Current conditions on the Queensway | Photo: Neil Sullivan via Old NYC

WILL QUEENS GET ITS OWN HIGH LINE?
The High Line is in many ways unique, but it’s by no means the only disused urban rail line in New York in need of repurposing. In Queens, the 3.5 mile leg of the Rockaway Beach Branch rail line, out of service since 1962, runs from Rego Park to the Ozone Park Trailhead, over auto-body shops, through Forest Park and a number of residential neighborhoods. While the current proposals reference the success of the High Line, they differ in intended audience and scope. Friends of the Queensway, the group leading the effort to create a new public space, is prioritizing providing amenities for the surrounding community — such as much-need bicycle infrastructure and community garden space — rather than primarily serving as a tourist attraction. Read more coverage on Treehugger.

The George Washington Bridge in Heavy Smog. View toward the New Jersey Side of the Hudson River | From the Documerica collection.

WHAT AMERICA LOOKED LIKE BEFORE THE EPA
In the 1970s, one of the early acts of the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), was a documentary effort called Documerica, for which EPA photographers travelled the country to capture the state of the nation in ecological terms. Forty years later, the National Archives has released 15,000 of the 80,000 photographs the project produced, many of which portray the harsh reality of our national landscape prior to an overhaul in environmental regulation. Be sure to explore these powerful photographs on the National Archive Flickr database and check out more about the collection on Grist.

MetroChange

METROCHANGE
When there’s not enough money left on your MetroCard for a trip, do you toss it? Apparently, lost or discarded MetroCards account for millions of dollars in wasted funds. So, NYU students Stepan Boltalin, Genevieve Hoffman and Paul May have collaborated to create a charity donation platform, called “MetroChange,” intended to turn these losses into gains for the city’s neediest families. The project calls for MetroChange kiosks to be installed in the subway, where commuters can swipe their cards (and recycle them) to donate the remainder of the value left of the car to charity. Read more about this project on the MetroChange blog.

RETHINKING AMERICA’S PARKING CULTURE
For those commuters who don’t use a MetroCard to get around this city, the availability, price and logistics of parking your vehicle often determine driver behavior. In most of the rest of the country, however, parking is abundant and takes up uncalculated amounts of land. Eran Ben-Joseph explores the problems and possibilities of parking in Rethinking a Lot, a new book published by MIT Press, that advocates for a transformation of parking lots into appealing, environmentally sound and better integrated features of our built environment. Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, explores Ben-Joseph’s argument that parking lots need to be taken seriously by designers and urbanists. Accompanying the article is a fascinating slideshow that encourages a reconsideration of this ubiquitous form that has, until recently, somehow eluded critical investigation by scholars of architecture, urbanism and the American landscape.

NYC HOUSING AUTHORITY TO CONSIDER SELLING AIR RIGHTS, RAISING RENT CAP
On Monday, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) released its five year plan, in which it announced the selling of air rights — the space that can be developed above buildings — as one potential strategy to redress its budget deficit. According to WNYC, NYCHA has also proposed raising the current $2000 rent cap and requiring all households to pay 30% of their income in rent.

BUS TIME
BusTime, the real-time bus tracking website, is now available for all of Staten Island. By allowing users to view exactly how far their bus is from their chosen stop, the real-time bus information “means more time at home with your family, relaxing with a cup of coffee,” according to MTA chairman Joe Lhota. Riders can access the information online, on a mobile phone (simply text a bust stop code to 511123), or — starting this spring — by scanning a QR code at the bus stop. Previously the MTA was having trouble reliably tracking buses through the tall buildings in Manhattan, but Bus Time’s opening up to all of Staten Island bodes well for the other four boroughs, all of which should have complete Bus Time service by 2013 . Read more on StreetsBlog.

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

Manhattan Flood Zones Under 4-Foot Sea Level Rise | LDEO & Civil Engineering, Columbia University | via transportationnation.org

FLOODED SUBWAYS
When Hurricane Irene was headed towards New York City, the MTA made the bold choice to shut down the entire subway system, anticipating widespread flooding of the tunnels which could cause significant damage to transit infrastructure. Though our subways escaped harm this time, the flood threat looks to be a harbinger of a future norm — unless we make some changes now. Last week, Columbia, CUNY and Cornell released Responding to Climate Change in New York State, a report commissioned by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The document is the result of three years of study into the potential local impact of sea level rise, temperature fluctuation and precipitation increases on infrastructure, economy and public health. The report offers adaptation and preparation recommendations for policymakers, managers and researchers. (Read more in The New York Times.)

Meanwhile, Andrea Bernstein at Transportation Nation points us to Flooded Bus Barns and Buckled Rails, an August 2011 Federal Transit Administration (FTA) report addressing climate change adaptation needs specifically in the realm of public transportation. Bernstein talks with Columbia professor and transit and climate change expert Klaus Jacob, who has worked with the MTA to model some worrisome future scenarios, and MTA Climate Adaption Specialist Projjal Dutta, who is working to implement preventative strategies. Of course, the MTA’s financial woes are well known, and these are costly measures — but Irene’s threat demonstrated that the possible impacts of climate change are closer at hand than we like to believe, and if you think mitigation strategies are expensive, imagine what would happen if we do nothing. According to Jacob, recovering from a full flooding of the subway system could take as long as 29 days, a timespan that would affect economic activity in the city to the tune of $4 billion a day.

