There’s More to Public Art than Sculptures and Statues

In By the City / For the City many residents spoke up for the need to beautify New York through color, light, and other non-traditional (read: not-a-sculpture-in-a-plaza) public art. One resident wants people to find new ways to add beautiful color to their neighborhoods.Leni in the West Village hopes that strategically located vacant lots could be filled with light. Laura simply wishes that art could be freely exhibited, so that the city could be “full of life and expressive of the people using such spaces.” Together, these ideas provoke the consideration of new and inventive ways of incorporating art into the cityscape.

The Storefront for Art and Architecture’s latest exhibit, Painting Urbanism, showcases the favela paintings with which the artistic duo Haas&Hahn has blanketed slums of Rio de Janeiro over the last several years, transforming dense blight into beauty. The exhibit hopes to inspire a similar color-intervention in New York City. Creative lighting is growing in popularity as an effective art form in both large and small-scale installations. Nuit Blanche New York is having an October showcase called Bring to Light, and longer lasting installations have popped up in parks around the city. Physically unobtrusive as well as being relatively cheap to install and maintain, light is an ideal artistic medium for the city. Art in Odd Places functions on an even more ad-hoc scale, promoting small installations, performances, and a variety of un-categorizable artwork in places where they are perhaps most unlikely to exist. Art can adapt to any environment, complementing or contrasting spaces which otherwise would not have caught the attention of passersby.

Some of the most prominent examples are publicly funded. The NYC DOT recently held a design competition for a temporary re-think of Times Square while a more permanent re-design for the pedestrian plaza there is being developed by IfUD Fellow Craig Dykers’ firm, Snøhetta. The winning design, “Cool Water, Hot Island” by artist Molly Dilworth, involved painting the street with a splashy sequence of blues. This project not only adds beauty and color in an unexpected place but has a utilitarian function too: separating pedestrian from transportation space. Another initiative spearheaded by the city is Arts for Transit, an MTA program that funds projects that create links to neighborhoods with art that echoes the architectural history and design context of the individual stations. The art makes use of non-traditional spaces like subway station walls, gates, windscreens, as well as ad space in the trains and buses themselves, resulting in projects like the bronze statues that inhabit the 14th Street ACE station.

Public Art runs the gamut of scale, and the opportunities for implementation are endless. One resident wants to see the passage along 138th Street under the Grand Concourse in the Bronx made more open, inviting, and colorful. Cat in Bushwick wishes the Unisphere base was painted with Murals by local artists so it wasn’t just a massive aqua blue circle. Finding clever places to add art to the cityscape is both a creative and practical challenge, but the result can be the creation of a meaningful place where there wasn’t one before.

Want to take on the challenge of adding art to New York City? 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!

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Better Buses: Going Where the Subway Won’t

In 1998, Mayor Giuliani proposed a $1.2 billion package that would build an airtrain to JFK and extend a subway line to La Guardia. The airtrain surived; the N line connection to La Guardia was scrapped. By 2003 the project had been shelved: short on funds, the city succumbed to “Not Above My Backyard” opposition from residents and local political leaders who organized to block elevated track construction. Even those residents, however, acknowledge that better access to the airport should be one of the top priorities in transportation planning. Tali in Astoria shared her idea for addressing this issue through By the City / For the City: a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line between Manhattan and La Guardia.

New York is projected to add another million residents by 2030, straining an already overworked and overcrowded public transportation system. While some subway extensions are in the works, the MTA’s limited capital resources will likely prevent them from keeping pace with passenger demand. BRT provides a proven option that can be quickly implemented with lower capital costs and integrated into an already existing network: our streets. There are no tunnels to be dug, no track to be laid. With dedicated transit lanes, green-light traffic priority and off-board fare payment, these express buses can maintain a fast and steady rate of transportation and represent a very viable alternative to trains.

The BRT transportation system was conceived in Curitibia, Brazil. In response to burgeoning population growth, Jamie Lerner and a team from the Universidade Federal do Paraná developed the Trinary Road System, which placed adjacent express bus-only lanes between those for regular traffic. The Rede Integrada de Transporte opened in 1974, and BRT was quickly replicated and implemented in cities all across the Americas. In Curitibia 75% of the population uses the system to commute to work.

