Multiplicity 2017 - 2018

2017-2018

The Student Magazine of Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment

showcased in this issue: STUDIOS THESIS EXCERPTS and FIELDWORK including interviews with alumni:

Beth Bingham Lisa Ackerman Ron Shiffman

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studios

theses

Pursuing Justice Through Preservation (of Community)

Building Dignity in Design: A Case Study Analysis of Venezuela’s Petrocasas.

by Eduardo Duarte [HP]

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Northwest Bronx Collaborative Community Action Plan

by Judah Asimov [CRP]

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Chinatown

by Sam Hope [SES]

Los Sitios

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by Claudia Castillo de la Cruz & Jackson Chabot [UPM]

Mott Haven

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by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP], Micaela Skoknic Dockendorff [HP], & Sheena Kang [CRP]

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Alumni at Pratt:Beth Bingham

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

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by Maria G. González Rausell [UPM]

The Garment District: Zoning for Highest and Best Use.

by Daniel McCombie [CRP]

Hillel Place

by Jackson Chabot & Daniel Eizo Miyagusko [UPM]

fieldwork

Remembering and Reinterpreting Nat Turner and John Brown

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by Jay Skardis [CRP]

Art, Culture,and Social Justice: New Orleans

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

Pratt’s Environmental Weeks

by Isil Akgül & Tina Pastore [SES]

EPIC at UN: Winter Youth Assembly

by Patrick Waldo [HP]

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by María Gabriela González [UPM] & Alejandra Gómez Bolívar [UPM]

by Jesse Such [CRP]

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Three Days in Turin

The Whole Preservation Story: Let’s Make Waterfronts Work for All

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Travel Reflections: Mexico Tour

From Redlining to Bluelining: The NYPD’s Policy of Stop and Frisk

by Micaela Skoknic Dockendorff [HP]

Answering to the Animals: Utilizing an Integrated Approach to Strengthen the Responsible Down Standard’s Parent Farm Transparency

by Emma Hickey [SES]

Alumni at Pratt: Lisa Ackerman

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

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by Jay Skardis [CRP]

by Sanika Kulkarni [HP]

Go West, Young Woman!

And Then...Return!

To Write Your Thesis

by Gambrill Foster [HP]

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Two Paths For Havana

80

The 15Bikes Story

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table of contents

Final Four at HUD

by Carlos Rodríguez Estévez [UPM]

by Adriana Lancheros [SES]

Painted Post and Riverside Fellowship

by Angie Koo [CRP]

USGBC Greenbuild Expo

by Isil Akgül [SES]

From the Public to the Private, and Vice Versa

by Claudia Castillo de la Cruz [UPM]

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Tokyo Experience 2017

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The Trip to the River

98

Ignition Lab

by Alejandra Gómez Bolívar [UPM]

by Ahmad Shaibani [CRP]

by Samuel Pressman [SES]

Trip to the Netherlands

100 by Tina Pastore [SES]

Alumni at Pratt: Ron Shiffman THEN by Jay Skardis [CRP]

104 NOW by Kristin Brown [UPM]

[CRP: City and Regional Planning] [HP: Historic Preservation] [SES: Sustainable Environmental Systems] [UPM: Urban Placemaking and Management]

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS Dear Fellow Student, Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) approach to helping build equitable and sustainable communities has provided a unique platform for us to come together.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to thank the authors of the articles included in this edition for their contributions and enthusiasm.

We hope to have done justice to the passion and excitement that inspired your writing.

We would also like to thank the GCPE and faculty, especially our Department Chair Eve Baron and UPM Academic Coordinator David Burney, for their generous support in this endeavor.

Multiplicity is a collaborative effort, and we are honored to have been a part of it this year. on the cover: Super Saturday Presentations, Fall 2017.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

61 St. James Pl. Brooklyn, NY 11238 www.pratt.edu/gcpe

And even though we come from different backgrounds, from a wide variety of places in the world, and each of us has a different story to tell about how we arrived here, most of us have a common path during our time as graduate students. It is our shared experiences and challenges that bring us together, where collaboration and innovation are at the center of each milestone reached on the path from student to professional.

