Q&A: Creative use of overpass

Paul from Boston writes:

I currently live in Boston. There is an overpass near Kenmore Square that has always bothered me. I think the fact that the city has attempted to pretty it up with better lighting, trees, and benches has made me notice how awful it is even more than if it was just left alone. It got me thinking about how to make good use of the dead space. I have read some articles about parks under overpasses in Seattle and an entire marketplace underneath a defunct viaduct in Paris. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the subject or if you knew of any articles etc. that explore the possibilities.

I lived for about 4 years in Boston, and I think this is the overpass you're talking about (Bowker or Charlesgate Overpass off of Storrow Drive).


Cars only on the overpass!

Regardless, overpasses are becoming a bigger problem as people find that they are impossible to expand when they cut through a city, and that they suck away so much energy from the city by their presence. Here's a little history of this micro-area before the overpass was built.


Seattle's Freeway Park

The places you're talking about in Seattle and Paris may be different types of infrastructure. Project for Public Spaces worked on Freeway Park, which is the landscape architecture designed park under the freeway that cuts through downtown. Here's PPS's description of the park and with recommendations,
the Seattle Parks and Recreation description, and Lawrence Halprin's Cultural Landscape Foundation on Freeway Park, with some critique of PPS's work. Finally, more photos.


Paris's Promenade Plantee, a BTTN personal favorite

The park you refer to in Paris is the Promenade Plantee, a park built on an old viaduct and abandoned railtracks. Here's the PPS description of it, the park's own web site, and the Boston Globe's own comparison between the Promenade Plantee to the park above the Big Dig.

Light, light

Postings are light of late. Over Memorial Day weekend, a de-cluttering attack hit us and over the three days we expunged our apartment, left a few residual pieces out on the curb and delighted in the gradual disappearance of our castaways. We know that they found a better home and are now more appreciated. Here's a better collection of that ephemera.

I'm also doing a lot of research on the intersection of place, corporate responsibility and civic good. Inserting "place" into this adds an interesting dimension, and seems to reveal a gap. Anyone got anything good to send over, please do.

Choreography of public spaces

Great article about people's movements through public spaces, and how design facilitates or obstructs it (lost in the Arts section of the New York Times).

The one correction in the article I think worth pointing out is that the example of Channel Gardens at Rockefeller Center, with the tall buildings on either side, were not always an asset - they were once a liability for the space. The configuration is a typical one in many smaller cities, with a small downtown filled with large office buildings. People put in a public space with good intent, but success requires more than physical space set aside. In the mid-1970s, there were "undesirables" inhabiting the Channel Gardens and the small retail storefronts in the channel to fail. PPS was commissioned to figure out what types of spikes to put in around the plantings to protect the vegetation. Instead of spikes, PPS advised putting in benches and created a destination at the end of the garden. This is perhaps too simplistic but the benches compelled people to sit, maybe eat lunch, and people walking down Fifth Avenue saw people eating lunch, looked down the Channel Gardens and saw something else at the end, and then would feel the gravitational pull that the article describes.

These elements probably had more to do with the magnetism of the site than the massing on either side of the Channel Gardens, though today, with all these elements, the massing helps instead of hinders.

Bryant Park, a public space commodity

Via Gothamist, the latest commercial makeover of Bryant Park...not too intrusive, actually, compared to other ads.

Which of our great New York public spaces carries the highest commercial premium? (i.e., which ones do corporate marketers like the most?) Bryant Park seems up there. Washington Square is growing. I saw a whole stack of Old Navy flimsy plastic dog bowls at Tomkins Square yesterday (and watched an adorable pitbull tear it to pieces). I think Union Square is definitely up there too. Does Times Square count? What about McCarren Pool?

From Charlotte...

Charlotte: Lots of great steps towards mixed-use development, a deliberate appreciation for public space, especially in the downtown. Yet, it seemed to miss something. The density of the city is really low - just looking at the boundaries and what is planned for future construction, city limits are wide and people are few. Cars -- of course -- are still king.


Arial of Charlotte, from UNCC

I kept asking the hotel for recommendations of interesting neighborhoods to walk around. We New Yorkers have a warped sense of what it means to "walk around" compared to the rest of the country (or vice versa). When we want to walk around, we also mean that there should be something interesting to look at and experience when we're walking. In other cities, it just means that it's easy and pleasant to walk around. On Sunday, we whiled away a few hours at a brewery in the South End, and finally had to ask where everyone was. It was empty - and we thought we were comfortably post-church time. But Mac's Speedshop was hopping by 6 PM Sunday night!

