nyc

Everyone knows that New Yorkers pay attention to crosswalk signals... right?

So if you live in New York City, you may or may not have noticed that all the old crosswalk signals are gone. Instead of the spelling out WALK and DON’T WALK in type, the new signals use pictograms of a big red hand and walking person in a dotted outline of bright LED’s.

The new signal displays fit into the old, existing signal housing. And, by switching from incandescent bulbs to light-emitting diodes, the City notes, the new signals will both last longer and use less energy.

This piece in the New Yorker provides some hard numbers:

“The city is changing all eighty-five-thousand signs, at a cost of $28.2 million. The job started in 2000, in Queens; by February [2004] the [job] should be complete....

The idea is that the new ones, which rely on dozens of light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, will last six times longer than the old ones, which relied on two bulbs, and will save two million dollars a year in maintenance and electricity costs....

The brighter signs should be more visible to persons with partial sight. But, the author notes, the signals do have detractors:

“Among them many children, who sense that there is something patronizing about the hieroglyphs....

‘First of all, they’re really bright,’ Jacob said. ‘They hurt my eyes, even from, like, a block away. They make my eyes water. And, also, the first thing my sister could read was Walk/Don’t Walk.’ The three of them came to a corner: across the street, an upraised hand. They took a look, then crossed anyway. ‘The old one is just more original,’ Jacob went on. ‘Almost every other place has the Man and the Hand. Whenever I go anywhere else, it’s the Man and the Hand. Italy, France—they always have that. It’s un-unique. So I don’t really like it. Actually, most of my friends don’t like it.’”

The NYC page also claims that switching to “internationally recognized symbols” will make the signs “easily recognized by non-English speaking pedestrians.” I applaud the recognition and accomodation of non-English speakers in such a massive, city-wide initiative, but while the symbols may be “internationally recognized” in Western Europe, an open palm has different meanings in different cultures. For instance:

• In Japan an open palm in front of one’s face means “I don’t know,” “I don’t understand,” or “I am undeserving,” [source]
• In Greece, “extending the arm and hand (palm open) as if pushing something away from you is an age-old form of insult. In wars, Greeks would humiliate their prisoners by rubbing mud or fecal matter into their faces.” [source]
• And in Nigeria, pushing the palm of the hand forward with fingers spread is a vulgar gesture. [source]

With closs-cropped hair and boot-cut pants, the figure in white resembles other symbols used around here to indicate “male.”

The NYC page doesn’t mention it, but new crosswalk symbols are nationally mandated in the Manual of Uniform Control Devices published by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Manual sets forth detailed design standards for traffic signage around the United States.

Recently, in San Francisco I discovered another variation I’d never seen before. In addition to the white man and red hand, the signals there feature a red countdown indicating the number of seconds remaining to cross the street. It turns out the countdown option was added to the Manual in 2000, and is slowly gaining popularity across the country. I was struck by the simple brilliance of it. The additional information is much more useful than the simple flashing hand or DON’T WALK. The latter always seemed to start flashing when one was halfway across the road. This calls to mind the scene from Rain Main when the austistic character stops walking in the middle of the road.

But that, apparently, is exactly when it is supposed to start flashing. The period of the countdown, flashing hand, and flashing DON’T WALK is known as the “pedestrian clearance interval”, the time for pedestrians to finish crossing, not to start crossing.

Local studies around the U.S. are finding that the countdown signals come at a price. While the countdown reduces the number of pedestrians who start running when the flashing DON’T WALK signal appears, the countdown seems to be interpreted to mean that it is OK to cross the street if there are enough seconds on the clock. Pedestrians are more likely to start crossing the street during the countdown than during the flashing DON’T WALK. This is contrary to the intent of the designers, and of the law.

Significant data has not yet been gathered on the countdown signal’s effect on the overall number of pedestrian fatalities.

On February 6th, 2004, Al Leidner, former head of New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications GIS Program, spoke to members of GISMO about the future of geographic information systems in New York City.

A version of this program was originally presented to the Municipal Data Processing Council. I’ve combined my own notes below with those taken by James Labate.

The GIS Utility: Key Integration of IT

• GIS marries information technology with the science of geography.
• The value of information has become the center point of the industry: the quality, amount, and how integrated it is.
• The technology is there, but the data is lacking. The more combinable data is, the more valuable it becomes. To that effect, the “stove piping” of information is a massive problem.
• From Data to Wisdom: Increasing the value of data should be the goal of the GIS Community.
• The “Where Field” - Geography as an ancient science vs. IT as a new industry. GIS people need to bring geography to IT people.
• We’re still in the early stages of understanding the integration of data. But all data is spatially enabled and therefore can be combined. For example, an automated mapping application can plot a database of 500,000 tree locations off of building and other feature locations.
• Five basic fields on NYCmap, the City government-maintained basemap, are: postal address, latitude and longitude, street segment, parcel, and building. These are all related and identified with a unique ID.

How Do We Create Value?

• With a “critical mass” of data support to NYCmap.
• The Department of Health used a “critical mass” of West Nile identifiers (e.g. infected birds) to created a predictive model of West Nile Disease. (A series of maps were shown depicting the spread of the virus.) Using the maps, they could quickly spray selected areas. Human cases are preempted. Predict death and stop it. GIS can save lives.
• In 9/11, the NYC Office of Emergency Management lost its office and data when the towers collapsed. Responders to the disaster needed combinations of data. GISMO volunteers and others provided data to responders from an ad-hoc office at Pier 92. Speed and ability to deal with complex interactions were key features.
• City’s 311 non-emergency hotline uses a GIS engine which geocodes all data that is taken in. With this, can look for patterns and trends in neighborhoods. (Do trash dumping complaints predict a rise in crime?) The City recently mapped cell phone outages using survey info from 311 and the DoITT Web site.
• My Neighborhood Statistics at nyc.gov, and CMAP’s myCiti expand the knowledge of GIS among non-GIS professionals.
• 40 City, 35 State Agencies create knowledge from GIS data. (See notes on Al’s GIS Coordination Program).

New Developments

• Massive sewer and water system mapping project underway.
• Dept. of City Planning releases geosupport desktop application.
• COGIS - developing better property tax lot outlines.
• Homeland security driving Federal, Local GIS integration.
• FDNY, EMS, NYPD integrating exchange of data for emergency response, sharing with State, FBI.
• Modeling building and subway systems for emergency response. 468 stations in MTA. PATH and Amtrak next.
• Aerial photos, from Pictometry, show all sides of every building in NYC. Free to City agencies.

Opposing the Future - Roadblocks to Progress

• Underfunded IT and GIS.
• Little understanding of the transformative process of IT.
• Contempt for Planning - Outmoded stereotyping.

Cultural Evolution

• What are the combinations of data across service and agency barriers that produce results?
• What are the analytic and predictive tools that can do it?
• Combine all capital projects - see where there are synergies, opportunities to overcome problems.

Benefits

• Revenue: better use of geography will create a higher level of billing accuracy, increasing City revenues.

Public Safety

• Develop an integrated 911. Fire Dept. and Police should be working off the best geocoding system possible to improve response time, plot fastest routes to sites.
• CompSTAT - Police Dept. Application - GIS saving lives. Info and analysis brought together with new way of organizing. (See this BBC article on mapping crime.)
• Hazardous materials and combustibles: combination of previously uncombined data to give firefighters more information before entering a building.

Predictions

• Every City agency will have GIS. Wireless connections to data applications from sites.
• 500% staffing increase in City GIS Personnel.
• Federal Govt. will need and seek out state and local data as it is more accurate and of a higher quality.
• Spatially enabled information will be the foundation of a 35% increase in productivity and 2% increase in revenues.
• All City strategic data will be available and the increase of shared valuable information will increase social cohesion and collaboration.
• Construction time will be reduced 10% and construction costs reduced 5%.
• Predictive models will reduce violent crime by another 50%.

Al noted that more and more City data is available online, though many in audience noted felt that the City does not share enough of its data. NYCMap is not available to the public for “security reasons,” but is licensed to a couple of Universities and corporations under strict terms.

See also “City Governments Map Trends” from Wired, February 1, 2004, and this 2002 interview with Al about GIS and the emergency response on September 11, 2001.

Steven Romalewski sends this growing list of nonprofit online mapping Web sites in New York City:

“We’ve noticed a kind of a critical mass of these mapping and data services recently.

Most of these have been created by my project, NYPIRG’s Community Mapping Assistance Project (a team of six people, part of a nonprofit organization, that uses GIS to help other nonprofits achieve their missions). They’re all part and parcel of an effort to ‘democratize’ data and provide powerful new tools with a community-based focus. Each site uses GIS technologies that few other nonprofits have tapped into, but that government agencies and the private sector have used to great effect. The websites use government data in in new and innovative ways, often to provide services that most government agencies would never provide. And they give local neighborhoods and individuals a window on their world that would’ve been daunting, at best, and maybe impossible for the average citizen or block association to obtain. The sites have helped level the ‘playing field’ in New York to a great extent, so public agencies and large companies don’t have a monopoly on information.

Here are the links:

• http://www.MyCITI.org — the Community Information Technology Initiative (CITI) website that puts mapping tools in the hands of New York City’s local planning boards, in a way that they can avoid the need to spend limited resources and duplication if all 59 boards had to buy the software and invest in the data creation themselves;
  
• http://www.oasisnyc.net — a wealth of information about parks, wetlands, gardens, and other open spaces across New York, reaching across all levels of government and developed for all different aspects of the city’s ‘greening community’. This site was spearheaded and funded by the US Forest Service, and involves a steering committee of more than 40 nonprofits, government agencies, academics, and businesses;
  
• http://www.nonprofitmaps.org/netmaps/bedc/bedc.htm — the Brooklyn Economic Development Corp’s. ‘Destination Brooklyn’ service that offers detailed real estate and demographic information for every property and neighborhood in Brooklyn, geared toward small business owners and community development organizations;
  
• http://www.straphangers.org/cmap.php — the Straphangers Campaign’s ‘Get Where You’re Going’ site, providing precise location information about the subway stops closest to any street address in NYC (which the MTA’s maps can’t do, since they’re geographically distorted to fit on a printed page);
  
• http://www.MyGovernmentNYC.org — allows anyone with a New York City address to easily find and contact the public officials who represent them at all levels of government, and is used by thousands of people each month, regularly praising it for its simplicity and comprehensiveness;
  
• http://www.nonprofitmaps.org/netmaps/lac/lac.htm — how to locate family literacy programs based on a survey by the Literacy Assistance Center, mapped by category, borough, or ZIP Code. The site also shows nearby subway stops and public libraries;
  
• http://www.nonprofitmaps.org/nycnonprofits — the NYC Nonprofits Project Service Atlas. It extends a 3-year study of the nonprofit sector that was released in June 2002, by enabling you to locate any of more than 6,000 nonprofit groups in the city by ZIP Code, neighborhood, Community Board, or City Council district. Groups are listed in 17 major categories and lots of sub-categories. CMAP created the Atlas for the Nonprofits Project; and
  
• http://www.LowerManhattanMap.com — helping with the recovery and rebuilding efforts of lower Manhattan small businesses, tourist destinations, and cultural organizations. The site includes information maintained by 3 business improvement districts on almost 2,000 local businesses, retail stores, restaurants, community services, cultural sites, and tourist attractions.”

Reading the catalog for Me, Myself, and Infrastructure, I stumble onto this:

“The corporations with the highest revenues in the U.S. are Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and Ford. They base their business on the supremacy of the road in American life.”

Wow! Incredulous, I consult Google. It’s true. Sometimes, living blissfully without a car in New York City, one forgets how the rest of this enormous country lives.

But then, via Planetizen my revelation is adjusted again. Sprawl is not propelled simply by consumer demand, but by lobbyists and politics that protect and promote the interests of those same companies.

In the Internet Archive, the javascript ticker still scrolls “Recycling    Community Improvement    Water Conservation    Job Creation    Economic Development    Brownfield Reclamation,”  beneath the former Web site:

“The Bronx Community Paper Company (BCPC) — a joint project of the Bronx-based Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association and the Natural Resources Defense Council is an innovative effort to harness New York City’s ‘urban forest,’ which includes the 1.2 million tons of paper the city throws out every year, by building a paper de-inking and newsprint production facility in the city....

The end result will achieve several important objectives: creation of hundreds of long-term jobs; reduction of the City of New York’s costs for disposing of wastepaper; revitalization of an abandoned industrial tract in the inner city; and protection of forests....

Throughout the development process, the BCPC kept the public continually informed on the project’s progress. In fact, during the environmental licensing process, the BCPC held over 120 public meetings with members of the South Bronx community, although by law a developer is only required to hold one...

With all legal, political and environmental issues behind them, only two major tasks for the BCPC remain — securing a deal with a paper company to operate the plant, and, of course, building the mill.”

Facilities for the BCPC were to be built on the Harlem River Rail Yard, a brownfield site requiring environmental remediation. The mill was to produce 2,200 jobs during construction and more than 600 permanent full-time jobs during operation.

In 1997, the Department of Energy posted a glowing review of the project as a “sustainable business success story”:

• The manufacturing facility will be an integrated recycling paper mill, including a wastepaper de-inking plant, a newsprint paper making machine, a wastepaper sorting plant and a steam boiler.
• The project will advance the market for economically viable recycling of 100% post-consumer, totally chlorine-free paper.
• The mill will serve as a solid waste alternative for a city recently proposing to build seven large waste incinerators.
• The paper mill will enable a major paper-making company to use secondary fibers for the manufacture of its newsprint, a commodity that is now manufactured mostly with virgin timber.
• The Harlem Rail Yard, an abandoned industrial facility in an out-of-use rail yard, will serve as the site of the mill. An additional goal of the project is to redevelop the rails, which will then serve as a transportation corridor for materials to and from the facility.
• The project will pioneer the use of water from a reclaimed sewage wastewater treatment plant, keeping water costs one-third lower than comparable fresh water.
• A comprehensive air study of the South Bronx was initiated to ensure technologies will be implemented to reduce to the greatest extent possible all emissions from the facility.
• The project will incorporate innovative energy-efficient technologies not implemented in any other paper mill in the country.
• The mill will utilize a chlorine-free de-inking technology that produces no air emissions or odors.
• Maya Lin, designer of the National Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, will design the facility’s layout and structure.

Banana Kelly was founded in 1977 when thirty residents gathered to stop the demolition of their homes along Kelly Street, a crescent shaped block in the heart of the Longwood/Hunts Point neighborhood of the South Bronx. Without support, tools, money, title to the property, they succeeded in rehabilitating the buildings and in creating 21 units of high-quality affordable housing. The activists formed the Banana Kelly Community Improvement Association, Inc. to continue the work that they had started. Since 1978, the organization has rehabilitated, weatherized, and managed thousands of housing units, provided service referral and housing advocacy, conducted education and job training, and attracted the first new health care clinic in the community in 22 years.

Revenue from the Bronx Community Paper Company was to fund other community development projects in the neighborhood, including:

• The Bronx Dormitory Project. A joint venture between Banana Kelly and Bronx Regional High School that will provide shelter for up to 20 students attending the high school who do not have stable living arrangements.
• The South Bronx Family Learning Center. A proposed 35,000-square-foot center that will include health care, child care, literacy classes, employment and training centers and housing opportunities.
• The Prospect Corridor Commercial Development Project. This project will promote local economic development by connecting existing and planned residences with a retail strip on Prospect Avenue.
• The Library Project. A project to increase the availability of library services in the South Bronx by providing additional equipment, supplies and materials to local libraries.
• Business and Housing Revolving Loan Fund. This project will provide a pool of working capital to be used by small entrepreneurs to purchase inventory, equipment or supplies to meet their contractual obligations and expansion needs. The fund will concentrate its services on housing groups that require basic repairs or replacement of major systems in their buildings.
• The Children’s Endowment Fund. To be administered by Banana Kelly, this fund will enhance and expand the educational and vocational opportunities available to children.

But by 2000 the project had folded.

From The New York Times, August 17, 2003

‘Bronx Ecology’: Green, Rocky Road

“In 1992, Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, proposed building a paper mill in the South Bronx. It would harvest the immense amount of wastepaper (used newspapers, junk mail, office detritus) New York City generates each day, recycle it into newsprint using ecologically sound methods and sell the product to local consumers, notably newspapers. Such a mill would address two city woes: the continuing slump, particularly severe in places — like the South Bronx — long dependent on the shrinking manufacturing sector (joblessness there hovered around 20 percent, 50 percent for teenagers); and the loss of traditional outlets for the city’s waste stream (ocean dumping, hauling to putrid landfills and burning in dioxin-spewing plants).

More grandly, Hershkowitz’s Bronx Community Paper Company would serve as a world-class demonstration project. He wanted to prove the viability of green capitalism — a marriage of economic development and environmental remediation+- to a host of unbelievers in the business world and the environmental movement, who were locked (he believed) in unnecessary combat. Hershkowitz knew the city presented a host of special obstacles to eco-industrialists, but if a mill like this could make it here, he reasoned, it could make it anywhere. He came amazingly close to pulling it off, as ‘Bronx Ecology,’ by Hershkowitz himself, and ‘Tilting at Mills,’ by Lis Harris, for many years a staff writer at The New Yorker, show.

To guarantee good relations with the plant’s neighbors, Hershkowitz found a local sponsor in Banana Kelly, one of the community development corporations that had sprung up in the 70’s, and vested ownership in it. Determined to resuscitate urban brownfields (polluted and abandoned industrial sites), the paper company settled on the derelict Harlem River Rail Yard. And to transform what others saw as waste into valuable raw material — a key precept of the sustainable economy movement — he insisted the mill use recycled water from a nearby sewage treatment plant instead of river water.

Hershkowitz found a receptive Swedish paper company, and with a corporate anchor secured, investment bankers came on board, as did construction companies and engineers. He got Maya Lin, the architect of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, to design a striking complex. The Natural Resources Defense Council put up seed money and helped clear regulatory hurdles. A bevy of foundations gave predevelopment grants. The state offered loan guarantees and helped with cleanup costs, and the city’s economic development arm provided expertise. On paper, it looked like a half-billion dollar enterprise was taking off.

Almost immediately it slammed into problems.

Businessmen’s support proved fickle: from their perspective Hershkowitz had overburdened the project with costly, time-consuming and risky furbelows on behalf of extraneous, if not alien, social and ecological goals. Worse, when the Swedish firm withdrew (new management wanted to concentrate on European ventures) it proved impossible to find another big paper company, the kind Wall Street would approve (one potential replacement declined after calculating it could clear more than 30 percent in the Bronx, but 40 percent in South Korea). Besides, in the 90’s boom, higher profits were available outside the industry altogether, in tech stocks or hedge funds. After 1992, moreover, the supply of newsprint outran demand, so producers began consolidating; the last thing they wanted was a new plant online.

And there were local competitors. In 1995, an Australian company built a recycling mill on Staten Island and won the right to process up to 50 percent of the city’s wastepaper. Though not in direct competition — it produced liner board (used, for example, for shoe boxes), not newsprint — it lobbied hard against any municipal deal with Hershkowitz, just in case one day it might want the remainder. Also opposing the Bronx project were commercial carters linked to the mob, and waste haulers whose profits were linked to exporting the trash, including giant multinational corporations like Waste Management , whose campaign contributions gave them considerable clout at City Hall. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was already predisposed against the project because the Bronx was the domain of a rival, Fernando Ferrer, though in fact Ferrer too was an opponent, miffed he hadn’t been allowed to pick the participating community groups.

Some of Hershkowitz’s biggest headaches came from his presumed community ally, whose new leadership proved undependable. Other community groups were also on the attack, some because the building trades refused to give construction jobs to neighborhood people, others because they wanted a slice of the development pie. (Once he was told that $70,000 would make his problems go away; when he refused to come across, Hershkowitz says, it was publicly implied that the plant was environmentally genocidal.)

Despite all this, Hershkowitz and the project plowed on, year after year, nimbly escaping one crisis only to tumble into another. Finally, just after having found a large construction company willing to undertake the project, the backers were sued by a rival construction firm (a common way to grab a piece of the action). Now the Natural Resources Defense Council itself wanted out, and its employee off the case. The paper company was handed over to the contractor-developer in 1999 and struggled on one more year before Giuliani pulled the plug....

The real question is how useful his blueprint for a greener future really is. Here, it seems to me, Hershkowitz pulls back from confronting the implications of what he’s laid out, particularly the key question of who exactly might be the agent to make his vision real. It’s clearly not the corporate world: ‘green capitalism’ stands revealed as a patent oxymoron. He urges environmentalists to step forward, but there’s no sign that major environmental groups will soon venture again into eco-industrial waters (certainly not if they read ‘Bronx Ecology’). As for labor, union pension fund managers proved even more conservative than investment bankers.

Hershkowitz comes closest to the mark when he wonders if the state might not expand its role, either building green projects as public works or committing public capital as lead investor. Certainly — pace current free-market pieties — government is capable of ambitious enterprise, viz. the Manhattan Project, the the space program, the Internet and the New Deal. Moreover, putatively private industries (notably pulp and paper, petroleum and highway construction) are, Hershkowitz reminds us, heavily subsidized by various levels of government. Why not be transparent about public investment, and establish a federal development bank like, but better than, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that underwrote much of the New Deal and World War II? That might yet make Hershkowitz’s bold blueprint a reality.”

The Bronx Community Paper Company may be dead for now, but near by, in Hunt’s Point, a plastics recycling plant is just being planned.

Just after sunset, the lights come back on to applause in the street. Email checked, I should probably write something about design and the last 24 hours in New York City. Something about flashlights, candles, and radios; bridges and tunnels, skyscrapers, and long walks home; acoustic guitars, drums, and old clarinets; block parties and bon fires; cellular, cordless, analog and pay phones, and just plain hollerin from the street; public parks in times of crisis, generators and hot dogs, gas-burning pizza ovens, second-hand books, cool breezes, and a long nap on an August afternoon; energy efficiency and sustainable design; infrastructure, ideology, and public policy; and the stars returning briefly to the night sky over Manhattan.

Instead, I’m going out to find something to eat.

I leave you with this:

Studio del Sole’s Violetta Solargear is a pocket-sized solar power charger for AA and AAA Ni-MH batteries. They also sell a USB extension and a DC adapter to power your mobile phone, PDA, music player, or Game Boy. A personal solar panel for your personal electronic device. It’s just so elegant.

“Designing the High Line” is an exhibition of ideas for the conversion of the High Line elevated rail structure to public space. The exhibit is showing in Grand Central Terminal until July 26. 720 entries were submitted from 36 countries. More than 100 of the proposals, including the competition winners, are displayed in the Grand Central exhibit. All 720 entries are displayed on the Web site.

In addition to the four principal winners, designs were selected for special cash awards for depicting the most compelling solution for universal access to the elevated structure, and for incorporating plants and wild flowers native to New York. (Pictures are posted here and here, though difficult to read.)

The High Line runs for 1.45 miles over Manhattan’s West Side, from 34th Street down through Chelsea to Gansevoort Street in the Meat Packing District. The High Line was built during one of New York City’s largest infrastructure projects, the West Side Improvement project. The project took place in the early 1930’s during the Great Depression and was presided over by Robert Moses. The Line carried freight above the streets of the West Side until 1980, when the last boxcars hauled a load of frozen turkeys down the tracks. The structure has been inactive since, collecting trash, shedding rust, and sprouting an elevated garden of weeds and wildflowers. [more history here]

In 1992, the Chelsea Property Owners, a coalition of two dozen businesses who own property under and near the Line — mostly parking lots, machine shops, warehouses, and the trendy Chelsea Market — won a conditional demolition order from the Surface Transportation Board. The proposal to tear down the Line was later supported by Mayor Giuliani. The plan never materialized because the coalition and the railroad’s owner at the time, Conrail, could not agree on an ultimate price tag for demolition. [source]

Through the economic boom of the 90’s, however, new residents moved into the neighborhoods below the Line, among them artists, designers, and galleries. In 1999, an altogether different group of neighborhood residents founded Friends of the High Line, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission of converting the structure to an elevated public space.

And, after much lobbying, it looks like the High Line might actually be redesigned. At the July 9 benefit preview of the exhibition, New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced a $15.75 million funding commitment for planning and construction. The first $750,000 was allocated in the budget adopted by the New York City Council on June 27.

“The funds can be used for planning, design, and construction costs related to the High Line project during the fiscal year that began July 1. The remainder of the $15.75 million commitment will be allocated to the High Line in the following three fiscal years.

‘The High Line was built during the Depression to invigorate New York’s economy, and it will reinvigorate our City again today,’ said Speaker Miller. ‘As we have learned from our City’s great parks, public spaces create value and catalyze growth. Central Park was planned in a recession. Even in tough economic times, we have to invest in our future—by planning for the public projects that will keep us at the forefront of the world’s great cities.’

The funds will come from the City’s capital budget, which pays for project costs such as planning, design, construction, and long-term leases. The allocation will not affect municipal services, which are funded separately through the City’s expense budget.” [source]

The Friends of the High Line are also seeking private, corporate, foundation, and federal funds for the project.

The competition follows two detailed planning studies: Reclaiming the High Line, sponsored by Friends of the High Line and the Design Trust for Public Space; and a comprehensive economic feasibility study, commissioned at the City’s request.

In December 2002, the City of New York took the first step in converting the High Line to a public walkway through federal rails-to-trails legislation. FHL is currently waiting on decision before Federal surface transportation board to allow City to move forward.

“As the next phase in its project to preserve and re-use the High Line, Friends of the High Line will hold a series of open workshops with members of the community beginning in September, with a variety of the competition proposals serving as springboards for discussion. At the end of 2003, Friends of the High Line will incorporate the community’s comments into a Request for Proposals, which will lead to the development of realizable designs.” [source]

The High Line is currently private property, owned by the rail company CSX Corporation. CSX acquired the High Line when it purchased Conrail in 1997. Conrail was created by the federal government in 1970’s from the remains of the New York Central and other railroads bankrupted by “competition from trucks, subsidized by the federally-built Interstate highway system, and an archiac system of economic regulations which prevented railroads from responding to the needs of the market.” The corporation was sold to the public in 1987, in what was then the nation’s biggest IPO. [more on Conrail] Though the High Line is private property, the federal government, specifically the Surface Transportation Board, has control over the Line as a piece of the nation’s rail infrastructure. CSX has been ordered by the government to work with all interested parties to effect the best exit strategy for the High Line, and to remain neutral as to the High Line’s outcome.

The City can not afford to purchase land under High Line, so has instead proposed rezoning and property transfer, moving air and development rights out to sites around West Chelsea. One potential consequence would be a wall of huge residential towers springing up along 10th and 11th Avenues in otherwise moderately sized manufacturing and retail zones. One challenge faced by city planners is the prevention such “massing.”

The High Line snakes through many neighborhoods and buildings, but sits almost entirely within the area served by Manhattan Community Board No. 4. The current Line blocks sunlight, collects trash, and drops water, rust, and pigeon droppings on the streets below. However, according to a survey by the Board, most community residents support conversion over demolition. They want to make sure, though, that the results of the redesign are the best damn park possible. The community is wary of new large-scale structures or billboards that would block sight of or access to the Hudson River. The project should provide open space for cultural programing, be accessible, and safe, providing a way to get up or down quickly. But most of all, it should connect with and respect the community. Some residential buildings sit within 5 feet of Line.

As development proceeds, areas beneath and adjacent to High Line will become lucrative spots for retail. Indeed, represenatives of our businessman-turned-Mayor is keen to move some of that retail up onto High Line itself. Other possibilities include constructing adjacent buildings with roof access that would meet the High Line or produce huge urban stairs, parks that terrace up to the bed of High Line, which is about 30 feet from the ground.

At a panel discussion, I asked Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line, about their advocacy strategy and how design competition fits into it. The competition took a year to organize from beginning to end and was a way to get people excited, to generate activism and support, and to provide a public platform for discussion. He noted the power of crazy, weird ideas - and how it is often easier to draw attention and support for the crazy ideas than the conservative plans. Another panelist noted that, when not located to a specific neighborhood, the constituency of public open space is transient and often does not have a consistent voice. The competition was an opportunity “to get those ideas out there.” Over the years, many have developed redesigns of the High Line for their thesis projects.

I asked Mr. Hammond what has led to their success to date while civic budgets are being cut and other projects around the city have faltered. Mr. Hammond proposed that the support base was “not the usual mix of neighborhood advocates.... The strongest supporters are architects, artists, art dealers.” Indeed a list of supporters at the gala benefit includes many A-list authors, actors, and artists. Not your usual city planning scene.

Mr. Hammond also noted that the design of their campaign materials was also key. Several designers have donated services to develop graphically sophisticated materials. Brochures, Web site, postcards for public comment... “Everything produced looks interesting. It suggests that the final design will be as innovative.”

Ironically, development of the High Line may push many in the arts community to leave the area. When the project is complete, rents around the Line are likely to increase. Many arts spaces are already midway through their 10 year lease, and unable to afford the current market rents. Part of the development plans could create public spaces that would not command retail rents and could support galleries, though these would be limited.

So how will the crazy ideas not get lost, or bogged down by politics? And allow ultimate designer to maintain poetic vision? The challenge is yet to come. Once New York realizes that the project is possible, everyone will want a piece of the action. It will be important to maintain a clear vision, and to make sure the final product is as extraordinary, interesting, and strange as the High Line itself.

Check out these photo galleries on the current state of the High Line.

The High Line was mentioned here in one of my first blog posts.

Apologies for the lack of updates lately. I’m just back in town from travels and have a whole stack of notes to write up.

In the meantime, I’m very happy to announce that New York City has started recycling again. Plastic recycling resumed on July 1. Glass recycling will resume in April 2004. Here’s the Department of Sanitation press release and poster.

Recycling was suspended last year as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to cut costs and fend off a projected $5 billion deficit. A year later, at a recent City Council budget hearing, Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty conceded that the projected savings from cuts to recycling never actually appeared. [source]

The City Council worked out the deal with the Mayor to resume recycling in a recent budget agreement.

The city will pay Hugo Neu Schnitzer East $51 per ton to handle the material, making the cost of processing the city’s recycling less expensive than processing its trash. According to HNSE, the city currently pays an estimated $105 per ton for the transportation and disposal of plastic and glass in the solid waste stream.

“[With the acceptance of the bid,] HNSE will build a multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art recycling facility in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx that will bring more than 40 high-paying, unionized jobs and numerous economic benefits to an impoverished area of New York City. Moreover, since HNSE operates one of the metropolitan area’s largest barge fleets, the development of the new recycling facility would create little additional truck traffic—indeed, the new facility would actually remove truck traffic from city roads and highways.” [source]

Building an recycling infrastructure in NYC is a wonderful thing, but I wonder about the environmental impact of the recycling plant itself. Residents of the South Bronx already endure much of the City’s waste transfer and incineration. Children living in East Harlem are three times more likely to have asthma than children living on the Upper West Side, and 25% of children from the South Bronx have asthma. As plans for the new recycling facility was just announced, the South Bronx Clean Air Coalition is seeking further information in order to evaluate the impact on health and traffic in the area.

On April 11, 2003 the U.S. military released their list of most-wanted senior Iraqi government in the form of a deck of playing cards.

The cards were designed by staff of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the 3401st and 3418th Military Intelligence Detachments. One of the designers, Sergeant Scott Boehmler, 27, an Army reservist from Hazleton, Pennsylvania reports, “We understood what guys like to do on their downtime. This is an effective way of getting these images in the soldiers’ minds.”

Images can be downloaded from the Department of Defense Web site in HTML or PDF.

Production of the cards was widely covered in the U.S. mainstream media and treated as a significant event in the war. Subsequent reports of the arrest of Iraqi officials frequently refer to the list, even noting when an arrested official is not on the list. The reports are occasionally illustrated with an image of said official’s playing card.

The decks have also become enormously popular with the public. Web sites have sold hundreds of thousands of decks. As of May, one company reported $1.5 million in sales. It’s one thing to sell a war to the public. It’s whole other matter for them to buy it themselves in droves. I’ve even seen street vendors in NYC selling the decks alongside the knockoff sun glasses and watches and received a couple of unsolicited email messages offering the decks for sale.

U.S. military personnel are the world’s largest consumers of playing cards, according to Cincinnati-based United States Playing Card Company, the world’s largest playing card manufacturer. According to Time (May 12, 2003) the extreme popularity of the most-wanted cards prompted the distributor to reissue cards created for the military in earlier wars. During World War II “spotter decks” were produced for troops to distinguish between Allied and enemy aircraft. During the Vietnam War “decks containing only the ace of spades were passed out to U.S. troops, who would display a card on their helmets to scare away the Viet Cong — supposedly superstitious about the card, which fortune tellers considered a harbinger of suffering and death.”

The cards have inspired a genre of spinoffs.

GreatUSAflags.com has followed up with U.S. Military Heroes playing cards “honoring America’s servicemen and women involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom.” The deck also features images of aircraft, ships, submarines, aircraft carriers, vehicles and missiles deployed in battle.

On April 25, global justice group, the “Trade Regulation Organization,” released their U.S. Regime Change cards [image, PDF 6MB]. The group, “estimating that the U.S. governing regime is no longer consistent with world peace or prosperity, hopes that the playing cards will show the way to regime change and, eventually, large-scale war crimes proceedings.”

On May 1, Greenpeace International released a deck of “most wanted” cards depicting the nuclear powers of the world. [PDF, 96K] “This deck is designed to help delegates to the Non-proliferation Treaty meeting recognise owners of weapons of mass destruction. Packed with nuclear weapons of mass destruction facts. Fun for the whole family.” Says Tom Clements, senior campaigner with Greenpeace, “It ties the anti-war message together with the disarmament message.”

On May 7, the conservative Web site NewsMax announced the Deck of Weasels [image] which features images of anti-war celebrities and politicians includes Michael Moore, Tim Robbins, Jacques Chirac, Barbara Streisand, Teddy Kennedy, Kofi Annan, Vicente Fox, Jean Chretien, Senator Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. Each card features a quote by the celeb opposing the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Each of the photographs has been altered so each figure wears the beret of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard.

On May 15, the Ruckus Society released America’s War Profiteers, a deck of cards identifying 53 individuals and institutions in the oil, military, government, media, and policy sectors. “The groups’ aim is to expose, ‘The links among corporations, institutions, and government officials that profit from endless war.’” The site also features a good set of links to articles and campaign pages.

On May 23, Nitestar Productions released “The Deck of Republican Chickenhawks,” depicting the 54 Republican officials, congressmen, politicians and pundits who avoided serving their country through connections, deferments, or other excuses.” Needless to say, many of the officials vigorously supported the U.S. war on Iraq. The deck was inspired by a list maintained by the New Hampshire Gazette of Republican politicians and pundits who have never served in armed combat.

Still other decks reported in the May 18 Washington Post:

“Republicans in the Texas legislature had cards made depicting the state’s ‘most-wanted Democrats’ — the lawmakers who fled to Oklahoma to scuttle a vote on a bitterly contested Republican redistricting plan....

