New efforts to bridge government-community divide
Submissions to NYC BigApps are currently being accepted for software applications that make the City’s data sets accessible and usefully legible to the public, with the goals of fostering greater accountability and transparency of government operations as well as providing better tools for public policy advocacy and grassroots action. Mayor Bloomberg announced the contest in June, about six months after the Obama administration put out a Transparency and Open Government memorandum. Inhabitat runs down a few existing crowd-sourced local planning projects: dotNeighborhoods, The Open Planning Project and OasisNYC.
Another recent initiative to give local actors more agency is the creation of the Livable Communities Task Force, a congressional group that will focus on partnering with community actors and planners on quality of life initiatives. Among items the agenda for the task force is an Act that would provide federal assistance grants to local efforts supporting urban parks, recreation facilities and social service programs.
(via Inhabitat and City Parks Blog)
Ward’s Island renewable energy park
The City of New York recently signed an agreement with Natural Currents Energy Group that will put a renewable energy generation park on the southern tip of Ward’s Island, near the Triborough (RFK) Bridge. The park will include four 100 kilowatt tidal turbines, a 140 foot wind turbine and 800 square feet of solar panels, generating, in total, enough energy to power 100 homes. The energy will be used to offset the costs of lighting the park and at Icahn stadium on adjacent Randall’s Island. The green “power park” is intended as a demonstration of the cost-effectiveness and suitability of alternative energy and will produce only a fraction of the energy that could potentially be generated on the island. The park will also feature a community center where the public can learn about renewable energy and its potential within the City.
It’s estimated that tidal power generation in the East River alone could generate 3 to 5% of the city’s energy needs. Ward’s Island was identified as a location for implementing tidal turbines due to its location along the Hell Gate, where currents are particularly strong.
(via New York Post)
Top ten great public spaces in the US
The American Planning Association has released its top ten list of great public spaces for 2009. #1 is New Haven Green in New Haven, Connecticut, which, it seems, was selected as much for its aesthetics as for its political significance:
General George Washington spoke here during the American Revolution. The Amistad captives were exercised here, Abraham Lincoln gave a presidential campaign speech, and rallies were held during the Vietnam War and civil rights struggles.
More recently, the green has acted as a keystone of the city’s smart growth policy, providing a centerpiece around which to densify development.
Numbers 2 through 10 seem like some pretty beautiful and inspiring places, too.
(via City Parks Blog)
The Infrastructure of Urban Ecologies, tomorrow
Wednesday the 28th, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) will host a discussion called The Infrastructure of Urban Ecologies. Speakers will include William Morrish, Dean of the School of Constructed Environments at Parsons, and Kazys Varnelis, Director of Network Architecture Lab at GSAPP. Morrish is an urban designer focused on community-based projects, and Varnelis is the co-founder of the experimental architectural collaborative AUDC. October 28th, 6:30PM to 8:30PM in Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, 1172 Amsterdam Avenue.
Zero waste strategies are catching on
Waste sorting in Nantucket, a model for zero waste, has reduced the amount of waste sent to landfill to 8%, compared with 66% in Massachusetts as a whole. The island has accomplished this through diligent sorting, an expansion of mandated recycling, industrial composting and a community swap shop.
The New York Times surveys the growth of “zero waste” strategies in the US among private companies, institutions and entire municipalities. “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” are really coming of age: biodegradable utensils, large-scale composting and citywide, warehouse-like free swap shops. And it’s not just hippies and treehuggers participating anymore.
Though born of idealism, the zero-waste philosophy is now propelled by sobering realities, like the growing difficulty of securing permits for new landfills and an awareness that organic decay in landfills releases methane that helps warm the earth’s atmosphere.
The municipal programs are the most inspiring. The story notes that Nantucket only sends 8% of its waste to landfills now–its landfill is actually shrinking, thanks to an entity that searches the landfill for materials it can resell like sand and aluminum. (The slide show about Nantucket is really worth checking out).
While not as comprehensive, it’s still impressive that San Francisco has successfully outlawed landfill-bound disposal of food waste. Ottawa has also recently joined that cause.
Recycling, composting and worms, this Saturday
The Council on the Environment of New York City and the Staten Island Compost Project will be co-hosting a recycling and home composting workshop this Saturday afternoon at the St. George Library on Staten Island. Tin can tricks and live worm bins, fun for all ages. October 24th, 1-3pm, 5 Central Avenue, Staten Island, just a block from the ferry terminal.
Then: gas storage tanks; Now: home
Four giant coal gasometers, built as part of Vienna’s municipal gas works in the late 1800s, have been refashioned into a complex of residential, commercial and municipal facilities. Formerly Europe’s largest gas plant, the gasometers now house 800 apartments, a student dormitory, a music hall, over 70 shops, restaurants, bars and cafes, a movie theater and the city’s municipal archive.
The gasometers were decommissioned in 1984 as the city transitioned from coal gas to natural gas, and they have evaded demolition through their 1978 designation as historical monuments. Each one stands 197 feet in diameter and 230 feet high and once had a storage capacity of over 3 million cubic feet. Designs for each of the four amended structures are unique and were chosen through a competition in the mid ’90s. The four designs come from architects Jean Nouvel, Coop Himmelblau, Manfred Wehdorn and Wilhelm Holzbauer.
(via Inhabitat)
Estuary power
A rendering of two stacked electrodes in salt water, drawing positive and negative ions apart and creating a field of intense electric charge.
Researchers at the University of Milan Bicocca in Monza, Italy are working to harvest energy offset by the mixture of fresh and salt water. The process uses electrodes to draw apart positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions in salt water, then forces those ions away from the electrodes by flooding them with fresh water. The forced diffusion of ions away from the electrodes to which they’re attracted creates electrostatic energy, which can be extracted as useable power. The methodology is still under development, but it could potentially be used for the continuous harvest of energy from the junctions of fresh water estuaries with salt water bodies, as happens throughout the creeks that flow through the Freshkills Park site.
(via TreeHugger)
Gordon Matta-Clark’s “Freshkill”
UbuWeb, the large online archive of avant-garde art, has posted a streaming video of Gordon Matta-Clark’s 1972 “Freshkill,” filmed at the Fresh Kills Landfill. The short film depicts the destruction of the artist’s truck by a bulldozer. The video is also available for download as an MP4.
The facts of bioremediation
Greenmuseum interviews Terry Hazen, Director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Biotechnology and the Head of Ecology at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about bioremediation, its benefits and its hazards. Hazen is a well-spoken expert on the subject of remediating contaminated sites and the microorganisms that can be used to do so. Below, he gives a comprehensive lecture on the subject as part of the lab’s lecture series.