Emily took a couple great photos. And you'll find everything that you really know about the trip (why, what) from Corey.


From Emily's flickr

Other "everyday" places - dressed up

A couple more images have been sent to me for the dressed up "everyday" places, in reference to the bus shelter post. There is an universal appeal to how to turn a dead place around with just a few amenities. We see it all the time in the work, and these small tests do seem to open people's eyes to the possibilities.

If there's more, send it over and I'll start an image gallery as an alternative to Everyday Fabulous.

From Red Wheelbarrow:




Thanks Kevin!

Places to be: Memorial Day wkd edition

Image from 43places

There's not much going on this week....maybe in anticipation of Memorial Day? On Wednesday morning, there is a potentially interesting roundtable at the Rudin Center at NYU called "No Time to Stop, Moving People Through NYC." Sometimes I have a hard time concentrating on things like this first thing in the morning, especially when the sun is shining and having coffee in the park seems more appealing and a nicer way of learning about public spaces. But if you're inclined, go here for all details (scroll down a bit).

Community-based marketing

I've been seeing a few examples of how a corporation has been trying to win over a community. OK, there's the Wal-Mart saga, which took on political activism in an egregious direction for its cause. IKEA's been at it, more in the background, more in Red Hook, but now with a full out "Everyday Fabulous" Campaign. Washington Square Park was overrun by mimes (courtesy of Virgin Mobile) and angels in Bryant Park (courtesy of Kraft Foods Philadelphia Cream Cheese "A little taste of heaven" campaign).


Image by Hubert Steed


From newyorkette

All strike me as terrible and transparent. I suppose that Virgin and Krafts have no physical stake in New York per se, unlike IKEA and Wal-Mart. For all, and given the deep pockets for marketing, is this the best they can do? I noticed quite a few people taking advantage of the photo-op of the mines (and probably of the Angels too, though perhaps people are too jaded in Midtown). People/communities stand to gain nothing with this type of activity. It would be great if they did something different that was more meaningful and long-lasting.

Update on those designed bus shelters

They're actually part of a marketing campaign for IKEA to ease its way into New York City! Here's a link to other "Everyday Fabulous!" images...

Outfitting bus shelters

I always thought this would be a great idea for New Yorkers, especially those who live near a bus shelter. But IKEA has latched on, and now it's just a commercial. (via Curbed)

Originally pioneered in Unst, England, in a more community-based fashion.



Update: Richard Layman writes, "This is about as close to this as we get in DC."

What to do in Charlotte, NC?

I'm heading down to Charlotte, NC this weekend. It will be the first time for me, and I'm woefully ignorant. A cursory look through the city web site and the tourism site left me still unenlightened, though wikipedia was better. Still, I need to ask: anyone have suggestions for not-to-be missed, non-touristy places down there?

NY Press: Land Grab?

Phew, I'm still recovering from the beardies and staches party.

This morning I went to my new favorite coffeeshop, Think Coffee, (Mercer between 3rd and 4th) and the cover page of New York Press caught my eye with the headline, "Land Grab: Developing a City for The Wealthy." Whoo. I grabbed a copy on my way out, and paged through the entire newspaper three times looking for the cover story.

The story ended up being a single-page vignette about two opposing socio-economic experiences of living in Bed-Stuy. Still worth reading about, but really, is it worth that cover? Reminds me of the silly marketing that some good movies are subjected to (like selling Friends with Money as a Sex in the City comedy, which it is not). I always get a bit annoyed with being misled. Now that I got that off my chest...

The cover article in question is about The Spencer in the liminal part of Bed-Stuy, the border land between Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill. I was mostly interested because I dragged my boyfriend to an open house, mostly out of curiosity. I took one look on this little street that is Spencer and just felt terrible: there was these two hulking six-story luxury condominium buildings with two-story little houses wedged between them. Ugh. It was inconceivable. And I couldn't figure out why the city would let it happen.

Well, the article mentions the loophole that the developers took advantage of to get the zoning variances (the developers told the city that they were building a dormitory). Read more about it.