These milestones are highlighted in this edition of Multiplicity, the GCPE student magazine. They reflect the progression from studio as the foundation of the curriculum to thesis as its culmination, and our continuing fieldwork within various communities. Student contributions in this issue are from the 2017-2018 academic year, with additions from the summers both before and after. We have also included interviews with a few members of the faculty who were once also GCPE students.

We truly hope that you enjoy reading the articles collected here, some of which tell the story of academic inquiry, others of a meaningful project, and some of a satisfying accomplishment, and that they inspire you on your own path.

Jay Skardis [CRP], Carlos Rodríguez Estévez [UPM], and M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

STUDIO MEMBERS Taylor Kabeary; Anvitha Reddy; Dina Posner; Anagha Naik; Camille Sasena; Di Cui; Gerardo Guerrero; Stefanie Hessein; Lara Secchin; Danielle Monopoli; Eduardo Duarte FACULTY Beth Bingham; Christopher Neville

by Eduardo Duarte [HP]

Pursuing Justice Through Preservation (of Community) STUDIO 1: DOCUMENTATION AND INTERPRETATION SPRING 2018

In his article, Les Lieux de Mémoire (1989), Pierre Nora argues that there is no spontaneous memory, that we need to create archives, have celebrations, take photos, write texts, live by creating actions to preserve our past, and to stir up our memory. Memory is really quite intriguing, what would become of us without it?

What would the future be like without the past? How has the past influenced the present? Where do past, present and future separate (if they separate)?

If we take a moment to think about memory we enter into a vortex of questions with thousands of answers, but in the end, the questions will never be satisfactorily answered.

Last fall, a group of nine students, with the common goal to understand, value, and protect memories, enrolled in the Historic Preservation program at Pratt Institute.

These animated students then began the troubled process of becoming a preservationist. They started researching various architectures, devouring images of buildings and landscapes, collecting names of architects and styles, diving into books, traveling from classic to contemporary all in just one semester to prepare for what was to come: Studio 1 - Documentation and Interpretation. Luckily two new students joined forces with the original group in the Spring, bringing the total to eleven!

Rumor has it that Studio 1 is one of the most challenging courses in the Historic Preservation program at Pratt. Endless texts and information, research, research and more research,

libraries, site visits, meetings and discussions, not counting the most feared and desired final day of the semester: Super Saturday.

Honoring my two semesters in the Historic Preservation program and following the guidelines of Pierre Nora, I share with you my memories here. I do not intend with this text to present a finished product or even a complete explanation, such as signaling that something has come to an end. This text is only an attempt to express the desires, goals, learnings, and growth of the intellectual path traveled by eleven students during the Spring 2018 semester in Studio 1 at Pratt Institute.

Making every moment count, our professors gave us readings and assignments before the first day of class. Chris Neville and Beth Bingham introduced themselves as our teachers and then presented us with the client, the Northwest Bronx Community

and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC). I confess that for me the choice was a surprise and I imagine it also was one for the other students, considering that none of us had visited or spent time getting to know the Bronx before. We organized field visits, divided into groups, created the best possible product for NWBCCC. The relationship with the NWBCCC was a bit distant, we only met twice.

The first meeting was at the beginning of the semester where goals and expectations of the coalition were discussed with the Planning students.

This meeting proved to be very important because we discovered that NWBCC had no expectations of the Preservation students! We were a bit confused and wondered if this would be a suitable client to work with, and how to present a product to someone who expected nothing from us. We discussed it at great length in class and understood that it is quite common in our field for many people to shy away

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Students visiting the Bronx. Photo: Gerardo Guerrero.

Photo: Noël K. Wolfe.

Source: The Gotham Center for New York City History.

Grassroots Anti-Crack Activism in the Northwest Bronx.

from historic preservation because of its association with gentrification and displacement. Our goal then would be to show NWBCCC how historic preservation is beneficial to them, by keeping communities together and resilient.

With this in mind, we begin the arduous work of research.