photo via civiccenter.cc

BEFORE I DIE I WANT TO…
Candy Chang, public installation artist, designer, planner, TED Fellow, Omnibus contributor and part of the team that designed urbanomnibus.net and our 50 Ideas for the New City posters, has taken her project Before I Die to cities around the world. The project presents a huge chalkboard, painted on a neglected or underutilized wall, repeatedly stenciled with the sentence “Before I die I want to _____”, entreating passersby to fill in the blanks. Chang’s intention is to help people remember what is important to them and, in some small way, to acquaint people with their too-anonymous neighbors. Over the past few weeks, the corner of Adams St. and Fulton Street Mall in Downtown Brooklyn has joined the ranks of New Orleans, Amsterdam, Querétaro, Lisbon, San Diego, Almaty, Ponta Delgada, Portsmouth as temporary home to Before I Die. From the looks of these photos from the Civic Center website (the design firm Chang started with James A. Reeves), Downtown Brooklynites aren’t short on hopes and dreams. Go check it out for yourself while you can and add your own aspirations to the jam-packed wall — the installation, on the construction boards of the future Brooklyn Shake Shack, will only be up through next Tuesday, November 29th.

© Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos | via todayspictures.slate.com

BUILDING THE VERRAZANO-NARROWS
For the past couple months, Slate has been presenting an incredible series of photographs from the collection of Magnum Photos. This week, we were treated to a series of the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, a vital piece of transit infrastructure whose lasting impact on Staten Island, New York City and the metropolitan region we explored in the third of our City of Systems videos. These shots document the human side of that story, with poignant portraits of construction workers assembling the “142,000 miles of twisted wire… and 8,000,000 bolts and rivets” that made this engineering marvel possible.

IS ROBERT MOSES FINALLY DEAD?
The Verrazzano pictures don’t just chronicle workers toiling on a massive public works project, but testify to an era when infrastructure investment was a political priority. The bridge was one of the final achievements of Robert Moses, whose legacy has been picked over and argued since his less than ceremonious expulsion from power in 1968. Beyond his reputation as power greedy and insensitive to the needs of neighborhoods, no one disputes that he embodied an era of consistent investment in infrastructure on the part of American governments at all scales. The end of that era, argues Matt Chaban in the Observer, begs serious questions about our current political climate’s failure to produce civic works responsive to contemporary needs. He takes Governors Christie and Cuomo to task for what he perceives as short-sightedness, and he calls out other leaders across the country who have done what Moses once thought impossible: they have pulled up stakes on active projects, prioritizing short-term political gain over jobs creation, regional planning and national competitiveness.

EVENTS and TO DOs

SEED AWARDS: The Social, Economic, Environmental Design (SEED) Network, a group of individuals and organizations dedicated to building and supporting a culture of civic responsibility and engagement in the built environment and the public realm, has announced the second annual SEED Awards for Excellence in Public Interest Design. The awards aim to showcase and promote projects that help create socially, economically and environmentally healthy communities, judged according to SEED metrics. Submit a project for consideration before January 16, 2012. Six winners will receive a $1,000 cash prize and an all-expenses-paid trip to present at the Structures for Inclusion conference in March, an annual event dedicated to highlighting the social and economic impacts of design, and will be included in a documentary series by The UpTake. Deadline: January 16, 2012. Find more info here.

WHERE IS NEW YORK?: Last week, Senator Chuck Schumer and NY State Senator Daniel Squadron announced that $14 million had been secured for the redevelopment of Pier 42 into a public park. On Monday, Columbia University’s Urban Planning Program is hosting a panel discussion addressing questions of the future of Pier 42, the role of community plans in urban development and how to activate civic participation. The panel includes three of the authors of the 2009 community plan A People’s Plan for the East River Waterfront, Jason Cheng (CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities), Anne Frederick (Hester Street Collaborative) and Damaris Reyes (GOLES), moderated by Kaja Kuehl (GSAPP). Monday, November 28, 6:30pm. Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, Columbia University GSAPP. Free and open to the public. Find more info here.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1969 | via nydailynews.com

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
The Omnibus is signing off until Monday. Have a wonderful holiday weekend!

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

In 1982, the MTA launched a multi-billion-dollar capital improvement program to rehabilitate the transit system. During that campaign, in 1985, a program was created to introduce original and integrated artworks into MTA stations and spaces and to promote design excellence as part of the rebuilding effort: Arts for Transit. Today, Arts for Transit oversees a number of programs that bring visual art and performance to the MTA network. They are most well-known for the Permanent Art program, which incorporates commissioned works of art into capital construction or renovation projects throughout NYC Transit, Metro-North Railroad, Long Island Rail Road and NYC Bridges & Tunnels. But their work isn’t limited to the permanent, or even the visual. They showcase the work of photographers in rotating temporary exhibitions, fill unused advertising space with posters by illustrators and other visual artists, and present thousands of musical performances annually at 25 subway and train stations.

Last week, we had a chance to speak with Arts for Transit Director Sandra Bloodworth, an artist herself, who first joined Arts for Transit in 1988 as a manager, before becoming deputy director in 1992 and then director in 1996. While sitting in front of the newly-installed Sol LeWitt in the 59th Street-Columbus Circle station, we talked about the power of art to help turn a failing system around, activate spaces of infrastructure, and improve rider experience and quality of life.

- V.S.

Times Square Mural (2002) © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Times Square–42nd Street Station, A, C, E, N, Q, R, S, 1, 2, 3, 7 lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

Tell us about Arts for Transit and your role there.
I am the director of Arts for Transit and Urban Design at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The role of Arts for Transit is really two-fold. One part is arts — visual and performing, the temporary poster program, the Art Cards, Lightbox, and the larger mission of commissioning permanent art for stations being rehabilitated under a capital program. We have over 230 works of art installed in MTA NYC Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro North, and MTA Bridges and Tunnels’ facilities.