Places to Be: May 16 edition

SculptureCenter in LIC

Tues, May 16: Completely unrelated, beard and moustache world champs have been traipsing through my house all weekend, and they're all over New York City too. Come out tonight to the Knitting Factory to compete or spectate at the inaugural New York City Beard and Moustache Championships, organized by my other half. Learn more about how one gets involved with something like this on today's Gothamist interview.

Wed, May 17: Municipal Art Society hosts a panel discussion on Grand Central Terminal, 6:30 - 8:00 at the MAS building. Details here.

Sat, May 20: Design Trust for Public Space hosts a book release party for "Long Island City: Connecting the Arts" at the SculptureCenter from 5 - 7 PM.

NYC Street Photographers

From Joe's NYC

Gotham Gazette compiles its suggested "Best of..." for NYC street photoblogs. All offerings are quite beautiful.

Tonight's New York Voices: Maya Lin and Jane Jacobs

My cleaning plans tonight will be complimented by some TV:

Tonight on NEW YORK VOICES:
"Maya Lin and Jane Jacobs"
Airs Friday, May 12 at 9:00 pm on Thirteen

Tonight NEW YORK VOICES looks at two women who have had a profound effect on our urban and cultural landscape. First, Rafael Pi Roman sits down with New York-based architect and artist Maya Lin, who first came to fame when she created the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. The daughter of immigrants, Lin discusses her personal ties to her latest project: designing a new home for New York's Museum of the Chinese in the Americas.

We also pay tribute to the late Jane Jacobs, author and urban analyst whose philosophies on urban planning have made a lasting impact on how New York City functions and thrives. The segment features Columbia University historian Ken Jackson, New Yorker critic Paul Goldberger, and Jason Epstein, who was Jacobs' longtime editor. They reflect on Jacobs' legacy, including her successful fight in the 1960s against a six-lane highway that would have sliced through SoHo.

We close with a story on the Sanborn Company, which has been documenting the city's changing landscape since the 1860s. Sanborn Maps, originally created for fire insurance companies, recorded nearly every detail of every block and sidewalk in New York, from fire hydrants to back porches. Recently, the company contributed aerial photography of Manhattan Island to Google's online mapping software.

Thanks Bruce!

Computers have corrupted architecture?

The Harper Mackay-designed Shepherd's Bush Building that I toured as an intern

Nah....then again: While in London, in graduate school, I interned at Harper Mackay, an architecture firm (the guys I know are now FourthSpace) and ran some extracurricular seminars on what I thought then were heady topical issues like this column in the Financial Times, how technology has impacted the craft of architecture. The firm used a lot of computer rendering to sell its designs. Everyone in the small firm attended and afterwards, my wonderful boss Karen bought everyone pints in return.

squabbling over Atlantic Yards; toilets go through though

Glass towers


Glass toilets

Ah, the ongoing dispute of the Atlantic Yards, especially as the pared down design was revealed yesterday by Frank Gehry and Laurie Olin. Of course it was quickly shot down by community organizations. They felt that it remained over-sized for that part of Brooklyn and there are still ongoing complaints about not soliciting community advise.

At this point in the process, I don't see how Ratner et al would seek community feedback from people who have been their main detractors, especially when the development group has a community benefits agreement in their back pocket. I wish it weren't so, but it's too late for widespread community input. Just a dose of reality. Then again, if all this fuss wasn't made, then there would have been no pressure to attempt to scale back the design. (And still no word on transportation impacts...)

At the same time, the new public toilets/bus shelters from Cemusa are quietly making their entrance. The Franchise and Concession Review Committee is expected to approve the project on Monday.

Public toilets? $1.4 billion from the city
Atlantic Yards? nearly $1 billion from the city

Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn's statement on the new Atlantic Yards design
NY Times article on the new design
And about the toilets

Bring back the boulevard!

Designed after the Champs-Elysee? Well, bring it back! (and keep the tourist-y establishments at bay).

It was fun to see Lukas Herbert in the article too - he had been selling me on the virtues of the Bronx two years ago, close to when he just moved.

Messy Diversity Urbanism - from Delft

Sure beats Starbucks, says Messy Diversity

I like the tone of this new blog, Messy Diversity, from a Canadian civil engineering undergrad doing an exchange program at the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands. We need more civil engineers like him/her.