The second contact with NWBCCC happened only at the end of the Spring semester. The Planning students set an informal meeting between the coalition and the Historic Preservation students to present the work conducted thus far. The goal of this meeting was to get feedback from the NWBCCC and situate us on their work. This meeting was important and provided us confidence that the work we produced during the semester was in line with the client’s expectations.

The journey to the final result was no easy task! There were 11 assignments during the semester, including 4 presentations. We studied from topography and hydrography to migratory waves and houses of worship. We visited public institutions such as the Bronx Department of Buildings, the New York Public Library, and the Municipal Archives. We received help from people in the community like Ron Shiffman, and professors like John Shapiro and Vicki Weiner provided feedback, all of which was indispensable for success in the final presentation.

Eleven students, two teachers, and several professors working together on a single presentation, sounds like a recipe for disaster However, this group banded together to achieve their goal of helping a community become more resilient, to hold on to their history in order to build a better future.

Our collective collaboration would ensure our success!

Super Saturday Presentation. Fall, 2017 Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez

We arrived on the day of the final presentation, many of us anxious and tired, but all rooting for a triumphant ending! The presentation was a huge success! All of our discussions and research during the semester paid off and the audience praised our narrative. They were amazed at the importance we gave to include Historic Preservation to the desired values of NWBCCC!

Summary of Recommendations.

We recommended the landmarking of the Fordham Library on Bainbridge avenue; the reopening of Bandshell in Poe Park and the use of this park as an anchor for community activities; the creation of a commercial rental protection program to prevent large chain stores from replacing important local businesses; and the protection of the Bronx’s rich urban fabric with its distinct layers of history.

LANDMARK THE FORDHAM LIBRARY CENTER PROTECT THE HISTORIC HOUSES USE POE PARK AS AN ANCHOR FOR THE COMMUNITY COMMERCIAL STABILIZATION

PROTECTING COMMUNITY

BUILDINGS

Chris and Beth were instrumental in building the job.

Always making intelligent and shrewd comments that helped us think in a creative way to solve the problems we faced, never giving the correct formulas!

The eleven committed students remained united and each of them was of fundamental importance for the construction of the final product!

Believe the rumors: Studio 1 is no easy undertaking, so far it has been the most challenging part of the Historic Preservation program! But it was also the subject that put us in touch with professional practice, with methods of academic research, and showed us this is an important and rewarding profession! We unite to preserve memories, among them, those lived in room HHS-310!

Source: Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition

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REOPENING THE BANDSHELL

PRESERVING

The coalition aims to ensure “health, economic and racial justice” for the population of the Northwest Bronx.

We realized that Historic Preservation is an important tool to ensure this justice is done. With this in mind we created a narrative that shows how health, economic and racial justice is achieved using preservation tools.

Our presentation was named “Pursuing Justice Through Preservation” and contained three different sections: shaping, building and keeping the neighborhood.

We connected the Coalition’s interest in keeping the community with our own to preserve memories, we understand that protecting tenants produces a protection of the built environment and vice versa: maintaining the built environment keeps communities together. This dynamic is a cycle where memory related to places and buildings keep communities together and communities protect the places where their memories are deposited.

STUDIO MEMBERS Judah Asimov; Erica Asinas; Emily Bachman; Riming Guo; Larissa Lai; Allegra Miccio; Leslie Velázquez FACULTY Mercedes Narciso; Juan Camilo Osorio; Ayse Yonder

by Judah Asimov [CRP]

Northwest Bronx Collaborative Community Action Plan THE CLIENT

FUNDAMENTALS OF PLANNING STUDIO, SPRING 2018

This Spring, the Fundamentals of Planning Studio worked with the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NWBCCC).

NWBCCC has been fighting for racial and economic justice in the Northwest Bronx since the early 1970s. At the heart of their work is community organizing with the long-term goal of building a stronger, more equitable Bronx. Last year, NWBCCC was one of the nine community-based organizations that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) chose to participate in the Community Land Trust Learning Exchange. Through this program, NWBCCC receives both funding and the technical skills and resources to create and expand a Community Land Trust (CLT), which was the primary objective of NWBCCC in its partnership with the studio.