The other hat we wear is that of urban design and promoting design excellence in the agency. We advocate that good design does not have to cost more money. In fact, really excellent design can save you money. The best example of how we work in that role is what happened when the MTA decided to implement vending machines for MetroCard sales. The MTA wanted to make sure riders not only accepted the new system, but saw it as a good option, a better option. In conjunction with NYC Transit, Arts for Transit worked with the designers, Antenna Design, to ensure the machines were user friendly, appealing, and not incongruous with the station environment. The machines were installed in 1999 and they have served us quite well. People like them and use them. And they showed that a government agency can change how it does business in a positive way.

Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Clock (1992) © R. M. Fischer, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, MTA Bridges and Tunnels. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Paul Warchol.

In a way, the same thing is true with the art installations, though that’s a less definable topic. We started introducing art into the subway environment at a time when the system was on the brink of collapse, in the mid-1980s. The concept of putting art into that environment was a novel idea.

Around that time, New York City’s Percent for Art legislation was passed, which requires that one percent of the budget of capital projects is allocated for art. Even before that was passed into law, the MTA knew it was pending and used that momentum to advance the idea of dramatically changing the underground environment. Ronay Menschel, an MTA board member at the time, was the one who realized this would need to be managed internally and played a key role in establishing Arts for Transit. Wendy Feuer was hired as the founding director. Arts for Transit immediately engaged with the role of aesthetics within the architecture and industrial design of the MTA, and advanced the idea that if we’re going to spend real money on improving the system, let’s be sure to design it well.

What was the intent in installing quality artwork in the transit system? Did you want to enrich the community experience? Did you want to interrupt the routine commute and make people engage with the space?
It engages the public, yes, but it also sends a huge message that someone truly cares about this space and, accordingly, about the riders. People see the MTA as this big, anonymous agency. They might recognize some of the leadership from the press, but they don’t often think about the people that are behind the scenes, the architects, the engineers, the Arts for Transit folks, the designers, the rapid transit guys, all of these people that get up every day to make this all happen, or, in the mid-‘80s and ‘90s, were driven to turn this place around. Introducing quality art tells the public that there are all these people invested in the space.

Blooming (1996) © Elizabeth Murray, Lexington Avenue–59th Street Station, 4, 5, 6, F, N, R lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

These are works by the same artists you see in museums — Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Elizabeth Murray — but now you can see them on your way to the museums. Elizabeth was one of the first major recognized artists that did a project with us. She waived her fee and gave the public a phenomenal project at 59th Street and Lexington Avenue. When developing the collection, if you will, we don’t only look to the art world. We also look to who is riding the trains and using these spaces — and those worlds very often overlap. The real challenge is to select works that speak to the ridership, that have a relevance to the place where they are installed. And I mean that in a more conceptual way, I’m not talking about only pictoral images referencing the site, like Heins & LaFarge’s depictions of Columbus’ caravel over on the Columbus Circle IRT platform — it’s a myth, by the way, that the caravels were meant to provide station information to people who couldn’t read the name tablet. They were purely ornamental.

We’re sitting in front of the perfect example of how the art can be about the people and the place, Sol LeWitt’s “Whirls and twirls (MTA)” at 59th Street-Columbus Circle. LeWitt captured the movement of the subway, the flow of people through the station. When you look at this artwork, you feel the motion around you, the energy — and the riders get it, it’s intuitive, we don’t have to explain it.

We’ve always felt that it’s not our role to be a gallery. We are creating work that becomes a daily part of people’s lives, as they travel their same route every day — or, when they take a different route, we want them to be excited about seeing something new.

Whirls and twirls (MTA) (2009) © Sol LeWitt, 59th Street-Columbus Circle Station, A, B, C, D, 1 lines, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

How do you identify the artists you want to work with? The commissions range from the renowned, like LeWitt, to the lesser known. What’s the selection process?
At 59th Street-Columbus Circle, we had the opportunity to invite Sol LeWitt to create one of his wall drawings for this station. However, the vast majority of our projects are the result of an extensive selection process defined by MTA policy, with the understanding that we’re procuring artwork.

Every time we do a project we invite artists to submit through an open call on our website. Now, because everything is digital, we keep a bank of entries and review all artists for every project, though we ask artists to notify us if they are particularly interested in any specific commission.

We then have two meetings with a selection panel, which changes each time and is comprised of arts and cultural professionals and community advisors. In conjunction with our government and community relations staff, we work closely with the local community boards, to help us understand what the community wants, and to help us communicate how our work relates to them.

We narrow down the field of artists to about four finalists, who then come in for an orientation on the project. We ground them in the space, the architects provide an overview of the design of the station, and we visit the site. Then, they come back to us with a formal proposal. The voting panel selects the proposed artwork they think is right for that location, work that speaks to the community and is of the highest quality.

The process has served us well. We have an amazing collection from a diverse group of artists, both emerging and established.

Given the quality of the artwork, which you talk about as a true collection, what is your approach to maintenance or conservation, especially considering the pieces are installed in highly-trafficked sites that are difficult to keep clean?
We have always known that there would be limited resources to maintain this collection. So we have been rigid in what we allow to be installed into the system, with some exceptions to allow us to reach beyond what we know. Mosaics, ceramics, glass mosaics, those are durable materials. We’ve seen examples where pieces have lasted for over 100 years. So that was a logical direction to take. Many of our works, certainly our underground works, are ceramics or mosaics.

