It’s been a week of big projects, big plans, and big ideas.

New York University has announced the NYU 2031 plan, an anticipated 40% growth of the institution in the city over the next 20 years. The university has worked with SMWM, Grimshaw Architects, Toshiko Mori Architect and Olin Partnership to develop what it calls “a strategic framework to guide the University’s growth.” The plans, which address academic, residential and public space, and which NYU President John Sexton says will be strongly community-minded, are broken down into three parts: expansion and development of the core campus, open space improvements, and the establishment of new NYU locations within the city at East River Science Park, in Downtown Brooklyn and on Governors Island. The plans have received a lot of attention and renew the conversation about sustaining competitive institutions in a city so limited in space. Love it or hate it, we’ll all have to wait and see how the big ideas start to play out — the proposals have been framed as the design team’s “recommendations,” and they will continue to review and refine them over the next 25 years. The New York Times reports that Cooper, Robertson & Partners is working on the design of the Downtown Brooklyn site and Polshek Partnership Architects will be tackling the East River Science Park Health Corridor. And all this from the preliminary report — the official strategy will be released on April 14.

Speaking of NYU and planning, NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy this week released the report How Have Recent Rezonings Affected the City’s Ability to Grow?, what they bill as the first comprehensive statistical analysis of the first 76 of the 100 rezonings the City has undertaken since 2003. The New York Times takes a look at some of the findings in more detail, or download the PDF yourself here. (While we’re on the topic of 2003, check out this lovely photo project by designer and photographer Andrew Faris, who shares his photographic wanderings from Spring 2003, when he first arrived in NYC, eager to explore with Polaroid in hand.)

Six acres of Brooklyn Bridge Park opened on this past drizzly Monday, with another 3 1/2 to open later this spring. The long-anticipated project will eventually cover 85 acres, so there is still lots to do, but Metropolis claims that “this first section is any indication, it will be worth the wait.” If the chilly weather doesn’t inspire you to check it out yourself quite yet, Metropolis suggests getting a sense of the new space through a video of the park in progress or by revisiting a 2006 piece by (Omni-friend and collaborator) Andrew Blum about Michael Van Valkenburgh’s design. Or take a look at Curbed NY and Brownstoner, both of whom have photos from the event itself.

You’ve read Carter Craft’s thoughts on the big ideas put forth in MoMA’s upcoming exhibition, Rising Currents. Now you can see them for yourself. The exhibition opened to the public yesterday — though it’s not the first chance the public has had to experience the content. MoMA has been blogging about and has offered workshops and open studios with the teams over the past few months. Now exhibition curator Barry Bergdoll is looking for feedback: What are your thoughts on the exhibition’s emphasis on process?

This week we looked at hard-to-count populations for the 2010 Census. It looks like even the not-so-hard-to-count areas are proving to be more challenging than hoped. New Yorkers are taking their time sending their questionnaires back — some neighborhoods hadn’t yet seen a single response as of Wednesday. Send in those forms! Don’t make us show you the music video again…

If you liked our look back into the archives on Wednesday, you might want to visit the Museum of the City of New York’s new exhibition Cars, Culture and the City, a show that explores how New York City “played an essential role in creating today’s car culture, and [how] the car has helped, in turn, to shape modern New York.” From car showrooms that lined Broadway to the development of infrastructure to early 20th century car manufacturing in our fair city, the relationship between automobile and city offers plenty of food for thought. Then balance the historical reflection with some (unsurprising) statistics about the state of traffic congestion today culled from GPS data collected from city taxis. To put NYC driving in perspective: Between November 2008 and October 2009, “weekday traffic in [Manhattan's business] district moved at an average of 9.5 miles per hour — about the speed of a farmyard chicken at full gallop.” And then find utter beauty in traffic patterns through this gorgeous visualization project by Pedro M. Cruz that maps the routes of 1,534 vehicles over 24 hours in Lisbon (via information aesthetics):

Visualizing Lisbon traffic from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

The aesthetics of Lisbon traffic from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Visualizing traffic jam in Lisbon from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

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

A conversation with Adam Friedman

Click audio player to hear Salazar’s interview with Adam Friedman. Running time: 9:36.
Right click here to download the mp3.

