French-American engineer Louis Aloys Risse first conceived of the Grand Concourse in 1890, basing the design on the Champs-Élysées in Paris as the City Beautiful Movement swept the US. During the public crowdsourcing phase of By the City / For the City, Ace from Pelham Parkway called for “More Hotels in the Bronx. Why not make one of those beautiful old buildings on the Grand Concourse into a Hotel AND in its lobby, create a museum to the Concourse of old!!!”
The Concourse, a broad, four-mile-long thoroughfare, connects the North and South Bronx, ending at the 138th Street Bridge to Manhattan. Originally populated by Jews and Italians escaping tenement life on the Lower East Side, White Flight in the 1960s and 70s led to a dramatic population shift, and this area of the Bronx is now home mostly to Latino and Black residents. Unfortunately, due to widespread neglect and blight in the Bronx-is-Burning 1980s, it has been a long time since the Grand Concourse has been referred to as the “Park Avenue of the Middle Class.”
But that is currently changing, as more attention is being paid to this stretch of the cityscape that tells a remarkable story of the Bronx’s history and culture. The Municipal Art Society and the Landmarks Preservation Commission are both advocating for the designation of a proposed Grand Concourse Historic District, which would secure about 73 buildings in this area that are exemplary of the Concourse’s history as a center for Art Deco and Art Moderne architecture. The Bronx Museum and the Design Trust for Public Interest have also focused their attention in the area, hosting a design competition for the future of the Grand Concourse and the greater Bronx several years ago on the 100th anniversary of the street’s opening.
Locals are also taking notice of the great value that their street has. The creation of a dynamic museum focusing on the history of the Grand Concourse, as suggested by Ace, could ensure public engagement, and allow people to celebrate a potentially forgotten history. This museum could also strengthen the center of gravity for tourism in the Bronx by connecting the Concourse to the Zoo, Botanical Gardens, the Poe Cottage, and other important cultural attractions to the east. A hotel could draw fresh attention to the architecture masterpieces that line the Concourse and benefit local shops, restaurants, and other businesses. The area is prime for development and deserves to be restored to its once-grand status.
Want to take on the challenge of designing a hotel & museum on the Grand Concourse? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Harlem is well-known for its strong sense of community, but its physical landscape is divided by imposing features from towering housing projects to the elevated commuter rail line along Park Avenue. Many Harlemites submitted ideas to By the City / For the City for knitting the neighborhood more tightly together by creating public spaces geared toward building up the existing community and involving its current residents—an especially important challenge at a time when Harlem is changing so quickly.
Ness in Spanish Harlem wishes that the “Taino Towers had parks that were actually playable in.” Designing functional green space for public housing would provide refuge for kids and adults alike. Similarly, Stanley in Sugar Hill would like to “break down the boundaries of superblock housing with community programming,” which could perhaps be achieved by accessible and engaging parks with frequent programming. Obviously this would be a smaller ordeal than the events at a place like Bryant Park, but the idea can be scaled to match, and would provide ideal community interaction space: Steve in Harlem suggests a “graffiti park” for artists to implement approved art on a rotating basis, and Sheryl hopes for one wall of an abandoned building to be transformed into a movie screen overlooking a kept field.
The Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center is a successful example of how multipurpose social space can be used to strengthen and expand the public realm, offering events targeted across age groups and spanning a wide variety of interests. Danielle in East Harlem would take this space a step further, instituting “a coworking space in East Harlem for innovation, sustainability, poverty alleviation, social justice and urban renewal.” Coworking spaces have been popping up all over New York, and with the right funding a space dedicated to community action and education of those types could be extremely successful - getting inspired and motivated Harlem residents together in the work place could be an opportunity for real, in-person social networking and could increase community connectivity.
There were also a number of original ideas for small venues of artistic exhibition or social engagement. Andrew from Hamilton Heights suggested “pop up food cafes,” which would “provide community access to fresh, delicious and healthy food and give entrepreneurs opportunities to provide service at reduced costs,” while Ulysses hopes that “a traditional open air market place [could be] created on the site of the old West Harlem Bernheimer Brewery and stables.” Creating flexible, attractive marketplaces could turn grocery shopping into an opportunity for social engagement. There are a number of ways and degrees to which community interaction can be encouraged and amplified in Harlem, and ample spatial opportunities to put ideas into practice.