We also work closely with our Stations Department on how they maintain the pieces, and if there’s ever any question, they call us and we work as a consultant. Arts for Transit maintains and repairs things that we can do ourselves. Beyond that, we just want to make sure that we’re keeping our eyes on everything we’ve installed. Staff members are responsible for visiting a portion of the collection bi-annually to do condition reports. We want to be sure that the art is always in the best shape it can be.

You mentioned that you make some exceptions in the type of work you commission, to learn new things and experiment with different materials and media. What are some examples of that? I know that Leo Villareal will be installing his LED light sculpture “Hive” in the renovated Bleecker Street station…
Leo’s piece is a very good example of the kind of exception I was talking about. We worked with our Chief Electrical Engineer Stan Karoly to make sure that the work is durable and can be maintained routinely. The engineers were very excited about his piece, because it really celebrates their field. So yes, we are trying it out as a pilot, to see what our limits are. We probably can’t have twenty projects like Leo’s, but we can have one!

Union Square in Motion (2011) © Anezka Sebek and Joshua Spodek, with Jeanne Kelly, Hilal Koyuncu, Rose Maison, Umut Ozover, Josefina Santos, and Jaqi Vigil. Lightbox project commissioned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Rob Wilson.

Tell me about some of the temporary projects that fall under the purview of Arts for Transit.
We have a few special projects. For example, we just installed a zoetrope underneath Union Square that was designed by a group of Parsons students. In some ways it is a pilot for us to activate unused advertising space and illustrate how dynamic it can be, and to experiment with new media.

We also have a number of temporary projects that we do on a more routine basis. We have our Transit Poster program and our Art Cards that you see in the trains, which are often created by illustrators and graphic designers. Then we have our Lightbox photography project, which showcases the work of photographers that either relates to transportation, the system or to the local community. Those are on view on the lower level of Grand Central, at the 42nd Street and 6th Avenue station, at Atlantic/Pacific and Bowling Green.

Traveling Dinosaur Chicks (2010) © Takayo Noda. Art Card commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit.

How do you view the interface between the Arts for Transit works and station advertising? Especially as some ads, through technology or design, hover in a more ambiguous creative space — I’m thinking of things like the new 60-foot digital video wall on the other side of this station, currently being used by an Asics ad, or the large MoMA poster installation in the Atlantic/Pacific subway station in 2009.
Yes, advertising is blurring the lines. Those are both 100% advertising campaigns. Some of it is very exciting, but it can be a double-edged sword. We hope that we can capture some of that technology and energy and bring more interactive, video-based works to the public on a limited basis. And it’s no secret that the MTA needs to capture every dollar in order to provide the best service we can. And if any institution has the budget, the funds, to do a campaign, then we support the MTA capturing those dollars.

Also, the visual interface is more than just the advertising and the art. The MTA’s signage is so present in the world’s perception of New York City. If you ask people to visualize words of New York, they’re probably going to see them in Helvetica. We’re an icon of New York now, and it’s important that we keep that in mind when we think about how people interact with these spaces.

Music Under New York performance at 42nd Street-Grand Central

Tell me about the Arts for Transit music program Music Under New York.
There are a lot of myths about Music Under New York. We are not giving licenses or permits to people to play in the subway. Any musician — anyone, really — can go into a subway station and play music or do what they want, as long as they respect the rules of conduct. We are presenting a roster of musicians daily, over 7,000 performances annually, in 25 locations throughout our system, which we identified with our station personnel to make sure we don’t interfere with transit needs. We simply want to present quality music on a regular basis.

We hold auditions every May in Grand Central, and we hold a roster of about 100 acts at any given time. Once you’re in the program, you’re in. For many different reasons musicians move on, so every year we lose about 25 and add about 25.

What are some of the other projects in the works?
We have a number of projects coming up on the Pelham line in the Bronx, and in the Rockaways, either just installed or in the middle of installation. Jason Rohlf will be installing a piece at the Mott Avenue A station. Barbara Grygutis recently did the Whitlock Avenue 6 stop in the Bronx, which received an honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society’s MASterworks this year — it’s a remarkable project. Barbara designed sculptural furniture that exists within the windscreen. And, of course, the mega-projects: Jean Shin and Sarah Sze are both doing projects in stations along the new 2nd Avenue line, and Xenobia Bailey is doing a piece for the new 7 station at 34th Street. And James Carpenter collaborated with Grimshaw Architects to create a cable net to bring light into the Fulton Transit Center.

Bronx River View (2010) © Barbara Grygutis, Whitlock Avenue Station, 6 line, MTA New York City Transit. Commissioned and owned by Metropolitan Transportation Authority Arts for Transit. Photo: Peter Peirce.

You are an artist yourself and you’ve worked with Arts for Transit for 23 years now. How do you define public art? What does it mean to you?
I started working, and still work, in public art because of the engagement between the built environment and the people who are in that environment — myself included. I’m an artist, so I was engaged with this environment before I worked for the MTA, but I felt it would be an incredible opportunity to be part of a team that affects the way your space looks.

People love to beat up on the MTA. But I’m still amazed to be part of an organization that has accomplished this type of change in the public environment. I believe public art changes the quality of life for everyone that walks through here. Maybe they are not aware of how or why, but ultimately it makes people feel good that someone makes this space a place where they might want to be.

And I think it has changed the perception of the New York subway. Plenty of people who ride the subway now don’t remember it when it was in really bad shape. But I remember when it was a sign of hope that if you could turn around the subway, you could change what was happening aboveground too. I believe that those went hand in hand. A lot of credit is given to a lot of different things for how New York turned around. But I believe there was no way it would have happened without the changes underground.