New York City is in the middle of Phase I of its Select Bus Service pilot program - routes are running on Fordham Road in the Bronx and on Manhattan’s First and Second Avenues; the Nostrand avenue line will open later this year. The MTA is already claiming that the East Side bus lines have sped up trips by 19%. Initially met with a little public resistance and confusion over new payment systems, the Select Bus Service is now poised to alleviate some of the burden on the city’s subway system. BRT is cost-effective, an environmental improvement over old bus systems, and unobtrusive to the neighborhoods through which it runs. Best of all, it offers a reasonable, feasible way to make new transit connections around the city.

Have a brilliant idea for implementing BRT in 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!

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Public Seating Beyond Parks and Playgrounds

We’ve all been there: exhausted, hot, annoyed, and just looking for a seat! With over eight million people calling New York City home, finding a place to sit outside of parks and playgrounds can be a bigger challenge than one might imagine. Megan in Clinton Hill wishes there were places to sit in public space besides in parks: free, public resting spots on every block for a coffee, lunch, and conversation. Ultimately, she wants the city to be “more free and open to all! Not limited to only people who eat at outdoor cafes, etc.”

In order to ensure more seating, new options for public space must be explored. Of the 305 square miles that New York City occupies, 27% is dedicated to open space and recreation: public parks, playgrounds, nature preserves, cemeteries, amusement areas, beaches, stadiums and golf courses. Open spaces serve specific functions (recreation, relaxation, etc.), but the introduction of new elements to streets is changing the way that we understand New York’s public realm. One day, we may include streets and sidewalks in the count of public open space.

In 2008, the New York City Department of Transportation released World Class Streets, a report that presents new policies for the function and design of streets in New York. Cases such as the transformative plan for Broadway are setting precedent in the reclamation of major streets for pedestrian use, ensuring new social, economic, cultural as well as seating opportunities. The plan seeks to pedestrianize a large swath of Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. The intended goals are to improve motor vehicle traffic flow, enhance safety and provide more and better public space to pedestrians. Within this new public space, more potential space is secured for seating and relaxation.

To take matters further, IfUD Fellow Linda Pollak wants to see some kind of seating that does not require maintenance. That’s a serious challenge! How do designers come up with maintenance-free public seating that could be easily installed in streets and sidewalks? Such a solution could directly help to create more inclusive public spaces, as well as address environmental and economic concerns, as cleaning fluids and maintenance can be two negative expenditures the city may want to avoid. Also, seating opportunities could directly address one resident’s desire for adding beautiful color to their neighborhoods! New public spaces deserve new seating that is fun, smart, and creative, as well as sustainable. 

Got a great idea for incorporating more seating into New York’s frenetic streetscapes? 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!

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A Stroll Through Herald Square

Several years ago, New York pedestrianized Times Square. In 2009, Broadway was closed to traffic between 42nd and 47th streets as part of the DOT’s “Green Light for Midtown” pilot project. The plaza-ization of Times Square included the initial installation of chairs and tables and painting of the pavement, while IfUD Fellow Craig Dykers’ firm Snøhetta works on a more permanent re-design. The DOT reported that the steps they had taken for the project were a success on multiple fronts, improving traffic, safety, and pedestrian satisfaction.

Just to the south, at the intersection of Broadway, 6th Avenue, and 34th Street, Herald Square sees a comparable amount of daily pedestrian traffic—according to the 34th Street Partnership, about 75,000 pedestrians pass through Herald Square every hour during peak times—and slightly more vehicle traffic. Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in America, shuttling more than 640,000 commuters through its doors each day. This is an overwhelming density of movement, and the results can be unpleasant, with the neighborhood sometimes difficult and even dangerous to navigate. 

It is reasonable to want to be able to “walk safely and comfortably [in the area around Penn Station], not be forced to walk in the street, and access the train and subway stations in a more friendly environment,” as Ryan asked through By the City / For the City. David in Brooklyn would have Herald Square  “turned into a pedestrian walkway,” and another suggested leveling Madison Square Garden, located atop the train station, to make way for “a truly large public gathering space for demonstrations and celebrations.” Leni in the West Village wants to transform exterior spaces around Penn Station with inspiring light forms so that people could “feel a sense of belonging.” 

Large, open plazas are rare in Manhattan, as is recreational space attached to transportation hubs. Rethinking the area around Penn Station and Herald Square is an opportunity to prioritize pedestrians and create an inviting, pleasant space. This would improve pedestrian safety and, simply and certainly, make Herald Square more enjoyable.

Have a great idea for re-designing Herald 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!