Welcome! Now, why are you called salzberg too? Am I missing a critical piece of European geography?

Carroll Park: It's My Park Day

As you can see, the park could use a little stewardship

Those of you who live in Brooklyn, come out to Carroll Park in Carroll Gardens on Saturday afternoon. The Committee to Improve Carroll Park with Partnerships for Parks is sponsoring a "It's My Park Day," with activities for families, artists, foodies and orinthologists alike. Artists had been asked to spruce up the park's trash cans, and you can view the "rolling out of the barrels" around 4PM, one of which a friend and very talented artist/designer, Francesca Kaplan, will have designed.

The responsibility of architecture critics

John King from the SF Chronicle has a good take on the role of architecture critics:

An architecture critic isn't musing on a branch of art that is tucked away in a gallery or a bookstore or a multiplex or a television set. We're entrusted with the urban landscape that everyone shares, from museums to strip malls and sidewalks to skyscrapers. We have a unique perch from which to home in on structures that either offer inspiring examples to follow or serve as cautionary tales of what to avoid.

Car-free Central and Prospect Park

Image source

Isn't this why I sent a letter to Christine Quinn?

Toronto-ans take on orphan space

From one of the success stories, Daffodil Hill

The Canadians are so far ahead. In Toronto, the Clean and Beautiful Secretariat, a division of city government, is claiming stewardship of unclaimed, orphaned space. With just $1500 per ward (a jurisdictional line in the city), neglected and overlooked spaces will be beautified.

Now, if only we looked at all our public spaces with this keen and compassionate eye.

Ongoing debate on, and spurred by, JJ

Andrea Bernstein's report on the ongoing JJ debate was filed on WNYC this morning. Lisa and I get our 5 seconds - the existence of this discourse is partially why JJ's legacy lives on.

On the Gowanus Expressway...again

Ugh. Never mind about learning from past mistakes. NY Post reports on DOTs latest Gowanus Expressway Tunnel - think Big Dig, but Brooklyn. What could the City do with the $12.8 billion instead? Tear it down, build mass transit (est. at $2.4 billion in 1994), put in affordable and mixed-income housing, create economic empowerment zones to spur on niche manufacturing industries, and build up some of the public spaces so that people have a lot to do when they get there between working, living and visiting via public transit. I'm just tossing out rough numbers there, but I think you might still have a couple billion dollars left, after my proposed plan. The main problem with this plan is that it's proposed in isolation...what other development projects are going on in this area that might make the tunnel a success?

Gothamist has looked it up.

New York Street Photography

I've always loved the New York Public Library's digital image collection. The library is one of those underrated community places - there are always something going on there. Now you can see some of its images in person. NYPL is showcasing NYC Street photography. From one of the photographers, Joel Meyerowitz,

“The 60s and 70s was a time of great openness, when photography was still fairly innocent and pure, without the ambitions of today’s Art market driving the action. Photographers then made pictures out of a love for the medium, its mystery and poetry, the intimacy of the little world of photography brought us all together and though there were different methods of approach there was a genuine, mutual respect for the effort we all were making to find the ‘voice’ of the medium.”

Check it out.

Thanks for coming out!

It was fun to chat about Jane Jacob's legacy with the lot of us from PPS, the folks at the eponymous curbed, catch up on the latest in New Orleans with John Messengale of Veritas et Venustas and Andrea Bernstein of WNYC. I ended up talking to her first on my way in, so I got all of my JJ-related thoughts off my chest in a matter of minutes. It was nice to meet some readers too. (Never mind that we didn't make it over to 555 Hudson).

And of course, a big thank you to Lisa of Polis for organizing it, or our thoughts might have remained in the blogosphere, which is not in line with Jane Jacobean thinking at all. It was fitting that while we chatted with each other, we also met some people un-related to the gathering and were able to share a few thoughts on what makes being in New York so great.

The personal connection

Image from CCNY

It was particularly touching to come across these three personal accounts of knowing Jane Jacobs from Blair Kamin at the Chicago Tribune; Michael Sorkin, architect and planner (who I remember selectively handing out flyers advertising the Jane Jacobs event he writes about - thankfully, I passed the test); and Thomas Lunke, planner and currently with the Harlem Community Development Corporation.

the Place to be: JJ

A reminder that we'll be gathering to commemorate Jane Jacobs today at 6PM, at the White Horse Tavern. The plan is to meet at the bar, and bring something (a favorite passage, flowers, whatever you like) to share.