Sandra Bloodworth is the director of Arts for Transit and Urban Design at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. As director, she is responsible for the Arts for Transit programs, whose mission it is to commission public art that enhances the transportation environment. In addition to the Arts for Transit award-winning permanent art program, she is responsible for Music Under New York, the Transit Poster program and the Lightbox Project. She represents the MTA on station aesthetics and urban design issues, with a focus on promoting design excellence. She joined Arts for Transit in 1988 as a manager and became deputy director in 1992 and director in 1996. She is the co-author of Along the Way: MTA Arts for Transit. Her previous experience includes working as a development associate for the Studio in a School Association. Sandra has taught Visual Art and Urban Design in the Department of Art and Arts Professions graduate program at New York University and studio classes in the fine arts departments at Florida State University and the University of Mississippi. Bloodworth is an artist and holds a B.S. from Mississippi College, an M.A. from the University of Mississippi and an M.F.A. from Florida State University. Bloodworth received the Fund for the City of New York’s 2005 Sloan Public Service Award in recognition of her work in the field of public art.

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.

Rendering by MIR and Snohetta, courtesy of NYC DOT

TIMES SQUARE PLAZAS MADE PERMANENT
On Tuesday, September 27, Manhattan’s Community Board 5 met with Craig Dykers of Snøhetta to review their plans for the Times Square pedestrian plazas of the not-so-distant future. No more lawn chairs, no more paint as marker for where the car space ends. The plan calls for a leveling of the streets and curbs, to create a continuous pedestrian surface of dark concrete. Inlaid into the pavers will be steel rivets to reflect the bright lights of the big city. Benches and street furniture will provide seating as well as space demarcation to aid pedestrian flow, making the plazas useful as lounge spaces and as thoroughfares. The intent, according to Dykers, is to make the space seem larger and less cluttered. NYC’s Department of Design and Construction hopes to get started next fall with a completion date of 2014. Check out more of the coverage from DNAinfo and the A|N Blog.

WEEKENDS WITH VIGNELLI
The Vignelli map is back. In 1972, graphic designer Massimo Vignelli created a subway map for New York City that was a favorite of designers but, because it eschewed geographic faithfulness for legibility, was deemed too geographically inaccurate by some. With the release of the MTA’s new Weekender website, the MTA has brought the Vignelli map back into use. The Weekender is a website devoted to helping people plan their weekend subway trips with ease despite service changes. The site features a trip planner, so that the MTA can “do the navigating for you – around any service change”, tabs to look up service by station, line or borough, and visual navigation through an interactive version of the iconic map.

fasttrash.org

FASTTRASH.ORG
Fast Trash is now a website! Last year we spoke with architecture, writer and curator Juliette Spertus about the exhibition of Fast Trash, an exploration of Roosevelt Island’s pneumatic trash collection system and her ongoing project to expose and document complex infrastructural systems. Now the exhibition has become a website that gives readers access to Spertus’ research and documentation of the exhibition and provides a space for discussion of larger questions of how we can radically rethink how garbage is moved through our city. Check it out at fasttrash.org.

EVENTS and TO DOs

VELONOTTE NYC
How do you “turn cities into nocturnal open air museums experienced on a bike”? Velonotte! On Saturday, October 1, the Storefront for Art and Architecture will host the kickoff of VELONIGHT NYC. In the early hours of Sunday, October 2, from midnight until 5:30am, a bicycle tour of the urban and cultural history of New York City will take cyclists to 20 planned stops throughout the city. An audio guide led by architects, architectural historians and cultural historians will be broadcast live over a proprietary radio frequency straight into participants’ headphones. Contributors to the tour include Jean Louis Cohen, Peter Eisenman, Ken Jackson, Rem Koolhas and Guy Nordenson, among others. Read more about the kickoff event here, and more about the tour here.

The Archtober Calendar

ARCHTOBER
What day is it tomorrow? Why, it’s Archtober 1st. New York’s Architecture and Design Month — Archtober — is a month-long festival of architectural design activities, programs and exhibitions that kicks off tomorrow. The initiative was spearheaded by the AIA NY Chapter, openhousenewyork and the Architecture & Design Film Festival, and plenty of cultural institutions from across the city are participating, including us here at the Architectural League and familiar faces like the BMW Guggenheim Lab, the Design Trust for Public Space, Friends of the High Line, the Institute for Urban Design, MoMA, Storefront, Van Alen and many more. Find out more about the dozens and dozens of events taking place over the next 31 days here and start planning your month around celebrating all things architecture and design.

Freshkills Park+ in action

FRESHKILLS PARK+
This Sunday, October 2, from 11am to 4pm, Freshkills Park will be open for the second annual Sneak Peak, complete with kayak tours, walking tours, biking, kite flying and making, a craft market, live music, public art, games and food trucks. This year’s event also marks the release of Freshkills Park+, a new augmented reality application. Because of the landfill infrastructure that lies beneath the park, signage can’t be installed. The Freshkills Park+ app allows visitors to learn more about projects under construction, nearby activities or surrounding natural environments and serves as a wayfinding tool throughout the 2,200-acre site.  Read more about the app here, the event here or check out photos of last year’s event here.

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Delancey Underground | image via nymag.com

LES LOW LINE
The Lower East Side might be getting a new park. The proposed project, the Delancey Underground, would repurpose the the abandoned underground Williamsburg Bridge Railway Terminal in an effort to inject some green space into one of the least green neighborhoods in the city and to join the ranks of the High Line in reimagining disused infrastructure. The subterranean wonderland lit by “remote skylights” would provide a green space “nearly the size of Gramercy Park” at the base of the bridge. The project, conceived by architect James Ramsey, PopTech executive Dan Barasch and money manager R. Boykin Curry IV, was presented to Community Board 3 on Wednesday evening. According to DNAInfo, the presentation “wowed” the packed audience. According to Curbed, skepticism abounded, despite the seductive renderings, about keeping the park safe and well lit, how it would be funded, or how the space would be programmed to best serve the community. Check out more renderings on Architizer and read more in New York Magazine.