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Expanding Access to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, located at the mouth of upper New York Bay, connects Brooklyn and Staten Island and serves as a major link in the interstate highway system, providing the shortest route between the middle Atlantic states and Long Island. The earliest plan for a crossing at the narrows came in the form of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s 1888 proposal to build a tunnel extending the Staten Island North Shore line into Brooklyn. Financial constraints and delays in the approval process prevented this project.

It wasn’t until 1946, when the New York City Tunnel Authority was absorbed into the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority—then chaired by a legendary and controversial master builder Robert Moses—that the narrows crossing proposal was reappraised. Moses’ plan, which called for a bridge instead of an underwater crossing, was quickly approved by state legislature, and the bridge opened in 1964 as the world’s longest suspension span. The original plans called for a bike-pedestrian path on either side of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (similar to what exists on the George Washington Bridge), but this component was scrapped by Moses, an ardent advocate for auto-centric cities, in favor of maximizing space for motorized transit.

The bridge remains accessible only to cars and buses—a situation that several New Yorkers spoke out about this By the City/For the City. One resident wants to see a more efficient use of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, allowing for walking, biking, and transit. Cat in Bushwick asked for one of the 6 lanes on the double-decker Verrazano Bridge to be converted into a pedestrian walkway/ bike lane. Lee in Castleton Corners thinks that the MTA should run a new subway line from Brooklyn over the Verrazano Bridge into Staten Island.

In 1994, civic and environmental groups launched efforts to construct walkways for pedestrians and bicycles on the bridge. The proposal received support from the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, a Brooklyn-based environmental advocacy group, and Transportation Alternatives, a bicycle advocacy group. In 1997, the Transportation Division of the NYC Department of City Planning drafted a feasibility plan for pedestrian/cyclist access. Adding walking, cycling, and even mass transit uses to this bridge could greatly increase accessibility and connectivity for residents of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and all of New York, while ensuring a less carbon-intensive future for the city.

Think you’re up to the challenge of improving access to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge? 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!

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Crossing the Gowanus: Rethinking the Canal and its Environs

The Gowanus Canal (aka the Lavender Lake) was once an industrial hub for the city, even serving as one of the primary transportation routes for the Brownstone used to construct much of Brooklyn’s iconic housing stock. Unfortunately, the canal was built without the lock systems that would have allowed flushing and the water quickly degenerated. Today the Gowanus is an infamously odiferous barrier separating Carroll Gardens and Park Slope. Recently the EPA went over the city’s head to declare the canal one of its Superfund sites, opening the floodgates for funding to dredge and reclaim the waterway. Recent studies, however, measure the polluted sediment to be at least 80 feet deep, rendering prevalent cleaning methods ineffective and indicating that the process will be long and arduous without a clear result.

A number of people submitted ideas to By the City / For the City for using the canal to re-link the surrounding neighborhoods. Jim from South Brooklyn would have the canal “delisted as a navigable waterway.” The Gowanus’s current classification—an archaic designation as a tall-mast shipping route—means that boats and barges must be able to navigate the entire canal, resulting in the drawbridges and the unusually-high elevation of the Gowanus Expressway and the Smith/9th St subway station. By delisting the canal, the city could reduce the heights of these structures and lessen the visual barrier effect that they create. People could also still canoe under deactivated drawbridges.

Kenneth suggested greenroofing the Gowanus. While the execution is drastically different, the motivation behind this idea echos Jim’s: renewing the urban landscape and expanding accessible habitat. Raymond from Bensonhurst, meanwhile, hopes that “neighborhoods can be more connected in Gowanus, Brooklyn by a green park/riverwalk w/ bike paths and pedestrian walkways that can also help prevent toxic water runoff into the polluted Gowanus Canal.” If the canal was, in fact, delisted as a navigable waterway,  green connections such as planted bridges could be used to create pleasant connections between neighborhoods.

The focus of these ideas is on seizing the opportunity to transform the Gowanus from barrier to bridge. There is plenty of industrial space begging to be repurposed and vacant space to be used. One resident hopes for a “new public building combining spaces for design and the arts with environmental R&D” at the presently vacant space near the Smith/9th St station. Rethinking connectivity issues connected to the canal could make neighborhoods along the Gowanus neighborhood more attractive, accessible, and navigable (for pedestrians), making it a more viable site for economic development. Greenspace could help mediate runoff to the canal, and creating new public spaces could invigorate residents and give the neighborhood a contemporary functionality. Motherless Brooklyn author Jonathan Lethem once dubbed the Gowanus the “armpit of Brooklyn;” smart design could integrate a host of improvements and go a long way towards elevating the neighborhood away from such a dubious status.

