Brownfield remediation workshop this Thursday
The NYC Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation (MOER) is sponsoring a free workshop this Thursday on “Green Remediation and Sustainability.” The workshop is the third in a series of events aimed at encouraging brownfield redevelopment and will include an introduction to MOER’s Local Brownfield Clean-up Program, quantitative tools for measuring sustainability at brownfield sites and presentations on remediation projects at both the local and national level. Other program themes are “Energy Use Optimization,” “Waste and Fill Management,” “Concrete Recycling,” and “Sustainable Soil Preparation at Brownfields.” Register online for the workshop by 5pm today; view the agenda here.
Thursday, December 17th
9:00 am – 1:30 pm, registration begins at 8:30 am
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave (at 35th Street), Concourse Level
Registration and Lunch are FREE
Orange County Great Park launches first phase
A rendering of the Orange County Great Park, including the park's observation balloon. The completed park will implement sustainable design in establishing a canyon, a perennial stream, a lake, botanical gardens and an aviation museum.
The first phase of development is underway for 1,347-acre brownfield transformation project Orange County Great Park. $65.5 million will fund the expansion of a 27.5-acre “Preview Park,” which opened in 2008 and features an observation balloon providing visitors a high-flying view of the entire site. Scheduled to be complete by the end of 2011, the new phase of construction will develop 200 acres and include sports fields, arts and cultural space, a 100-acre farm, a 2,500-tree orange orchard, a community garden and an agricultural pavilion. The park is being constructed on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which operated from 1942 until 1999.
Pop-up parks
LentSpace is a 37,000 square foot temporary park and cultural space at Canal and Sullivan Streets in lower Manhattan. The site opened to the public on September 18th–Park(ing) Day–and is on loan to the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for three years from Trinity Real Estate, which hopes to build on it when the City’s real estate market improves. The video above depicts the site’s construction.
This particular economic moment seems ripe with opportunities to build parks like these–”pop-up parks”–where construction projects have stalled indefinitely or where there happens to be temporarily vacant land:
- The hugely popular Brooklyn Bridge Park-adjacent pop-up park that appeared in summer 2008 offered the only view of all four of Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls in addition to hosting a picnic spot, sand play area and an outdoor cafe and bar.
- In London, the site of a mothballed 48-story building project was the subject of a public design competition, the winner of which proposed Leadenhall City Farm, a temporary, low-budget park featuring a garden, market and soup kitchen.
- A three month-long art park in London called Wonderwood, which transformed an abandoned building into a public play space, won honors in the Leeds Architecture Awards new Temporary Works category.
- There were 51 participating parks in this year’s NYC Park(ing) Day:
(via The New York Times, Treehugger, and The Infrastructurist)
NYC commissioners roundtable interview
Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney, Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe
In a roundtable conversation hosted by The Architects’ Newspaper, four New York City Commissioners–Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, Design and Construction Commissioner David Burney, Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden, and Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe–discuss recently designed and developed projects as well as what they believe is achievable during Mayor Bloomberg’s next four years, especially given tightening fiscal constraints. It’s a pretty in-depth interview, and it’s great to hear the shared thoughts of this group, who have helmed some major projects in the City over the last eight years, including the High Line, the pedestrianization of Broadway in Times and Herald Squares, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Yankee Stadium redevelopment and, of course, Freshkills Park.
NYC biking up 26% in 2009
According to the NYC Department of Transportation (DOT), biking in New York City has increased by 26% in 2009. This is following a 35% increase in 2008 and corresponds with 200 miles of new striped or separated bike routes developed over the past three years. DOT’s graph, below, shows just how big the uptick has been.
The ‘Indicator Values’ on the Y-axis are derived by dividing the cyclist count for each year by the value for the year 2000 and multiplied by 100 (further explanation of the data is available through DOT). DOT collected their data by counting cyclists crossing 50th Street on the Hudson River Greenway, riding over the four East River bridges, and entering and exiting the Staten Island Ferry at Whitehall Terminal.