On the Go Travel Station | image via popsci.com

TOUCHSCREEN TRAVEL
The MTA has a new magic map trip planner, the first of what they are calling their On-the-Go Travel Stations, now installed at the Bowling Green subway station in Manhattan. The Station is a 47-inch touchscreen that allows riders to access up-to-the-minute service announcements, plan trips and navigate the subway map. The upper portion of the screen is devoted to subway information, with clearly identifiable buttons for Service Status, Elevators, MTA Maps and Key Destinations. Service alerts scroll under the interactive portion, while the lower third of the screen is devoted to advertisements. For more coverage, including a video of the Bowling Green Travel Station, check out Popular Science.

TOOLS AT SCHOOLS
Engaging in a design process taps creativity, communication skills and general understanding of how things work. So why isn’t it introduced to students earlier in their education? That question is the basis for Tools at Schools, a partnership between design firm Aruliden and furniture manufacturer Bernhardt Design. The program asked 44 eighth graders from The School at Columbia University how they would redesign the basic components of classroom furniture: the chair, the desk and the locker. The students went through the entire design process: researching existing products, identifying what they saw as lacking, sketching and modeling their ideas and presenting them to representatives from Bernhardt and Aruliden. The designers took ideas from each team and turned them around into 3D models. From there, the students were invited to the furniture factory in South Carolina to see how designs become realities. The final products were presented at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair earlier this month and an exhibit of the furniture will open at the Museum of Arts and Design on October 6th. Read more of the coverage at Smart Planet.

Solar village, Solar Decathlon 2011 | Photo by Stefano Paltera/U.S. Department of Energy

SOLAR DECATHLON HITS DC
The 2011 Solar Decathlon has hit DC! After designing and building their prototypes on home turf, the nineteen teams began final construction of the houses in West Potomac Park on the 14th. Starting today, the houses are open to the public and judging has already begun. Only a few hours in, Team Maryland is in the lead, though Team New York (one of three New York/New Jersey-area teams participating in the event) has taken an early lead in the People’s Choice category. The houses will be on view through October 2nd. Keep tabs on scores and standings here and, for readers in the DC area, find more information about visiting the installation on the Solar Decathlon website.

EVENTS AND TO-DOs

PROJECT NEON: THE SHOW! In February, Kirsten Hively told us about her ongoing effort to document and celebrate the neon signage of New York City. Now, complete with a fetching new neon sign of its own, Project Neon has been turned into an exhibition, opening tonight, September 23 from 7-10pm, at Brooklyn’s City Reliquary. The show features several dozen of Hively’s photographs and marks the release of her new, free Project Neon iPhone app. For more on Project Neon, revisit our feature about the project, check out the website, or see a preview of the exhibit at the Times’ City Room.

DUMBO ARTS: The annual DUMBO Arts Festival starts tonight! Rain or shine, head towards the Brooklyn waterfront to check out three days of events with over 500 artists. Visit artists’ studios, watch performances by musicians, dancers, poets and circus artists throughout the neighborhood, commune with instrument makers in workshops, listen to tech gurus talk about the latest advances and join walking tours to hear little-known stories of the neighborhood. The festival runs from tonight, Friday, September 23, through Sunday, September 25. Check out the full schedule of events here.

LIVING AS FORM: Also opening tonight is Creative Time’s new project Living as Form, which explores the intersection of socially engaged visual art, architecture, urban design, theater and activism, just to name a few disciplines. Bringing together 25 curators, taking place both in Essex Street Market building and the surrounding neighborhood, the project will feature over 100 socially engaged projects from around the world. An exhibition and related programming will be presented through October 12, all of which will lead up to a book, scheduled for publication in January 2012. Check out the schedule of events, as well as more about Living as Form here.

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Suggest a Bike Share Station | via nycitybikeshare.com

SHARING IS CARING
New York City is joining the bike share club! Learning from the mistakes of other pilot programs across the country, NYC Bike Share will open big with 600 stations and 10,000 bikes. The city has chosen Alta Bike Share, of the successful Capital Bike Share program in Washington D.C. and the New Balance Hubway program in Boston, to run the program. Annual membership will cost “less than one monthly MetroCard” and will stretch from the Upper West and East sides down and into Brooklyn, according to an op-ed Janette Sadik-Khan wrote for The Daily News. Best of all, the Department of Transportation has launched a website on which New Yorkers can request docking stations at specific locations — the response has been impressive, with suggested spots already blanketing the city (see screengrab above). Some people are thinking creatively about how to implement these stations (2nd Ave. Sagas suggests activating disused bus stops) and bike share demonstrations will be held throughout the fall (including one in DUMBO tomorrow, Saturday September 17), with plans to launch the network sometime next year. Read more of the coverage at The New York Observer, and, of course, Streetsblog.

