban Design and adjunct professor of planning at the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service at NYU.

The conversation was organized without a moderator, allowing the panelists to pose questions to one another. Their discussion revolved around questions of the physical city — In what kind of city do we want to live? Who decides what kind of city ours will become? — as well as questions of pacing, framed by their own experience with major redevelopment projects across the city over the last decade. The panel set out to define what constitutes the public realm, as well as the responsibilities of both public and private entities to that public realm.

Guy Nordenson opened up the discussion with the question, “Is privatization a good thing? Or should the public sector take over?” Nordenson situated himself as undecided. He referred to a recent New York Times article that claimed that the government pays more when using private contractors they they do when using government workers, but also noted examples of particularly successful public/private partnerships around the city, such as the Central Park Conservancy. Other answers varied: Richard Olcott cited issues of capital, and the private sector’s ability to raise funds where the public sector can’t. Rob Rogers, speaking specifically about New York City, claimed that the major boon of the last decade of building in New York City was the high skill level of public sector staffs: a high quality client begets a high quality project. Claire Weisz added that New York is the right kind of city, with not just an educated city government, but an educated and involved populace. Ultimately, we hope for a well educated, well meaning, capable government, but we have to be prepared to make design decisions without one.

Betty Chen’s questions — “Is there a way for architects and engineers to play more of a role in setting the public agenda? Are there other opportunities not generated by the traditional client model?” — led the discussion to one of timing and environment. According to Guy Nordenson, new public design ideas need to have a public sector champion to become institutionalized. The consensus of the panel was that the major success of the Bloomberg administration has been its ability to institute long term, visionary planning and policies and to institutionalize progressive ideas about what kind of city New York should be in the future.

Rob Rogers and Richard Olcott asked questions regarding the widespread attention on the public realm that has been generated by the World Trade Center site, whether that has led to a more interested and more involved public and, in a more disciplinary light, how it has changed how architects work. Betty Chen answered with a fear of complacency: New Yorkers are excited about their city, but does that excitement lead to satisfaction with the status quo, and thus a lack of urgency to push the city forward? According to Chen, designers have the training and the imagination, and therefore the responsibility, to look at the urban fabric and show the rest of the city its potential.

A surprising moment of consensus on the future of the city came when the question was asked, “What is the most urgent civic design issue facing New York today?” Across the panel, there was a call for further activation of the city’s waterways, specifically through reinvestment in a ferry network, to engage our “sixth borough” and alleviate our traffic problems.

The panel opened up for questions from the audience. League Executive Director Rosalie Genevro stayed on the topic of city transit by asking about what can be done to resolve the conflicts and frustrations that arise from, as an example, the city’s subways being controlled by a State agency. A State agency is less capable of responding to the needs of the primary users, less able to act nimbly. The question harkened back to Guy Nordenson’s first question, in that it asks how large an active government agency can be before it is no longer able to be responsive to it’s citizenry. Rob Rogers suggested that the need to wrest back control and funding extends beyond the MTA, using education as another prime example. Richard Olcott pointed to the mayors of Los Angeles, Newark and San Francisco as examples of how to think regionally, without looking to their States for help, and suggested that approach as a model for New York City in disentangling itself from the State as much as possible. Claire Weisz seconded the need for regional thinking, citing the US Northwest as leading the way, but also acknowledged that some of the State/City divide is an issue of timing and balance: there was a time when the city was less capable, Battery Park City needed the State to step in, and there are still circumstances in which it makes sense for the State to take control. It is more about how to work within those constraints tactically, using state or federal capabilities when necessary.

There was, all around the table, a real sense of apprehension about what could come out of the next administration. When the Bloomberg administration leaves, who will take over? What kind of city will they want New York City to be? And will they be capable of, or even interested in, instituting the kind of long ranging, forward thinking policies that the Bloomberg administration promoted? We’ll have to wait and see. But the panelists agreed, regardless of what’s next, we have to be willing to challenge and reimagine the status quo, drive the conversation and demand quality planning and design in dialogue about our public realm.

Jessica Cronstein is a designer and writer interested in the point at which the social, cultural and physical growth of a city intersect. She has just completed her M.Arch at Rice University and lives in New York City.