Above the gentle hum of conversation and the less gentle hum of traffic rumbling past on Fifth Avenue, one could hear the chirping of birds and the clanking of metal as a small group of New Yorkers took turns thwacking each other with swords.
Bryant Park, which decades ago was one of the most notorious Read More
New York is about to be just as green as the Hudson River!
The Deputy Mayor, Cas Holloway, New York City Department of Environmental Protection and the New York City Economic Development Corporation announced a proposal for solar and wind power facilities in Fresh Kills on Staten Island earlier this week.
There’s a 75-acre plot of land within the massive 2,2000-acre dump-turned-public park available for lease that could be developed into a facility that generates upwards of 20 megawatts of renewable energy. That is enough to power about 6,000 homes. It will double the city’s natural energy capacity. Read More
It may be the best new park in the city that’s not the High Line, maybe even better, so whenever there is news of expansion at Brooklyn Bridge Park, it is good news. In this case, the good news comes in threes. Read More
Looks like the recession has born some green shoots, after all—for green groupies.
Nonprofit land trusts, who buy up swathes of empty land for preservation purposes, are reaping the benefits of the tumbled real estate market in New York and New Jersey, according to the Journal. Developers are finding themselves in the less than ideal position, of making a reluctant call to a land trust and offering them hundreds of acres, at up to 90 percent discounts. Read More
It seems that the prayers of Dr. Seuss’ lovable Lorax are finally being answered—in the form of MillionTreesNYC. But like all things, it comes at a cost.
Having recently reached its halfway point of planting 500,000 trees in October 2011 (a year ahead of schedule), MillionTreesNYC now faces its biggest obstacle yet: the U.S. economy. Just as nearly every other industry’s budget and workforce are being trimmed, the greenery program is no exception, according to City Limits. Read More
Walking through the two N.Y.U. superblocks just north of Houston Street can be both a tranquil and oppressive experience. Surrounded by brusque, mid-century apartment buildings many times taller than the townhouses and loft buildings surrounding them, the open space at the Silver Towers and Washington Square Village is not exactly inviting.
Created by some of the greatest landscape architects of their day, these spaces are, to put it mildly, challenging. Like the modernist architects redefining what buildings should look like in the middle of the last century, so too did these landscape architects, favoring viny slopes and more concrete than vegetation in places. At the corner of Houston Street and LaGuardia Place, Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape, which to most New Yorkers may look like an overgrown thatch, is actually a celebrated space taught in design and art schools around the world.
These “parks” need, if not improving, at least updating. That is a big part of N.Y.U.’s pitch to the community as it works to rezone the area, one of the most vicious Village NIMBY fights since Robert Moses built these superblocks half a century ago.
Still, does that mean N.Y.U. can bend the truth when talking about the project? Read More
Upper Upper East Side residents have been locked in a development death match with The Related Companies for a few months now, ever since the company decided to exercise its right to build a residential tower on the site of a playground it has maintained for the past 25 years. Actually, 28 years.
Recently, Related decided to close Ruppert Playground, but the community is fighting back because there are no immediate plans to redevelop the site. Rather than let Related take its ball and go home, though, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has stepped up to the plate and potentially throwing up some hurdles that could bring greater oversight, and possibly concessions, to the site. Read More
Readers know we love a good carousel around these part, which is why the news that the one in Forest Hills Park may soon start spinning again brings childish glee to The Observer‘s pink hearts. And it turns out the savior is an unusual sort: the same Italian amusement operator that has revived Coney Island in recent years. Read More
Thomas Balsley is one of the foremost landscape architects in New York who happens to hold a special distinction as the person who has designed more Privately Owned Public Spaces, better known as POPS, than anyone else. A zoning anomaly until Occupy Wall Street made them famous, POPS have become an important part of the city’s landscape, and their fate is no doubt going to be debated in the year to come. Here, Mr. Balsley shares his thoughts on the vital importance of these spaces in our city and what their future holds.
In the recent flurry of newspaper accounts about the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, we read a lot about how Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park was a Privately Owned Public Space, a small, publicly accessible park maintained by private owners in exchange for zoning incentives.
As an urban landscape architect in New York City, I’ve designed dozens of these spaces. I’m proud to say I’ve been called (in Jerold Kayden’s Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience) “the most prolific of the city’s public space design specialists”; I’ve even had one named after me, Balsley Park, on West 57th St. And it’s precisely because I’ve seen firsthand the power of POPS to enhance our urban existence that I’m such a strong supporter of the zoning rules that created them. Almost 90 acres of POPS have been installed throughout the densely developed island of Manhattan, without a cent of public financing. Imagine what the city would have had to pay to acquire the land to build and then maintain even half of these!
Now that the occupation is over, however, the city is left facing some daunting questions about the ambiguous nature of these parks and plazas. Do they belong to the public, or to their owners? Should they be, and feel, more civic in character, or quieter and more sequestered? What limitations should be placed on their use? Some of these same questions were asked in the 19th century by the creators of our city’s great public parks. What’s remarkable is how, after over a hundred years, we as New Yorkers still haven’t come up with an adequate urban solution to the pressing social need that public demonstrations like OWS represent. Read More
The Parks Department has left a bad taste in the city’s mouth—and its coffers.
Yesterday, Comptroller John Liu announced that Parks lost the city $8.8 million by poorly managing concessions and vendors, according to a new audit from the comptroller’s office. Read More