No one's outgrown Jane Jacobs

Image by Benjamin Donaldson, at the jen bekman gallery

The Nicholai Ouroussoff screed that led the NYT's Week in Review was deliberately provocative. I'm sure the New Urbanists have their panties in a bunch, as do many at my workplace.

Looking beyond the inflammatory rhetoric that's calling every urbanist to arms - and rightly so - I think that Jane Jacobs would agree, in principle, with what Ouroussoff proposes: that once a formula or set process has been established, the "unaverage" clues once again falls to the wayside and we're left again with solutions that don't necessarily address an underlying issue. Too many have taken the table of contents of the Death and Life... and applied it wholesale to solving all of our citis' problems. Design is not the only answer - whether it is on a neighborhood level or at the starchitect level.

Solutions are ever-evolving and as decisions are being made, they are determining how people are making a home and getting to work and just plain living. Though Ouroussoff does eventually end up saying that today's cities are very different from those of yesteryear, at both stages of city history, the city exhibited a similar attribute: constant change at an astonishing rate. This speaks to a high demand for the city to accommodate change.

Therefore we can't afford to make large-scale experiments that inexorably narrow a city's options. The few projects that Ourrousoff cited have wreaked havoc on many lives, and at current writing, it can be argued that they cast a negative projectile for a city's public good - namely, in the model of Los Angeles. Who really has the life experience to fully appreciate the "haunting silence" of an empty plaza? Is it a limited group of privileged, or truly the entire city's population?

Just as a healthy government should take on the task of creating infrastructure, a la R. Moses, and create incentives for developers to take on the risk of building in our city, government should create a friendly environment for the small-scale, community-based approach advocated by Jane Jacobs. This is preferable to simply dismissing, or eradicating, that option completely.

Housing and rapid change around Marcus Garvey Park, East Harlem

Image source, "Your Guide" on Flickr

I spent the beautiful Saturday walking through East Harlem getting a crash course in the redevelopment of the Marcus Garvey neighborhood with a few other bloggers. Thankfully, the tour came from an affordable housing point of view and frankly, it's about time - with all the triple-mint, XXX R.E. pornography going on these days. A big thank you to Aaron of Starts and Fits (and of HDC, the city's financing unit for multi-unit affordable housing) for the day.

To give us a broad sense of the hockey-stick acceleration of development in East Harlem, Aaron took us around at some stand-out buildings that mark the progression, not all funded by HDC.

East Harlem had a slower uptake at first. When Maple Plaza (c. 1998/1999) and Maple Court (c. 1995), the first stop on our tour at 124th and Madison were being developed, the real estate market was still a bit slow and the area was considered exceptionally "market-risky" with street after street of empty lots and the Metro-North tracks running above ground, bifurcating the neighborhood and punctuating the atmosphere. In these early buildings, you can see the difficulty in shedding some of the old hallmarks of "affordable housing," with the set-backs, especially of the entrance; the tall iron fence that surrounds the building; spare use of windows; and no ground floor amenities. Though Maple Plaza and Maple Plaza are full-lot developments (preferable by developers, makes their job easier), they did receive an upgrade in their design: they are U-shaped, with a courtyard in the middle, instead of being a monolithic block.

For low-income household home ownership purposes, they were an incredible success. The buildings were limited equity co-operatives, which meant that the city sold them at low prices, but bundled mortgage payments with the monthly maintenance fees. The multi-bedroom apartments came with a now inconceivable price, averaging $7,000 per unit. Any proceeds from future sales must be split with the city.

Those were definitely the earliest buildings. As we walked through the years, each successive building demonstrated greater trust in human nature. Instead of designing out of fear, the designs started to come out to meet the street some more, utilized materials that reflected the urban fabric, would incorporate older buildings into the development, and start providing ground-floor retail and more windows. By the time we reached the 2004 mark, we were inside 1400 on Fifth, one of the first green multi-family buildings in the city. Here, the hallmarks of affordable housing had switched from tall perimeter fences to energy-saving features such as geo-thermal heating and fresh-air pumping and a semi-permeable parking lot to mitigate stormwater run-off.

At this point, developers and the city were feeling more creative about financing models. 1400 on Fifth is also a mixed-income building, with some apartments available at market rate and others subsidized by the city.

