A Call for Artists: What Is Space to You?

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The David Brower Center of Berkeley, CA is calling upon artists to submit art reflecting the changing uses of public spaces for their new exhibition Congregating. They ask artists, “What does a sense of place mean today?”. The panel of Jurors includes Amy Tobin, Executive Director of the David Brower Center, Ann Hatch, philanthropist and founder of The Workshop Residence and Capp Street Project and co-founder of the Oxbow School, Cheryl Haines, director of Haines Gallery and founder of the FOR-SITE Foundation and René de Guzman, senior curator of art at the Oakland Museum of California.

Submissions are due on January 11, 2013.

For full information, please visit their website.

Peter Marcuse on Hurricane Sandy and Occupy Sandy

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Peter Marcuse has recently written several excellent and thought-provoking entries on his blog, Peter Marcus’s Blog: Critical planning and other thoughts, about the Hurricane Sandy aftermath and its social justice implications and about Occupy Sandy and the help given to the victims of the superstorm.

In Blog #21 (November 5), “Sandy, Katrina, and the World Trade Center: Are There  Social Justice Issues?,” Marcuse discusses the social justice issues in the distribution of public resources after Sandy. He points out the social justice implications brought up by comparing the response to Katrina to that of the attack on the World Trade Center, and then asks, “How will Sandy be handled, by contrast?” Marcuse lists a series of questions if comparisons between Sandy and the World Trade Center loss are being considered, including: What does the allocation of resources to the Sandy disaster reflect, as compared to that to the two earlier disasters, Katrina and the World Trade Center? The division between local, state, and national responsibilities?; How will the distribution of the cost of repairs and prevention be distributed between the public sector and the private sector, and the role of insurance? Will it be different for different neighborhoods, different uses, different groups affected?; Will changes in land use patterns be seriously considered to avoid future disasters, or will existing patterns be taken as permanent and attention devoted to protection of their future? How will decisions be made, and by whom?; and will any political conclusions be drawn from Sandy as to the appropriate role of government?

In Blog #22 (November 8), “Vacant Housing and Sandy,” Marcuse discusses commandeering vacant housing for those displaced by Sandy. “It is an abomination to have people desperately in need of housing, both emergency after Sandy and long-term, at the same time that there is a stock of vacant, good quality, accessible housing being held off the market because its own believes that the market will improve and he/she/it will make more money by waiting to make it available,” he says. Marcuse proposes a city ordinance that would require any person or firm controlling the occupany of a unit that has been vacant for more than six months to file a report with the city. Then, in the case of an emergency, the mayor and housing authority could review all vacancy filings and commandeer any unit for emergnecy shelter.

In Blog #23 (November 15), “Occupy Sandy: Social Change through Prefiguring Action,” Marcuse sees Occupy Sandy work as prefigurative, rather than as a model:

Occupy Sandy is not suggesting that all disasters should be met by voluntary loosely-organized efforts that occur spontaneously and without planning. Rather, it realizes the essential interrelationship between what its adherents are doing and the world outside, even in developing positive relationships not only with FEMA but also with the police and National Guards, most of the time institutions seen as unwelcome intrusions in the model of what Occupy would like to see in the future.  Occupy Sandy is simply prefiguring, in its own behavior, how certain social relationships might exist independently of the assumed rigid requirements of the outside world, independently of the market and the state — actually, not independent of the state, but in reliance on it to assemble resources Occupy Sandy itself could not and should not assemble. It is not suggesting that its response to Sandy should be a model of disaster response, as opposed to the response of FEMA and police authorities; it is simply saying such responses should be coupled with an activation of fundamental human instincts of solidarity that are outside of state or market.

In his most recent blog post, Blog #24 (November 21), “Helping  Sandy Victims:  FEMA, Charity, Politics – Occupy Sandy and Human Relations,” Marcuse discusses the relations between helper and those helped, between giver and recipient and the institutions involved in the aftermath of Sandy. He illustrates the way in which Occupy Sandy has affected the relationships among the occupiers involved, those they are helping, others making use of the existence of needs for help for ulterior purposes, how different helpers are seen by those they are helping, and how relations between occupiers and institutions, from churches to the police and FEMA employees, have developed. Moreover, he points out that

At Zuccotti Park, there was always a bit of social service involved in the occupation: homeless people sheltered and the hungry fed, but it was ancillary to Occupy’s main objectives, which dealt with societal, structural problems. But the reaction to Hurricane Sandy, and the formation of Occupy Sandy, brought out a different aspect of the Occupy movement, not directed at Wall Street or big systemic issues, but directly providing help to those in need.

“Occupy Sandy not only does substantial immediate good for many, it also affects a variety of interhuman relationships, and provides many lessons for the future going well beyond how to respond to disasters,” Marcuse concludes.

Thanks for these insightful thoughts, Peter! We look forward to reading more excellent and thought-provoking blog posts in the near future!

Changes Needed After Sandy

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Both Michael Kimmelman, chief architecture critic of the New York Times, and Tom Angotti, director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning & Development, recently wrote excellent articles discussing Hurricane Sandy and the public debate about how to best protect New York City and other cities from future storms given the growing consensus that powerful storms and sea level rise are inevitable. Both ask, who will be protected and who will pay?