The collapse of the financial markets and their subsequent rescue has brought the need for a “real” economy into sharp relief.  While the financial sector was shedding jobs earlier this year, I sat down with Adam Friedman, then executive director of the New York Industrial Retention Network (NYIRN), to talk about the manufacturing industry in New York City and why it’s important.

“Manufacturing today is overwhelmingly very high end and provides very well-paying jobs.” -Adam FriedmanThroughout the five boroughs New Yorkers are producing high end garment and paper products, building green construction materials, furniture, the kitchen sink, and so on. While much needed infrastructure investments and talk of a Green Economy are getting long overdue attention from Washington, many New York businesses are doing the kind of work the national economy seems to be dreaming about. Steady growth in this corner of the economy goes to show the viability of potential investments nationwide.

These jobs also contribute to the vitality of the city and our neighborhoods. High wages, unionized workplaces, benefits, the high walk-to-work ratio of blue-collar communities – for many people, industry jobs are the only jobs in the city that offer a living wage and decent work. Even so, there are tremendous pressures on manufacturers in the city to leave. High rents and inadequate and outdated zoning laws are squeezing manufacturers out of the city.

Political and private interests are also at work, as always. A recent proposal supported by the Bloomberg administration to eliminate zoning protections in the garment district in Midtown means 4,600 workers are battling for survival. Once upon a time (in the 1950s and 60s), 95% of apparel sold in the United States was made here. Today, that number is down to 5%.  With the Garment district under threat of extinction, we should expect to see that number plummet further. If the proposal goes through, designers will not be able to afford the rents for production in the Fashion Capital.

The work by The New York Industrial Retention Network and Adam Friedman, who has since been appointed Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, are critical voices on how we can make our communities stronger, more innovative, and more resilient. Now more than ever we should bring their work to the forefront.


Nicole Salazar is a Multimedia Producer at the independent TV / Radio news program Democracy Now!. Previously she studied Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University. She lives in Gowanus, Brooklyn.


Image: 3rd Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn. Photo by Nicole Salazar

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.

This week we listened to some new strategies to involve community stakeholders in the design of public spaces, strategies tested in the parks of Manhattan’s Chinatown and the Lower East Side. Meanwhile, across the country in LA’s Chinatown, urban planner James Rojas has assembled an interactive city model from legos, blocks and other bright and shiny plastic building materials that recall many of our earliest childhood experiments with design, urbanism and (not) following instructions. At the public unveiling on August 8th, he invites “the public to play and dream about the future of Chinatown. The economic, social, and built environment of Chinatown is rapidly changing and the model will capture that energy through an interactive public participation process.” Legos sound like WAY more fun than the blue drafting dots still popular at many community visioning sessions.

Closer to home, it was a big week for planning resolutions in which the public input was perhaps less playful, despite the zany legacy of one site in question. We’ve been following the debate about the future of Coney Island for some time. On Wednesday, the City Council voted to approve a 27-acre redevelopment plan. Don’t expect the debate to end anytime soon though, negotiations with Thor Equities are still underway. And let’s not forget about Greenpoint/Williamsburg, Flatbush, DUMBO, and Middle Village/Glendale/Maspeth – rezoning plans passed for all, as did an amendment to the city’s Inclusionary Housing Program.

The debate is also still raging around Atlantic Yards, another controversial development proposal we like to check in on from time to time, although it looks like these days fewer and fewer people are showing up to show off rage or support.

Macro-projects will always inspire macro-anger, so for a dose of macro-optimism in a micro-intervention, check out the party at the Putting Lot tomorrow (reviewed in our forum today).

And we hope to see you Monday night at the Brecht Forum for back-in-the-day movie hour. But if the politics of mass transit don’t tickle your fancy, perhaps you’d prefer to see some feel-good flicks on the politics of money instead? If so, join the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) for Money Movin’, a look at the circulation of capital on scales large and small, from Wall Street trading floors to pawn shops in South Central L.A. They’ll be screening a selection from Andreas Hoessli’s “Wall Street” (2004) and Lisanne Skyler’s “No Loans Today” (1995).

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about. Images courtesy of Fifth Floor Gallery.