LIGHTS OUT NEW YORK
“I don’t know of any architects out there who want to kill birds,” said Brendan Owens, vice president of the Green Building Council, but that’s exactly what’s happening. Everybody loves glass. More specifically, everybody loves having big windows in their offices and homes. But the growing number of glass towers across the city are killing birds. New York City is in the path of the Atlantic flyway and every year 90,000 birds die flying into buildings. Solutions range from angling or curving glass to treating windows with netting, patterning or ultraviolet reflectivity that only birds can sense. Or, you can turn out the lights. Just under 100 buildings, including the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center and the Time Warner Center, to name a few, are taking part in the Audobon Society’s Lights Out New York program. According to the Audobon Society, “In the dark, and especially in foggy or rainy weather when birds fly at lower altitudes, the combination of glass and light becomes deadly.” The buildings will turn out their lights at night during major flyover times to prevent the loss of any more bird lives. Read more coverage in the Times.

Photo by Varick Shute

SUBWAY POWER
Running the subway uses a lot of energy. Stopping trains expends a lot of energy, mostly in the form of heat. What if we could recapture the energy lost by stopping trains and return it to the subway system’s electrical grid? Vycon Energy is putting forth a plan that will ostensibly do just that. By using flywheels, energy will be harvested and returned not only to subway cars, but potentially to the city’s larger power grid. Read more at Fast Company and Inhabitat.

ATLANTIC CITIES
Chances are, if you’re reading this site, you’ll want to check out The Atlantic Cities, a new online project of The Atlantic that’s all about understanding the way we live, work and play in our urban environments. According to the introductory article by site editor Sommer Mathis, the site has four main goals: to offer reported features about the past, present and future of cities; to deliver news reports about current events in cities around the world; to facilitate a big-picture, ideas-based conversation about urbanism; and to tell these stories using a variety of media. Read more of The Atlantic Cities here.

National Design Awards 2010 | Photo by Richard Patterson

MAKE IT WORK
This week Michelle Obama teamed up with Tim Gunn to present the National Design Awards, put on by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. Architecture Design winners Architecture Research Office (ARO) are perhaps best known to Omnibus readers for their work with Guy Nordenson on the 2007-2009 Latrobe Prize Fellowship study On the Water: Palisade Bay, which was one of the motivating forces behind MoMA’s exhibition, Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront. ARO’s project in the exhibition, “A New Urban Ground,” a collaboration with dlandstudio, sought to mitigate the flooding of Lower Manhattan due to rising sea levels by breaking up the edge of the island and reimagining sidewalks as soft infrastructure. Other NDA winners include typeface designer Matthew Carter, who received the Lifetime Achievement award; Seattle-based Gustafson Guthrie Nichol, the recipient of the award for Landscape Architecture; and author, editor and educator Steven Heller, who received the Design Mind award. Read more about the National Design Awards here.

INTERVENTIONISTS TOOKLIT: PART 3
Over on Places, Mimi Zeiger offers the third essay of her fine series “The Interventionists Toolkit.” In this installment, Zeiger ponders the challenges of evaluating the authenticity and effectiveness of certain interventionist tactics, such as urban agriculture projects, mobile food trucks or ephemeral marketplaces, when corporate or institutional interests either generously expand their reach or cynically co-opt their principles (depending on whom you ask). She adapts the architectural methodology of post-occupancy evaluation to grassroots efforts at local or temporary urban improvement, but finds that measuring impacts can be as slippery as identifying the agenda behind any strategy of urban change. Read the full piece here.

EVENTS and TO DOs

URBAN DESIGN WEEK  Earlier this week, Institute for Urban Design Executive Director Anne Guiney told us about the inspiration and intentions behind Urban Design Week, six days of events dedicated to celebrating and increasing understanding of the public realm of New York City, currently underway. The Week kicked off last night with a launch party at the BMW Guggenheim Lab, and between now and September 20th, there are plenty of events to choose from. Today is Park(ing) Day, an annual event that invites urban dwellers to transform auto-focused street space into people-friendly public space. Other social occasions include the launch party for the People Make Parks toolkit, an exhibit opening at Studio-X on urban design mixed media representations, and a street vendor picnic in the Financial District hosted by the Design Trust for Public Space and the Street Vendor Project. Talks include Cities in History, a conference exploring the development of urban identities; a discussion with Chris Ward of the Port Authority on the security and design concerns of the World Trade Center memorial; and the concluding debate for City Sessions on the “practice of tactical urbanism and socially active design.” GOOD will be hosting a presentation on design solutions for quality of life in cities to celebrate their new initiative, GOOD Ideas for Cities. For those interested in getting their hands dirty, check out Drawing the City (exactly what it sounds like); 72 Hour Urban Action, a public workshop in anticipation of an upcoming live-action design-build competition; Architecture for Humanity’s call for ideas on how to redesign the Manhattan Bridge Skatepark; and an illuminated version of the “Insert ____ Here” project created by 350.org and artists Eve Mosher and Paul Notzold. Or tag along on some walking tours: Women and the Brooklyn Bridge highlights contributions women have made and continue to make in shaping the bridge, and our friends at Elastic City will lead participants on a walk that creates musical scores from graphic features of downtown Manhattan. The week wraps up with the New York City premiere of Urbanized, a new documentary film by Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica and Objectified fame). If you’re not exhausted yet, check out the full list of events at urbandesignweek.org.

Reflecting the Stars

REFLECTING THE STARS  Last month, filmmaker Ian Cheney spoke with us about light pollution and the disappearance of the night sky in dense urban environments. This month (and next, as long as the LED lights hold out), take advantage of an opportunity to see the night sky recreated in the Hudson River through “Reflecting the Stars,” a light installation that projects the starscape onto the deteriorating posts of Pier 49. The lights twinkle throughout each night, but visitors can also press buttons to highlight constellations that, without the ambient city lights, would otherwise be visible overhead. This is the first New York City project for Jon Morris of the Windmill Factory, who developed the installation both to raise awareness of the disappearing night sky and to give urban-dwellers a rare opportunity for stargazing in the middle of the city. The installation will be on view through October 25 and, according to the project’s website, special events are in the works in conjunction with Climate Week NYC, which runs from September 19-26. Find out more here.