Are you up to the challenge of designing an engaging social space in Harlem? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Due to the recent redevelopment of the High Line and Hudson River Parks, great attention and excitement is heating up around the idea of linear parks. These spaces are particularly interesting in that they often augment or re-use existing infrastructure of different scales and types, like railroad tracks, canals, natural waterways, highways, and arterial roads. This often has long-standing economic, social and environmental implications.
Designers of Hudson River Park and the High Line took areas that had been at the heart of the city’s manufacturing-based economy and retrofitted them to serve as nodes for recreation, a form of “soft” infrastructure for the city, making it more attractive to new information-economy workers. Linear parks are also unique in that they do not just turn underused paths into pedestrian-friendly green space, but they also serve as great catalysts for change and investment in large stretches of the city, benefiting multiple neighborhoods along their routes.
Several By the City/For the City ideas highlighted corridors prime for the redevelopment into linear parks. Anandi in South Ozone Park wants to see “the old, abandoned LIRR running from Forest Park to Rockaway Beach turned into a simpler version of the High Line with native plants, an edible garden, along with a bike and pedestrian path.” The Long Island Rail Road traveled south along the Rockaway Beach Branch from Rego Park all the way to the Rockaway Peninsula as late as the early 1960s. Today, rusty trestles remain, with tracks elevated along much of the route. This could serve as a prime location for a linear park that capitalizes on the line’s old, industrial foundation.
Tony from Greenwich Village wants to see “the parks restored to Park Avenue,” a thoroughfare with a long history of oscillation between serving as a major arterial for traffic and an accessible green space for pedestrians. As of today, the medians of the malls have been narrowed to accommodate for greater car access, but with adequate design attention the malls could be restored to their 1920s grandeur, not only beautifying existing infrastructure, but also incentivizing activity.
More than a few New Yorkers expressed interest in seeing parks along the East River linked and expanded to create an accessible recreational waterfront, following the model of Hudson River Park to the west. Prior to the 1930s, the East Riverfront was dotted with slaughterhouses, glass factories, power stations, and railroad yards. While the stretch along the Lower East Side was redeveloped into the 57-acre East River Park following the construction of the FDR and a string of public spaces exists up the river, connections between them are often tenuous, creating a huge opportunity to improve the city.
Want to take on the challenge of designing a new linear park for NYC? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Located at the northeastern tip of Staten Island, St. George is a community set upon hills and is home to a mix of art galleries, local businesses, historic architecture, and cultural attractions like the St. George Theater, the Staten Island Institute of the Arts and the Sciences, and the National Lighthouse Museum. On a typical weekday, 65,000 passengers utilize the Staten Island Ferry; unfortunately, many miss out on the rich history and culture of the area of St. George because they never dare to embark on a journey into the “other side”. We recently spoke to Melanie Cohn, Executive Director of the Council On the Arts and Humanities for Staten Island (COAHSI), who explained that the area around the Ferry terminal is particularly unwelcoming to pedestrians as it lacks signage as well as pedestrian connections that bar access from the Ferry to the rest of the community. This is an issue that numerous submissions to By the City / For the City called attention to:
Melanie in St. George wants to see “a better pedestrian path from the Ferry on the Staten Island side to the main commercial corridors of Bay Street and Stuyvesant Street.” A resident from West Brighton wishes “the area right off the Staten Island Ferry was more tourist/pedestrian/resident friendly: Less cars, more plants/art/pedestrian walkways, and more useful/interesting shops.” Joseph from the North Shore hopes that the “NYCDOT won’t demolish a ramp at the St. George Terminal of the Staten Island Ferry that could allow pedestrian-only access.” Together, these ideas make apparent the need for a dialogue around building better connections between the Ferry and the St. George community with its many cultural attractions.
Recently, urban planning students from Hunter College did a site analysis of St. George highlighting the neighborhood’s strengths. The resulting plan, Art Hill, proposes the development of a sustainable cultural district “where an influx of new artists will live and work in now-vacant or underutilized spaces in St. George, joining the diverse arts community already in residence.” Planners believe that St. George can be transformed into a go-to location, creating a destination for some of the 47 million tourists who visit New York City each year.
Not only does St. George have to be a welcoming place for visitors, but physical connections must be improved in order to ensure more efficient use of the space. A start: the NYCDOT recently began a $175 million rehabilitation of the ramps leading into the St. George Ferry Terminal. This investment is being made to improve mobility within the area, strengthening pedestrian access as well as securing bikeways for cyclists. Not only will this improve daily commutes for residents who use the Ferry terminal, it will also make it easier for visitors to explore the rich history and culture that is St. George. But the question remains: how can better physical connectivity be used to encourage social connectivity as well?