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New York Botanical Garden FORDHAM

Study Area: Bronx CD 7.

Data Source: NYC Department of City Planning.

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KINGSBRIDGE MARBLE HILL

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THE PROJECT GOAL

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The purpose of this year’s fundamentals studio was to analyze the existing conditions in Bronx Community District 7 (CD7), and to explore and identify resources for building a Community Land Trust that would create and ensure longterm sustainability and affordability of housing and assets in the Northwest Bronx. In crafting this plan, the studio recognized that stability and affordability are not enough, and that economic prosperity, environmental resiliency, and a high quality of life are the foundation to a healthy, sustainable, and thriving community.

Moreover, the plan highlights that active participation, advocacy, and stewardship from local stakeholders serves as the key to unlocking the wealth of resources that CD 7 holds.

THE EXISTING CONDITIONS The process for this studio began with a site visit and land use survey of CD7.

This was followed by several return visits, all throughout the project

BEDFORD PARK

period, which provided the team with the opportunity to observe the New York study area. This was then followed Botanical by in-depth research onGarden three broad FORDHAM topic areas: the built environment, the socioeconomic environment, and the natural environment.

The analysis of the built environment included a history of the study area, an overview of the area’s building characteristics and land use, and a summary of relevant zoning and development plans. The socioeconomic analysis focused on the area’s demographics, housing characteristics, social infrastructure, and economic development. The natural environment analysis included open space, transportation systems, physical infrastructure, disaster response infrastructure, and an assessment of CD7’s vulnerability to sea level rise and climate change. Through extensive data gathering and multiple sessions of analysis, the team produced an existing conditions analysis, which was presented to the client.

The Studio’s existing conditions research identified significant strengths on which to build future efforts. For example, CD7 has several strong, effective community advocacy groups like NWBCCC, as well as large education and healthcare institutions such as Lehman College, Fordham University, Montefiore Medical Center, and NYC Health and Hospitals North Central Bronx.

There is also an extensive public transportation infrastructure connecting the district to both New York City and Westchester County.

In addition, while the Harlem River waterfront is vulnerable to flooding, the high elevation of the district protects the vast majority of its residents from the threat of sea level rise and storm surge.

New York Botanical Garden

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Subway Stations Inventory Summary Map. Data Source: NYC Department of City Planning; Property Shark (retrieved 2/18); NYC MapPLUTO 17v1.1

But, there are several major weaknesses in CD 7, including low educational attainment and median income, coupled with high rates of poverty and rent burden1 . Despite the fact that the population is increasing less rapidly than in the surrounding area, there is overcrowding in housing, schools, and open space in the district. While the area’s topography protects it from flooding, the steep hills also serve as a physical barrier that limits mobility, especially for elderly and disabled residents.

The major threats motivating the studio’s work were displacement and gentrification. This study ascertained that CD7 has experienced a 2% drop in rent stabilized units between 2007 and 2016 2 . Although lower than New York City’s decrease during the same time period, this still represents a loss of 1,582 affordable housing units.

An increased threat of displacement is correlated to increased real estate pressure and speculation following recent rezoning designations in the district, suggesting that the residents of the district’s 8,710 remaining stabilized housing units

are increasingly vulnerable to displacement3 . Additional threats include increased heat vulnerability caused by increased density, as well as the disproportionate New York impacts of extreme heat on the Botanical Garden area’s vulnerable populations.

However, there are also significant opportunities in CD7. This study identified scattered lots and properties, with the potential for affordable housing development, leading to the creation of a Developable Lots Inventory provided to the client. These lots comprised those with a variety of different ownership types ranging from city owned to privately owned lots with tax liens.

RECOMMENDATIONS During the second half of the semester, building off of the district’s strengths, the studio developed recommendations to address the district’s weaknesses, to take advantage of existing opportunities, and avoid looming threats.