The overall lingering impression of the neighborhood around Marcus Garvey is that this is a vast improvement over street after street of empty lots or abandoned buildings that was stimulated by the renaissance that started at 125th street (our tour took us from 124th to 116th). As for the negative effects of such accelerated change (e.g., city-instigated gentrification) it's hard to say based on this short tour. For all new city-subsidized multi-family buildings, there is a deliberate process to stem the tide of gentrification. About 50% of units are set aside for community residents first, to be determined by lottery. Within that group, there are also preferences for the disabled, veterans or city workers.

So, who's behind the change? That was even harder to pinpoint. There is definitely a backlash to the government being the developer (think of all those huge housing towers that Jane Jacobs bashed), so the practice now is that the city waits for developers to approach them for development. No proposals are cultivated by HDC per se - they just review proposals sent to them by developers. Without the HDC and HPD and DCP coordinating at this high-level, and with the housing market the way it is, the prevailing "given" is that luxury housing would dominate new developments.

But what about looking at each block and understanding the nuances of the street, the sidewalk, the neighborhood and the community? Zoning practices today reflect more and more an awareness of diverse uses within a single block (the re-zoning plan I know more of is the recently passed Williamsburg-Greenpoint waterfront plan), but this is still a very new practice and zoning is a somewhat crude instrument. There remains no daily coordination between agencies for screening land-use decisions and the erasure of nuance is apparent in the City Planning Commission's reports. Just because you say that a sidewalk should be added to a proposal doesn't mean the sidewalk will actually take you anywhere.

I'm not advocating for bigger government and micro-design and management of city blocks. I am simply suspect of too many decisions being left to market forces because the driving incentive there is profit and a city is not meant to be designed for profit. At balance, a city should be designed for the public good. Like the pioneering green building whose windows have shifted and need to be reset, new ideas need their test of time. They shift and evolve when first practiced and may need to be reset. At the current pace of development, we aren't stopping for a second.

For more on affordable housing in New York City, check out the eponymous Gotham Gazette, edited by Jonathan Mandell who was on the tour with me.

Gathering for Jane Jacobs

From Lisa at Polis,

The consensus is to meet at the White Horse Tavern at Hudson and W. 11th. So let's do that for a happy hour drink on Tuesday (a week after her death), May 2 at 6:00 at the elbow of the bar in the front room (if it's nice, we can move outside). Bring something with you (a favorite passage from Death and Life, flowers to lay at 555 Hudson, or whatever inspires you). Pass this along.

See you there.

Independent America Screening

I'm a bit late with this, but I did end up going to the Independent America screening at Pioneer Theater, the perfect place to screen it.

The film has a great concept - driving cross country taking only local highways (no super highways) and stopping/eating/sleeping at only independent mom and pop stores. A former intern happened to be in NY and happened to be doing just this very thing, only his route is from Ohio to the Atlantic Ocean up to Canada and back to Ohio (I think) - and he came to the screening with me. We both thought the movie was fun - less shrill than other anti-big box movies (my opinion) and therefore perhaps more palatable for people who are on the fence about the effect of corporate chains. Who could ever say that they don't like mom-and-pop's? And anyone who had seen Greenwald's "The High Price of Low Cost" won't be more enlightened by the Wal-Mart reveals.

Both Heather Hughes and Hanson Hosein are much more articulate than your average on-the-roadsters, a reflection of their network journalism days. It would have been nice to see more of the evolution of their relationship throughout the movie. It's clear that being on the road, driving relatively slow (compared to interstates) and being limited to only independents is a foil to how the counter-trend might impact so many families across America who have choices limited by the proliferation of corporate chains and mass commuting patterns.

In memorium

Image from Flickr, Brunocerous

Courtesy of Polis: There's a call to gather at 555 Hudson, where Jane Jacobs lived and wrote the canonical Death and Life of Great American Cities. Drop Polis a line if you're interested.

If that's not your style, Polis and Curbed have partnered for a "Best Jane Jacobs Block in NYC" contest. Details here.

I would add one more element to the list of Jane Jacobs virtues: to be aware of the small details, the interplays, the "unpredictables" - once you think there is a formula, its merit diminishes. Things that you thought unimportant may just be the lynchpin to the success of the block. The beauty of street photography, if you look at enough photos, is that those little details come out in ways that sometimes escape our human eye when we're in the middle of the activity.