(via Treehugger)
NYC Environmental Transformations Conference
On Monday, the CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities is holding a one-day conference called In the Wake of the Half Moon: Environmental Transformation of the New York Metropolitan Region: 1609-2109. The discussion will center on current, former and future transformation of the City’s environment and the challenges to that transformation. Some very accomplished and interesting folks in the realm of New York City development, environment and infrastructure are slated to speak–Eric Sanderson, Robert Sullivan and Rohit Aggarwala, to name a few.
Monday, November 16th, 2009, 9am-5pm, on the Hunter College campus. Tickets are $25.
Concrete Plant Park opens in the Bronx
Recently opened Concrete Plant Park, in the Bronx, sits on the seven-acre site of a concrete plant that operated from the late 1940s through 1987. The park has retained some of its industrial past in the form of newly-painted silos, hoppers and conveyors, structures that once served as mixing facilities and now distinguish the park as sculptural monuments to the site’s evolution. The Parks Department and the Bronx River Alliance partnered to clean up the site, which, for years, remained an abandoned strip of land and illegal dumping ground. The project garnered public support by hosting community festivals and launching public boat tours from the site into the Bronx River. The park’s amenities include a waterfront promenade, a reading circle, concrete lounges, a canoe/kayak launch and restored salt marsh. It will also be part of the Bronx River Greenway, a 23-mile long multi-use path planned to extend the length of the river through the Bronx and Westchester County.
(via NY Daily News)
High Line-inspired projects
Three High Line-inspired projects clockwise from top left: San Francisco's new Bay Bridge and the old structure that park advocates would like to save; The Embankment in Jersey City, envisioned as an open space oasis; and a proposal for a 3- mile greenhouse and hydrogen-generation facility to be situated on Chicago's former Bloomingdale Rail Line.
Inspired by the success of the High Line, proposals to reimagine abandoned rail lines have popped up all over the country.
- Faced with the replacement of a section of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, Rael San Fratello Architects have proposed the creation of the Bay Line, a hanging neighborhood complete with housing, cultural and commercial buildings and bike and pedestrian paths. Inhabitat notes, however, that the bridge section is being replaced for structural reasons and would have to be stabilized before it could be re-purposed.
- In Chicago, a design collaboration between Gensler and 4240 Architecture envisions the old Bloomingdale Rail Line as a 3-mile greenhouse containing a 100-acre urban farm and, on its underside, a hydrogen-powered generator. The energy source, dubbed the “HYDROGENerator,” would be placed along an old aqueduct that runs under the railway, and would be used to power local schools.
- Just across the Hudson from the High Line, The Embankment Preservation Coalition has been advocating for the preservation of an elevated stonework structure that runs a half mile and spans 6 acres in downtown Jersey City. The Embankment is part of what was once a freight railroad line comprising seven tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It’s envisioned as part of the 2,600-mile East Coast Greenway: a traffic-free path spanning from Florida to Maine.
(via Inhabitat, BLDGBLOG and High Line Blog)
Wrestling with Moses
This Friday, journalist and land policy expert Anthony Flint will be discussing and signing his new book, Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City at the Greenbelt Nature Center on Staten Island. The book recounts how urban activist Jacobs helped prevent the construction of an elevated highway through her West Village neighborhood.
Robert Moses was a key player in the development of Staten Island’s highways and bridges, as he was in the rest of New York City. He was also influential in the opening of the Fresh Kills Landfill. Jacobs, author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, was an influential urbanist and vocal critic of Moses’ ambitious urban renewal plans. Should be a fun event and a lively discussion.
Friday, November 6, 7:30 pm at the Greenbelt Nature Center, at the intersection of Brielle and Rockland Avenues on Staten Island. Light refreshments will be served. Tickets are $15. Call (718) 351-3450 to reserve.
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)
