As a design professional, I'm used to the concept that communities don't like change. When I read that the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) was presenting an exhibit to examine how urban planning, eminent domain, and real estate development are affecting Brooklyn's communities, I was admittedly hesitant about a topic that…

Friday night I braved the cold to attend the opening reception for “Designing the Myrtle Avenue Pedestrian Plaza – Pop Up Exhibition and Workshop,” sponsored by the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership and the Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn BID. The event brought together neighborhood residents, business owners, committee leaders, and…

There’s a new, bright green poster that will be making an appearance around the city in the near future, encouraging people to take the stairs and ”Burn Calories, not Electricity.” In addition to reducing our carbon footprints, the city is offering us another way to help the environment and to help ourselves…

Tuesday night at Metropolitan Exchange, John McLaughlin, Director of Environmental Services for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection, presented the lecture "Restoring Brooklyn's Pennsylvania and Fountain Landfills" as part of the Freshkills Park Talks lecture series. The landfills – on Jamaica Bay, near JFK – were…

Drinks with performance artists tend to keep you on your toes. You're always wondering if something they say, the way they walk, or the thing they're holding in their left hand might be part of the act: a highly scripted, reactive, and meaningful performance intended for your immediate apprehension and interpretation in…

As the plaintive wail of an ambulance drifted up 2nd Avenue last Friday night, a group of about 30 people at the corner of East 10th Street paused to listen to the siren as it passed by. I had joined a nocturnal urban hunt, an aural field trip through New York City…

Almost 35 million vehicles use the Holland Tunnel each year to pass between New Jersey and Manhattan under the Hudson River. Probably very few of these drivers think twice about the inner workings of the piece of infrastructure that makes their commute not only easier, but possible. Lucky for us, Heather L. Johnson let curiosity…

Two weeks ago I came across Sarah Nelson Wright's compelling statement about Brooklyn Makes published here on Urban Omnibus. A thoughtful text for a contemplative project. I stopped by when she presented the project recently on the streets of North Brooklyn. Wright made three short videos of three different manufacturers in the Williamsburg-Greenpoint…

I was expecting a turnout befitting a rockstar when I showed up at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square a couple weeks ago for an event celebrating the publication of David Byrne’s book, The Bicycle Diaries. The book is an account of the former Talking Head’s three decades worth of cycling…

"Design has become too important to be left to designers," Tim Brown told a packed auditorium at Parsons last Wednesday. Brown, the president and CEO of IDEO, a global design and innovation consultancy based in Palo Alto, advocates applying a problem-solving methodology founded on observation, storytelling, visual thinking, iterative prototyping…