Jane Jacobs, 1916 - 2006

Jane Jacobs has influenced so many. While working in the private sector, it was her "Death and Life of American Cities" that made me feel that critical thinking and engagement with the development of our cities was possible for someone like me, who had no exposure to or "professional" background in urbanism.

Her legacy lives on as cities continue to struggle with the balance of big vs. small-scale as they work towards livability and economic vitality. On a even more tangible level, I feel her presence with each recent graduate that writes to tell me, I want to make our cities and our lives better.

Toronto Star on the life of Jane Jacob.

Car shapes help take over parking

There's been a lot on taking over parking spots in New York and across the country. Do car-shaped tents help? Michael Rakowitz's new project, P (LOT), takes over parking spaces - this time with car-shaped tents. You can get in on the fun too - the tents are rentable at the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna.

Shoppertainment, lifestyle ctr, in our own backyard

at this point, I'm not sure if the nomenclature is really all that important. I forget that we are surrounded by these said structures - they're not in far-flung places. Like any girl, I like my outlet shopping, but the phenomenon of experiential shopping + lowbrow (outlets) + highbrow (premium goods) is mutating, and Lisa Selin Davis who has been featured on these pages offers a critical analysis of American Manhasset Mall in Long Island for Plenty. She writes

The idea is to build community, to recreate the public, lively nature of a real downtown. But this is, of course, an illusion. The "street" is very much maintained by a private entity, and exclusivity is integral to the lifestyle center. If the three-level malls of the 1990s went from low- to high-brow, a sort of cruise ship model with the steerage-class cheapo stores at the bottom level and the high-end boutiques at the top, then the lifestyle center goes a step further, excluding the steerage class altogether. It's a kind of shopping segregation; affluence, after all, is one of the ICSC's main criteria for a lifestyle center.

All of this goodness via theboxtank.

Inaugural "Places to Be": April 24

Image: New Partisan

Writing for BTTN and as a former marketing director, I'm on the receiving end of a lot of cool events from all sorts of different organizations in New York - and happily. As city-folk, we're all inundated with invites, especially in this field of planning, development, urbanism and design (one impressive calendar listing I received last month felt like it was about 50 events long, and does anyone actually go through the AIA one?)

To cut through all of it, I thought I'd start a Places to Be edition, a weekly listing of a few but choice events that address the issue of place in an interesting way, with a preference for the free and public. Think of this as my vicarious social calendar. So, keep those events coming, and here's the inaugural issue, out to you by Tues PM from now on:

THURSDAY, APR 27
I posted (sorry, the image has changed) about the making of Independent America last summer, where two journalists documented their drive across the country on local roads and stopping only at mom-and-pop places. The film premiere will be at Pioneer Theater, when the filmmakers will be present. Buy tix here, 7 PM, 155 East 3rd Street (between Avenues A and B).

SATURDAY, APR 29
Culture Clash: Latino-Anglo Relations in New York City - An all-day forum with workshops, films, exhibits and performances. Presented in collaboration with East Harlem-based Art for Change at the Museum of the City of New York. (No info about price...) 10 AM - 4 PM, Reserve: 212.534.1672, ext 3393; 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street.

SUNDAY, APR 30
Shelter - The Foundry Theater hosts a panel on artists' unavoidable participation in gentrification in making the next "new" neighborhood, with Oona Chatterjee, Brad Lander, Esther Robinson (formerly with Creative Capital Foundation), and Elizabeth Streb. Free. 12 - 2 PM; 140-142 Second Ave (Ninth Avenue)

ONGOING
MAS launched a photo competition, Shoot It Down. Send in your pix of over-sized ads that over-dominate our public spaces, and you might win a $50 gift certificate to Center for Urban Books, a drool-inducing store for all printed matter on urban and design. Best and worst pix will be posted on the site. Details here.

Hurray: Eighth Avenue Bike Lane

Image from Transportation Alternatives

Three years and tens of thousands of man-hours later, the DOT is striping in a bike lane on Eighth Avenue. Kudos to Transportation Alternatives!

I found the Citywide Coalition for Traffic Relief while reading about the win. There's lots of other suggestions on the site, many of them small, for making our streets more of a public good, rather than a car/private good. Also, the list of coalition members was inspiring - so many different groups from across the city.