Think you’re up to the challenge of re-connecting neighborhoods along the Gowanus? 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!

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Creating Connections, Exploring Culture: Staten Island Ferry and the Community of St. George

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!

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Westchester Square: A Cultural Microcosm

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!

Connectivity: Let’s Get Together [Part II]

Perhaps we privileged it by including “Wouldn’t it be great if there were an easier way to get from Queens to Brooklyn?” as one of our sample ideas, but New Yorkers really took to the idea of better-connecting the only two boroughs to share a landmass. You can read a full list of their ideas on that subject here, but as we were sifting through the results we noticed an interesting, related trend. Mass transit aside, Connectivity-related ideas in the two boroughs at the tip of Long Island were mostly focused on connecting neighborhoods by removing existing physical barriers.

In Queens, Ange from Woodside proposed that the borough’s notorious Queens Boulevard be turned into one long, continuous public space scaled for pedestrians and cyclists, and “serving as a connector and safe route between neighborhoods.” Out in Maspeth, another Queens resident suggested that the LIE trench be decked over so that the neighborhood could be “connected, not divided by highways.” Farther out, Mike from Douglaston thinks it would be great if the Cross Island Expressway were closed and turned into a waterfront park, linking the neighborhoods along Little Neck Bay with one continuous green space.

Down in Brooklyn, Raymond from Bensonhurst called for neighborhoods along the Gowanus Canal to be better linked with a system of greenways and bike paths. Martin from Ditmas Park suggested a footbridge at Albemarle Road to connect the east and west parts of his neighborhood. Chris from Park Slope would like to see the BQE buried in North Clinton Hill to create better connectivity for pedestrians, and another Park Sloper named Sam suggested that Grand Army Plaza be better-designed to connect the Slope and Prospect Heights to Prospect Park (a sentiment shared by Dina on the Heights side of the plaza).

[Click here to read Part I, which focuses on citywide trends in connectivity.]

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!

Connectivity: Let’s Get Together [Part I]

The ideas that New Yorkers shared for increasing connectivity in their city generally fall into one of three groups: physical connectivity, and transportation-related connectivity, and social connectivity. Here are some of the most interesting ideas from those groups.

  1. PHYSICAL: One Lower East Sider thinks it would be great if the public space along Allen Street were reconfigured and connected with shops along the sidewalk, rather than isolated in the middle of the street. Tristan from NoMad suggested burying the FDR to connect Manhattan to the East River, and one of his neighbors called for the removal of parking lots near Murphy Park with the same goal. Lourdes in Inwood wants to see Dyckman Street’s role as a connection to recreational opportunities for her neighbors highlighted. IfUD Fellow Rosemary Wakeman suggested linking the many arcades in Midtown West to create an urban corridor. Someone also suggested bridging the sole gap in the Aqueduct Walk, which traces the path of the Croton Aqueduct, at Burnside Avenue.
  2. TRANSPORTATION: You can see lists of the many great, specific ideas for expanding the city’s mass transportation system here and here. But here are a few that are more open-ended, for your pondering pleasure. Brooklynite Edward would like to see smarter connections between transit lines at Atlantic and Jamaica Avenues. Margaret would like her neighborhood, Snug Harbor, to have better transit connections to the rest of the city, a sentiment echoed by Lee from Castleton Corners, who wants to see a new subway line connecting Staten Island to Brooklyn. Another New Yorker issued an especially open challenge: find a better way to connect Greenpoint to Manhattan and Queens.
  3. SOCIAL: New Yorkers aren’t just looking for ways to get from A to B—they’re also looking to connect more with each other. Out on Staten Island, Reza suggested that Charleston should create a memorial to commemorate its history as Kreischerville. Robby from New Springville would like there to be some better way for people to understand connections between the physical and virtual, noting that “the digital world is becoming today’s culture, connecting us in a global way.” In an interesting parallel, Steven suggested a public space around Times Square where people from around the world could share messages with New Yorkers. And while suggestions for physical mass transit connections to the city’s airports were popular, Libby from Brooklyn Heights sees the trip home from the airport as an opportunity for social connections, too, suggesting that there be some way for people to connect with others looking to get home from the airport at the same time as them.

[Click here to read Part II, which focuses on neighborhood connectivity in Brooklyn & Queens]

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!