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PLACE PULSE
When we familiarize ourselves with new surroundings, we often rely on our instincts more than guidebooks or demographic studies. We feel it out, without consciously asking ourselves the questions of whether a neighborhood seems safe, active, clean, unique. Place Pulse, a new tool from the Macro Connections group out of the MIT Media Lab, wants to tap into these urban perceptions through online crowdsourcing. Place Pulse shows photos from cities all over the world and asks users to rate the pictures (without geographical knowledge) based on a uniqueness, safety and class level. The data from the ratings is then geographically coded, creating a database of crowdsourced gut reactions. Read more at Co.Design.

KEY TO THE (AFFORDABLE) CITY
NYCHA and HPD have recently partnered in a search to find a private developer to retrofit the Randolph Houses on West 114th Street into a mix of 140 new public housing units and at least 155 affordable housing units. The properties are yet another entry in the infamously long and ever deteriorating list of “white flight”-era abandoned housing. Built in the 1890s to house the influx of European immigrants, the tenements today are mostly vacant, with only 109 of 452 units currently occupied.  This project will help to reoccupy an “entire block of historical architectural significance,” and help to repair many units that have been subdivided into arrangements that are dangerous and/or illegal. By cross-subsidizing the project with a private developer, the city is able to get more bang for their buck out of the new developments, despite a net reduction in the number of units in the buildings. For more on what makes this deal innovative and perhaps exemplary (the development marks the first time “affordable and public housing units will be intermixed within the same buildings”), read Matt Chaban’s article in The Observer.

LET’S GET CRITICAL
Let’s Get Critical, a new collection of critical writing curated by Alexandra Lange, debuted this week. The premise of what Lange refers to as a “short-form blog” is to create a centralized location where one can always find enjoyable and interesting cultural commentary. Similar to other quality article aggregators, Lange aims to have each featured piece on the new site “well-written, its point of view clear, its language hooky.” For more criticism, check out Lange’s Let’s Get Critical, or revisit our On Criticism series.

CRAINIUM
Crain’s New York, a valuable source for reporting on all things business and industry in New York City, releases an annual report on the city’s economy entitled “CityFacts.” This year, they’re also offering an online resource that allows readers to explore the enormous amount of data they have mined for the issue. CityFacts is devoted to showing, in an attractive and legible way, how New York City is doing financially, educationally, demographically, commercially and transportation-ly. Learn more about this year’s CityFacts from the “This Week in Crain’s” podcast, keep up with Crain’s numbers-based news on their Twitter feed @StatsAndTheCity, or check out the CityFacts mini-site here.

PIN-UP
Everybody knows the red pin that marks locations in Google Maps. It marks the starting point of a trip or an important location. It casts a shadow on the map and, notably, if you just type in the name of a city, it picks a point somewhere within the city that Google Maps has decided is the center of the city, casting that shadow on the surrounding city features. In an effort to show us just how much the digital world is bleeding into the physical, artist Aram Bartholl is installing “life-size” map markers in the Google Maps centers of a handful of cities. Read more at Architizer, or check out an interview with the artist on the Rhizome blog.

IRT RIDES AGAIN
If you are like us, then your favorite part of the MTA Transit Museum is walking through the old trains, looking at the ads, and imagining what life was like in an era when people got to ride on them. In some ways it must have been wonderful (padded seats), in others, less so (no air-conditioning). Well, you’re in luck! The IRT is back! (for the month of September). The team at HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, in an effort to advertise their period piece drama, has retrofitted a 1917 IRT train to run along the 2/3 track in Manhattan from noon to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays starting September 3rd.

EVENTS & TO-DOs:

GEOLOGIC CITY
Last year, Jamie Kruse and Elizabeth Ellsworth gave Omnibus readers a taste of the “Geologic City Field Reports” they’ve been publishing on their blog Friends of the Pleistocene, to get us thinking about how deep geologic time is connected to the built environment of New York. Now, Kruse and Ellsworth are launching Geologic City: A Field Guide to the Geoarchitecture of New York, the result of their research and explorations. Join them along with dynamic urban-systems-and-architecture duo Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG) and Nicola Twilley (Edible Geography, Foodprint Project, Omnibus contributor) next Thursday, September 8, at Studio-X for the launch of the Field Guide and a related exhibition. Find more information here.

Also during the exhibition, sound artist Kevin Allen will be demoing his exploration of what he calls “the secret lives of material objects” with his ongoing project Sonic Geologic, cataloguing the acoustic conductivity of infrastructure such as the Brooklyn Bridge and the subway. Other artists and musicians have already tried their hand at similar “Aeolian harp” phenomena, from Alex Metcalf’s Tree Listening to David Byrne’s Playing the Building. Bridges, a new project from sound engineer Rutger Zuydervelt and designer Gerco Hiddink, asks eight well-known experimental musicians to field recordings or four Dutch bridges. What results is a coherent soundscape; in effect “the bridge becomes an instrument played by the city revealing hidden harmonies within the built environment.” Preview and purchase Bridges here.

BROWN BAG READING SERIES
Part of the Van Alen Institute’s ongoing Brown Bag Reading Series, held every Wednesday at 12:30pm, this week’s talk is on The Power of Pro Bono. John Cary, founder of pioneering nonprofit Public Architecture and a Senior Advisor to Next American City, will discuss the national impact of pro bono work in public-interest design. More info over at VAI.

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