In the New York Times article, “Vetoing Business as Usual After the Storm,” Michael Kimmelman writes,

Hurricane Sandy was a toll paid for procrastination. The good news? We don’t need to send a bunch of Nobel laureates into the desert now, hoping they come up with some new gizmo to save the planet. Solutions are at hand. Money shouldn’t be a problem either, considering the hundreds of billions of dollars, and more lives, another Sandy or two will cost.

So the problem is not technological or, from a long-term cost-benefit perspective, financial.

Rather it is the existential challenge to the messy democracy we’ve devised. The hardest part of what lies ahead… will be staring down the pain, dislocation and inequity that promise to upend lives, undo communities and shake assumptions about city life and society. More than requiring the untangling of colossal red tape, saving New York and the whole region for the centuries ahead will become a test of civic unity.

“At this point there’s no logic, politics and sentiment aside, to FEMA simply rebuilding single-family homes on barrier islands like the Rockaways, where they shouldn’t have been built in the first place, and like bowling pins will tumble again after the next hurricane strikes,” Kimmelman adds.

In the Indypendent article, “On the Waterfront,” Tom Angotti parallels many of Kimmelman’s sentiments and expresses the need for a “more equitable strategy going forward that forces the powerful real estate giants in Manhattan to pay the steep price of fortifying their luxury enclaves and puts public funds into protecting the most vulnerable working people.” Furthermore, Angotti adds that “if the city and state administrations seriously want to address climate change, they might begin to limit development in flood-prone areas instead of promoting it. They could also put more money into preserving and retrofitting the city’s housing stock, especially public housing and homes in vulnerable areas, instead of wasting money to protect lavish new developments.”

Both Angotti and Kimmelman would agree that Sandy’s aftermath has provided designers, planners, and engineers with a perfect opportunity to finally get back, after so many decades, to the decision-making table. In the words of Kimmelman, “It’s no good merely to try to go back to the way things were, because they are not.”

Campuses Lead Open Discourse on Public Space Freedoms

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Freedom of assembly in public space has been a lively topic this fall on campuses across the nation. University of Washington PhD students in the Built Environment held a colloquium to examine public and politics after reading a reprint of Professor Jeff Hou’s article from Beyond Zuccotti Park, in Places online magazine, Design ObserverBeyond Zuccotti Park: Making the Public.

Columbia University Professor of Sociology, Saskia Sassen, who is also a contributing author to Beyond Zuccotti Park, cohosted a Cities Conference with Richard Sennett—Theatrum Mundi/Global Street: Presence and Absence in the City. Michael Kimmelman led a panel session there focused on what makes a street alive or dead. “The ‘life of the street’ is a classic Jane Jacobs trope; what does it mean today? Have the people who once gave streets life left the city, or been removed, or ceased to wish to interact? Has the design of streets prevented people from engaging with one another?” His session also covered the key issue of privatization of public space. The conference was followed by a public workshop, Places and Spaces for Free Speech in the City— “In a time of cordoned-off ‘free speech zones’ and after the eviction of Occupy from Zuccotti Park, a question arises: What could and should a space for Free Speech and Assembly in New York City look like?”

Also in New York City, Fordham University held a public discussion—Public Spaces, Public Good: Building the Livable City—with Beyond Zuccotti Park contributing authors Janette Sadik-Khan and Michael Sorkin.

On the Cornell University campus, students, faculty and staff joined in a day-long open forum, which included political theater, a “People’s School” for democratic discussion on topics of anyone’s choice, and placement of a man-made tree stump in Ho Plaza to serve as a soapbox for free speech.

Q&A with Rick Bell on Metropolis Magazine

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Susan S. Szenasy, editor in chief of Metropolis Magazine, recently interviewed Rick Bell, executive director of the Center for Architecture New York and an editor and contributor to the book Beyond Zuccotti Park, about his involvement at the Center as well as what an active group of architects can do for themselves, their profession, their city, and the world.

An excerpt:

Susan S. Szensy: In the years since you took your post as executive director of the Center for Architecture, what is the most dramatic shift you’ve seen in professional practices and equally important, in the professionals’ attitudes and aspirations?

Rick Bell: The most dramatic shift I’ve seen in the decade since I’ve been at the Center for Architecture is the falling away of boundaries and barricades. International work has kept New York architects and designers alive. A global approach to practice, relying on technology and partnership, has become the rule rather than the exception. This coincides with an openness to learn from other cities, other practices, not only for survival and profit, but to create a better world. Those of us who came of age in the late ‘60s used to think that we had a generational monopoly on idealism. My take–influenced by the Future Now!—our theme this year is that there has never been a better time for the next generation of practitioners to make a difference. The downturn has caused us all to catch our breath and tighten our belts. In so doing it has forced a reassessment of what architects do and why we do it.

Read the full interview.

Metropolitan Diary: Bench for Sitting Only

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Bench for Sitting Only

by Sharon Mast

Outside the library,
a sign proclaims:
“BENCH FOR SITTING ONLY.”
Not for dancing on?
Not for shouting from?
. . .

Excerpted from the New York Times, August 24, 2012. Read the full entry.