Real Estates Collectives

Designing Transitions: The Bronx-wide Coalition

Tamar Ofer

SMArchS Architecture & Urbanism and MSRED

Advisors: Albert Saiz & Rafi Segal Reader: Roi Salgueiro Barrio

In 2016, a collaboration between New York City and an international real estate firm skillfully redirected a staggering $1.6 billion from Harlem's most impoverished neighborhoods to Hudson Yards - the costliest private development in US history, exemplifying a tour de force of "innovative financial ‘design’". Exploiting spatial gaps in the federal EB-5 Investor Program, this specific instrument is just one of many that constitute a dominant state-sponsored urban speculative investment model. By scrutinizing its codified protocols, laid-bare fissures unveil a fractured social contract, as urban speculation seizes control over significant portions of New York City's growth amid the city's escalating inequality crisis.

This thesis presents a set of practice-based models that explore alternative ways of doing real estate. In doing so, it posits that urban design must not only strategically confront current forms of real estate, but must consider real estate speculation as a design project in and of itself.

Drawing from local cross-sector stakeholder collaboration, a strategic transition design is proposed in response to the ongoing Bronx-wide Coalition’s Plan and Platform. To achieve this, an expanding repository of components is compiled into a series of action plans, exemplified throughout the neighborhods of South Bronx’s Harlem Yards. The repository capitalizes on the collective capacities of all stakeholders, diverting dominant speculation towards scalable and sustainable pathways for investing in the commons.

Image opposite: Excerpts from the Landlord Archives: Hudson Yards to Harlem Yards. (Author)

The Monkey Cheeks Toolkit: Design Strategies for Mitigating Flood Impacts in the Bangkok Metropolitan Area

Pimpakarn 'Prim' Rattanathumawat SMArchS Architecture & Urbanism

Advisor: Miho Mazereeuw

Reader: Roi Salguerio Barrio

Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, has been facing frequent and destructive floods due to the recent decades of urban expansion and inadequate public drainage infrastructure. Although the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration (BMA) has actively improved the flood drainage network as the city expanded, its developed capacity and configuration have not kept pace with its population growth and rapid urbanization.

Rather than solely depending on flood protection via large-scale infrastructure, this thesis proposes a decentralized approach to stormwater management, in which rain is captured where it falls through a local flood control measure called “Monkey Cheeks.” Although the concept is commonly associated with large water retention areas, the thesis focuses on applying the core concept of Monkey Cheeks to an ultra-urban environment like the Bangkok Metropolitan Area, where the availability of land is limited. The main objective is to embrace water as a valuable resource and seize the opportunity to incorporate it into the fabric of the city. The outcome of this research is presented in the form of a Design Toolkit, which contains a set of strategies for implementing Monkey Cheeks across various scales of urban conditions, ranging from small individual property-level to large-scale publicly owned spaces.

The Toolkit concludes with case studies illustrating how these strategies can be applied to existing conditions of Bangkok’s urban fabric and how they can be combined to impact the city at large. Together, a network of Monkey Cheeks within the city can play a critical role in mitigating flood risk by slowing down runoff that could otherwise overwhelm public sewage systems, storing rainwater to tackle water supply challenges, and restoring the hydrologic function of the urban landscape by releasing water back to the aquifer.

Image opposite: The Monkey Cheeks Toolkit. Image by the author