Want to take on the challenge of re-thinking the Ferry’s connection to St. George? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Italian, Pakistani, Irish, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican: no, these aren’t tonight’s dining options, but rather the ethnic traces that can be felt throughout the community of Westchester Square. Founded in 1654 by English settlers from Connecticut, the area grew with the arrival of the subway in the early twentieth century. Today, Westchester Square sits at the heart of the most ethnically diverse county in the US (Bronx). This unique community bears witness to the history of colonial settlement, the rise of urban development, European immigration, urban decay, internal migration and population shifts and, most recently, reinvestment.
One New Yorker, Ethan, shared his idea for improving Westchester Square through By the City / For the City, suggesting that the square and the surrounding area should be reinvented as a great public asset for the Bronx and the entire city. Ethan not only wants residents to be proud to say they live in the Bronx, but is hoping to see more “participation and preservation of local culture.” All of this is part of an effort to move the city toward a model where its neighborhoods are defined by public squares that draw out and reflect the best of the surrounding communities.
The Westchester Square area’s rich history and diverse community provide an excellent foundation for envisioning the future of its eponymous public gathering place. Located at a point where the older, more densely-built South Bronx transitions into the newer, post-war neighborhoods of the Northeast Bronx, the square serves as a transportation and commercial hub for the area. The square could potentially be a powerful location to mitigate the demands of an extremely diverse community while creating a forum for all to equally participate and enjoy.
The Bronx Council of the Arts has already taken an interest in the area, setting up “place-based economic development strategies [in] the Northeast Bronx. [They] are busy creating alliances between the local community, politicians, artists, and regional audiences to make Westchester Square a destination.” The BCA Development Corporation is facilitating business workshops, creating arts programs and supporting community events to engage all local residents as well as new residents and all of the Bronx. Hopefully, with the aid of some thoughtful design attention, Westchester Square can live up to its true potential and capitalize on it tremendous history reflecting the cultures of its past and present.
Want to take on the challenge of designing a more dynamic public space at Westchester Square? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Around every corner, under every bridge, and in your community, New York City’s industrial history can still be seen and felt. Many New Yorkers asked architects to develop more innovative, adaptive, functional strategies for reusing these old industrial spaces so they can match the social, ecological and economic climate of today.
The students at CUNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture couldn’t be more spot on when they said they wanted to see “the degraded industrial infrastructure around the city reclaimed, remediated and re-utilized for a civic purpose, activating a new social, spatial, and ecological awareness.” Their proposed site is Gowanus Canal and its areas in proximity. Another entry submitted by Brendan calls attention to the Aqueduct Walk in the neighborhoods of University and Morris Heights. He thinks the aqueduct path should be “renovated to create a beautiful new linear park.” Michelle in the Upper West Side thinks, “The 69th Street Transfer Bridge along the West Side Highway could become a part of the park that residents can access” in an effort to create “a dialogue between cutting-edge, new forms and what has come before.” Lastly, Regina wants to see the armories all across the city used for “arts and cultural activities, like the one on Park Avenue.”
The adaptive reuse of these and other industrial sites will allow us to celebrate and understand the value and importance industrialization played in the rise of New York City while at the same time creating a more aware, more innovative city from those lingering spaces.
Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
New Yorkers concerned with increasing Social Equity often spoke about increasing the richness of the public realm: bringing communities together more frequently and in a more concerted fashion, and creating more opportunities for sharing with their neighbors. The kinds of community spaces and what they wanted to share differed by borough.
[Click here to read Part I, which focuses on citywide trends in Social Equity.]
Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
We here at the Institute for Urban Design are big believers in the importance of creating a more Socially Equitable city, so we were extremely encouraged to see that it’s a goal shared by so many of our fellow New Yorkers! Here are some strong trends we saw in ideas submitted across the city.
Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
Exactly what New Yorkers are hoping to enjoy more of often depends on which borough they’re in. Here are some borough-specific trends focused on increasing Enjoyment of the cityscape.
[Click here to read Part I, which focuses on citywide trends in enjoyment.]
Have a great design solution for one of the ideas listed above? Click here to register for the By the City / For the City design competition today! Entries are due by midnight (EST) on Sunday, July 31st, 2011. We can’t wait to see what you come up with!
If they made nothing else clear through their suggestions to By the City / For the City, one thing New Yorkers communicated en masse was that they really value their city’s varied opportunities for Enjoyment. In fact, when we looked at how people explained their ideas, “enjoy” was far and away the most commonly-used verb. Some trends: