BZP is named a book of the month!

A Daily Dose of Architecture has named Beyond Zuccotti Park one of its “28 & 28” books of the month! The blog is focused around architecture and architectural musings from New York City. BZP was chosen as one of the books for this month and featured with a review.

[The contributors’] takes on public space and assembly could be read as recipes for making urban open spaces amenable for exercising democratic rights. It’s certainly a goal that goes well beyond design; or more accurately, the context that design works within is much more charged and contested than in other realms of building and landscape. Consensus won’t be found in the varied collection, but like OWS itself, there is a shared dissatisfaction with things, in this case how the public fits into public space.

Read the full review here.

Beyond Zuccotti Park Authors Win Multiple Awards

Since the publication of Beyond Zuccotti Park, many of its authors have been recognized for their achievements in the fields of urban planning and design, community development, architecture, globalization and space, and sociology.

Ron Shiffman, lead editor and contributor of BZP, is being honored with the 2012 Jane Jacobs Medal for Lifetime Leadership by the Rockefeller Foundation for his work as a “trailblazer in his development of the model for community development corporations.” He is also being awarded the 2013 Planning Pioneer honor by the American Planning Association. This prestigious award is presented to pioneers of the profession who have made personal and direct innovations in American planning and have significantly and positively redirected planning practice, education, or theory with long-term results.

Michael Pyatok, contributor to BZP, was recently honored with the 2013 Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Architecture. Pyatok received the award in the category of making a significant contribution to the quality of public architecture while working in the private sector.

Michael Kimmelman and Saskia Sassen, both contributors to BZP, have been included in the Disruption Index, a Next City index of people who have changed cities.

Saskia Sassen was also included in Die Arkitektin‘s Top 10 Theoriticians of spatial theory.

We would like to congratulate all our authors on their wonderful achievements.

Van Alen Books hosts Beyond Zuccotti Park: Privatization of Public Assests and Public Space

Van Alen Books, an architecture and design bookstore located in Manhattan, is hosting a dialogue for Beyond Zuccotti Park. The panel includes contributor to BZP Arthur Eisenberg, DSGN AGNC founder Quilian Riano, and urbanist and city planner, Moses Gates. Lynne Elizabeth, editor of BZP, will monitor the open dialogue. Some of the questions that will be addressed by the panel include:

“Is public space really public?”

“What are the mechanisms of privatization at play?”

“How are we allowed access and use of public space?”

Please join us on January 17 at 7pm for this exciting open discussion. Please visit the Facebook event here fore more details and the Van Alen Books website here for more information about the bookstore and the associated institution.

BZP Places in Top Ten Books 2013 by Planetizen

Beyond Zuccotti Park was included on Planetizen‘s Top Ten List of Best Books for 2013 in urban planning, design and development. The list is comprised of books published in 2012 that Planetizen‘s editors chose, based on of a number of criteria including the potential power of the book to influence the urban planning, design and development professions. The editors wrote,

If a book could resemble a social movement, Beyond Zucotti Park comes real close…Much like the diverse concerns that found a place in the Occupy movement, this book traverses a broad range of questions about the role of public spaces in society

We are very excited to have been included on the list and would like to thank the editors at Planetizen. Please click here for the full list and full review of BZP.

Grassroots Recovery Help in the Wake of Sandy

For those who wish to help in Sandy recovery efforts, here is news about grassroots groups to support! It comes from Ron Shiffman of Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, who is himself volunteering with a joint regional disaster task force and the NYC Office of Emergency Management. Pratt has posted a spreadsheet of organizations to help at this link. It offers contact info and websites for each organization.

In addition to efforts like 596 Acres and the Red Hook Initiative, folks on the ground like Pat Simon of Ocean Bay Community Development Corporation of the Rockaways are working with Public Housing folks, know the community, and have done an outstanding job in the wake of Sandy, as has Jeanne DuPont of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance. These are two groups indigenous to the area that work with those traditionally ignored. People who have self-organized to help also need to be identified and supported.

Others worthy of support are the New York Environmental Justice Alliance working to protect vulnerable communities from toxic poisoning that can easily engulf waterfront communities where industrial sites have or presently exist. The need to maintain jobs coupled with the need to clean those areas is critical. Groups like el Puente and UPROSE need funds to keep serving youth and education programs and others like the BTCC and churches united need resources to help identify and develop housing relocation resources.

Occupy Sandy is collecting supplies and donations and leading a series of grassroots efforts, including dispatching people for on-the-scene work, in New York and New Jersey. In a New York Times article entitled “Occupy Sandy: A Movement Moves to Relief,” Allen Feuer described how on the morning of November 7, “as the winds picked up and FEMA closed its office ‘due to weather,’ an enclave of Occupiers was huddled in a storefront amid the devastation, handing out supplies and trying to make sure that those bombarded by last month’s storm stayed safe and warm and dry this time.” Feuer also noted how there is an “Occupy motor pool of borrowed cars and pickup trucks that ferries volunteers to ravaged areas. An Occupy weatherman sits at his computer and issues regular forecasts. Occupy construction teams and medical committees have been formed.” The group is also running a registry of needed supplies through Amazon.

Check out We Got This (Occupy Sandy) by Alex Mallis to learn more about relief efforts by locals and Occupy Sandy that are offering continued direct aid to the neighborhoods most affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Please consider contributing directly to one of these groups with your time, connections, or a donation. The Brooklyn Community Foundation has also set up a Brooklyn Recovery Fund to support Brooklyn nonprofits responding to Sandy.

Just published!

cover of Beyond Zuccotti Park BookBeyond Zuccotti Park: Freedom of Assembly and the Occupation of Public Space is now arriving in bookstores across the country. Edited by Ron Shiffman, Lance Jay Brown, Rick Bell, and Lynne Elizabeth with Anastassia Fisyak and Anusha Venkataraman, this 432-page, illustrated compendium of original essays examines the importance of public space as a community forum for citizen expression.  More than forty contributing authors put free civic engagement into the center of built environment dialogue by addressing issues such as where and how people can congregate publicly today, whose voices are heard, and the factors that limit the participation of people of color. The book was conceived in response to repressive actions against Occupy Wall Street demonstrations that spotlighted US Constitutional First Amendment rights.

Publisher’s Book Page