Inspired by the Pentagon’s cards, Frances Gomez, 23, decided to print up card sets featuring her top 55 Cuban villains. But just before the printing order was sent out, Gomez tweaked her plan in hopes of really sticking it to Fidel Castro. She decided to make the cards look like dominoes, the real king of the board games in Little Havana and just about anywhere else that Cubans gather.

So, instead of being the ace of spades — the card reserved for Saddam Hussein in the Pentagon’s deck — Fidel is the Double Nine, the domino tile that no player wants to hold at the end of a game. Gomez needed help from Cuban American groups in Miami to compile her list. She was born in the United States and says, like many Cuban Americans her age, that she knew little about the details behind the deep animosity felt toward Castro and his allies by older generations that fled the island nation.

‘It’s important to learn who these people are,’ Gomez said.”

In addition to the playing cards are recent political trading cards.

In 1991, trading card publisher Topps (coordinating with the Pentagon and Navy Department) published 3 sets of Desert Storm Trading Cards. In 2001, they published a series of Operation Enduring Freedom Trading Cards.

An article in the Guardian notes:

“90 glossy cards featuring US political and military leaders, the patriotic response to the September 11 attacks, and military hardware.... The series also features a photograph of flowers laid outside the US embassy in Pakistan in the aftermath of the September 11 atrocities. No corresponding card shows the subsequent angry demonstrations against the US bombing campaign.... Topps would not directly respond to charges that the cards promoted an unquestioning view of the war to children.”

Kingsley Barham, publisher of marijuana trading cards that cover hemp history, politics, types, and uses, developed a set of trading cards about the September 11 attacks, Heroes of the World Trade Center. Despite approval from families of victims whose portraits are on the cards, the cards were met with outrage by politicians and the media. The New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg urged lawyers to find ways to prevent the sale of the cards.

Satire decks of the U.S. “war on terrorism” include American Crusade 2001+, Unofficial Iraqi Freedom Action Cards, and the images of Playing the Hitler Card, a small collection of cards with images of dictators and links to pages were they have recently been compared to Hitler.

In September, 2002 Slate published the Flash animation Corporate Scandal Trading Cards, “the fastest guide to America’s top 10 business crackups” with names and photos of CEO’s along with some statistics and a brief description of the crimes and frauds of WorldCom, Enron, Global Crossing, Adelphia, Tyco, ImClone, Halliburton, Harken, Qwest, and Andersen Consulting.

In April 2000, Texans for Public Justice produced a set of Bush League trading cards. The 20 cards feature statistics and a profile of a Bush “Pioneer” who has raised at least $100,000 for Bush’s presidential election. The profiles are drawn from TPJ’s investigation into the 212 announced Bush “Pioneers.”

On the heels of their 1989 comic book “Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, & Covert Action,” in 1990 Eclipse published the original Friendly Dictator Trading Cards. The hallucinogenic artwork of Bill Sienkiewicz illustrates “three dozen of America’s most embarrassing ‘friends’, a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests.” Other political trading card sets published by Eclipse include “Drug Wars,” “The Iran Contra Scandal,” and “Rotten to the Core - New York Political Scandal,” and “Coup D’etat,” which presents theories pertaining to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Douglas Rushkoff’s 1994 book Media Virus quotes journalist and Eclipse editor Catherine Yronwode:

“Our trading cards are designed so they read like Hypercard stacks. Each cross-references to other cards... They all connect, and you can rearrange them in chains of interconnectivity. Or chronologically. You can find out who someone’s boss was, how different people moved around, that this guy was in Vietnam at the same time as this guy, and then that they were both in Nicaragua at the same time, too.”

Eclipse’s “Crime and Punishment” and “True Crime” cards, which present information about serial killers and gangsters, prompted the Board of Supervisors of Nassau County to pass Local Law 11-1992 which made it illegal to disseminate “indecent crime material to minors.” From the Friendly Dictators site:

“In 1997... a U.S. federal appeals court struck down a Nassau County, New York law banning the sale of trading cards depicting ‘any heinous crime". The court found for Eclipse who had challenged the law on First Amendment grounds - cf: Eclipse Enterprises, Inc. v. Gulotta (U.S. Federal Court of Appeal, 2nd Circuit, December 1997). The expense of this court case seems to have bankrupted them - at any rate, for whatever reason, Eclipse appears to have folded. There are no web entries for the company, no listing in any of the Publishing Indexes I’ve been able to find, and all its products are out of print, as far as the big web booksellers are concerned.”

Details of the case and proceedings can be found here.

This entry has been updated and incorporated into An Introduction to Activism on the Internet.

I’ve been searching for a list of excellent examples of Internet activism. I couldn’t find one, so I made my own.

I’ve structured much of this list around categories outlined by Sasha Costanza-Chock in “Mapping the Repertoire of Electronic Contention,” in Representing Resistance: Media, Civil Disobedience and the Global Justice Movement, eds. Andrew Opel and Donnalyn Pompper. Greenwood, in press. Unless otherwise indicated, the quoted text below has been taken from him.

Though I’ve added some of my own commentary, this is not intended to be a full analysis of the campaigns and organizations mentioned. I disagree with the politics of many of the examples listed, but think there is something to be learned from each of the them.

Continue reading "Techniques of Electronic Advocacy" »