Finally, Aaron Naparstek weighs in on the Eighth Avenue bike lane - he's a wise one, that one.

American Roadside

image source

People often assume that I'm anti-cars. I'm definitely not, I just wish we were more thoughtful about how we treated everyone using the street - walking, biking and in cars - and that there was less unnecessary driving. I always hated that I lived within walking distance to our grocery store growing up but always had to get in the car to get there because it was too "dangerous" to walk (no sidewalks, no shoulder and speeding cars).

Here's a site that reminds us of the heritage in thoughtfulness in road travel - The American Roadside. I'm not trying to be nostalgic about it - I'd just like to remind us that it wasn't so hard to do and maybe what we've achieved with roads is no longer giving us the experience that we once liked about driving.

Population boom...or is it decline?

Yesterday, I was reading Bob Yaro's article about NYC's incredible population growth over the last 15 years, which would explain (at least partially) the booming real estate development these last couple of years and all the scrambling to build condos, mixed-income, affordable housing, etc. (Robert Yaro is the president of the Regional Plan Association). Today, I'm looking at a U.S. Census Bureau report (pdf), which says that the New York metropolitan region (New York City, Northern New Jersey and Long Island) lost on average 210,000 people per year from 2000 to 2004, making it the region with the lowest in-migration among all regions in the U.S. (Florida is the highest).

What gives?

Economic impact of community gardens

One of my favorite gardens, the Liz Christy Garden, named in honor of the woman who launched the community garden movement. I love this garden for helping to make the intersection of Houston and Bowery a bit more human. Every time I have to cross the intersection with all the lanes of cars and the construction with Avalon Communities going on, I'm thankful that the garden is there.

Community gardens are one of the most illustrative transformations of blight and neglect into community asset. Throughout New York City, they're remarkable for the way they break up the monotony of buildings by offering beauty in the most unexpected places.

If that's not enough reason to support your local community garden, now there's a economic case for creating community gardens. There's a new study from NYU and available on the Social Science Research Network on the effect of community gardens and adjacent property values. The abstract can be found here (and there's a link to the full article).

A few conclusions: community gardens do have a significantly positive impact on property values within 1000 feet of the garden, and the impact increases over time. The gardens have the greatest impact in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Anyone who has helped start or worked on community gardens didn't need a study to tell them that. But now you have something to go to your local politicians with...

NYC Waterfront

Here's a beautiful sample of Diane Cook and Len Jenshel's photography on New York City's waterfront. Once the place of the most industrial, neglected and unlivable areas, the waterfront has become the site of many future condo and office complexes. But that's a projected vision - these images show what the waterfront looks like now.

More on Mosaic Man, and the last artist squat in the E. Village

Polis has been following the story for us. This post gives the latest, as well as linking to the other updates.

More Stone Streets in NYC

Stone Street, NYC - image source

Aaron Naparstek has a great article in NY Press about how we could pedestrianize NYC streets. I've been thinking a lot about how the city changes and what people fight for, and it's amazing how many times we're trying to get at the same thing, and how it seems like we're starting from zero each time. But it doesn't have to be that way!

Main street vs "lifestyle centers" vs shoppertainment

Image source

Just a quick update on the issue of Main Streets versus Malls, this time by the WSJ, just to put some business economics into it.

I'm so glad that "shoppertainment" may be reaching the end of its life!! It always felt funny that as a nation we would spend so much money and resources to create artificial "destination" experiences, like dining in faux rain forest restaurants. What both shoppertainment and lifestyle centers illustrate, to me anyway, is the deep appetite for genuine experiences, which can come from our traditional main streets and public markets, among other types of shopping typographies. That's still innovative (in the broad story of our civilization) and obviously still hard to get right! I still don't like the lifestyle center trend, which I think will also have its day of judgement, but at least it's a better reflection of where we want to end up.

Beauty in the details

It's one of those quiet Sunday evenings when I have the TV on while I spend time on my computer, looking at things that I didn't have time to during the week. Tonight I was reminded of one of my favorite New York photographers, rion.nu, who recently moved to Paris. I'm going to miss the fabulous New York street photography (here's just a sample), but of course Paris is great for that too - so many beautiful details that make up the whole experience that is Paris. I'm looking forward to more.