Rezoned Areas

Inventory Lots

Target Areas

A key piece of the studio’s efforts was to go beyond the traditional understanding of a land trust as solely focused on providing affordable housing. In contrast, building on NWBCCC’s strong history and commitment to the community, the studio sought to develop a plan that would also address many of the existing quality of life conditions in CD7. Thus, the studio’s action plan not only provided recommendations for affordable housing preservation and development, but gave additional consideration to economic development, environmental stewardship, and food access, all with the goal of fostering a healthy community in which all residents can thrive.

This process informed the creation of three objectives for CD 7, which are followed by recommendations to achieve each objective. The first objective was to create and preserve affordable housing. Indeed, the studio’s report was first and foremost aimed at ensuring affordable housing access to all members of the Northwest Bronx community. These recommendations focused on how to structure and acquire land for the CLT ranging from traditional to more innovative strategies like the sale and transfer of air rights. In addition, this section also provided strategies to protect existing affordable housing, both in conjunction with and beyond the CLT through strategies to lower building maintenance costs and keep existing homeowners in 1-2 family buildings.

2.2a

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implementation short

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Anchoring

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Housing Resource Center

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Preserve Small Family Homes

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Microgrid

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Empty Homes Tax

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1_ US Census Bureau, ACS, 2012-2016.

2_ Kraus, J. Changes in Rent Stabilization, 2015.

3_ Idem

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The ultimate result of this studio was an action plan for affordable housing preservation and development in tandem with empowerment; equity; and economic, environmental, and social improvement.

1.3c

costs

The second objective was to create economic development opportunities in the community. The studio suggested that NWBCCC consider further supporting Northwest Bronx residents by expanding their economic capacity to stay and thrive in their neighborhoods. To do this, the studio suggested partnering with the large, resource-rich institutions in the district through initiatives promoting vocational training, local hiring, and new job creation.

The third objective was to improve environmental conditions & quality of life because affordable housing development can and should take place in tandem with neighborhood improvements to ensure all residents live in safe and healthy communities. The third objective provided recommendations for increased quality, quantity, and access to open space and food systems through strategies like the acquisition of properties identified in the Developable Lots Inventory.

1.2

Improve Environmental Conditions & Quality

3.1a

Activate Parks

3.1b

Steward Existing Green Infrastructure

3.1c

Develop Green Infrastructure

3.2a

Increase Use of Food Access Resources

3.2b

FRESH Incentives Recommendations Matrix

STUDIO MEMBERS Kristin Brown; Claudia Castillo de la Cruz; Jackson Chabot; Jaiyi (Grace) Cheng; Alex DewittConnelly; Daniel Eizo Miyagusko; Lindsay Fischer; Molly Greenburg; Daniela Hurtarte; Saba Jaberolansar; Harsh Prajapati; Jane Kandampulli; Dhanya Rajagopal; Koichiro Tamura; Nasha Virata.

FACULTY David Burney; Meg Walker

by Jackson Chabot & Daniel Eizo Miyagusko [UPM]

THE LAB

LAB: URBAN PLACEMAKING AND MANAGEMENT, FALL 2017

Each Fall, the incoming cohort of the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) Urban Placemaking and Management (UPM) students take an introductory Lab course to gain invaluable fundamental Placemaking skills. For the Fall of 2017, the course was based around researching and supporting the case for converting an existing street, Hillel Place, into a pedestrian only plaza under the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) Plaza Program. This interactive collaborative project incorporated elements of research, community engagement, and street level evaluation. These elements and others built on a collective package of the courses Placemaking learning and contribution. The client for the Fall 2017 Lab was The Junction Business Improvement District (BID), led by Kenneth Mbonu. Additionally, the course was taught by Professors David Burney and Meg Walker whose professional and academic experience were instrumental to the learning process. The immediate study area for this Lab was Hillel Place, a small street just off of the busy Flatbush Junction in South East Brooklyn.

Flatbush Junction is defined by the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Nostrand Avenue. While this was the immediate site, to best understand the context of the project, the whole study area included the surrounding neighborhoods up to a ten minute walk away. The full extent of the site is shown in the attached image with several neighborhood points highlighted on the map.

CHALLENGE The Flatbush Junction is uniquely located at the intersection of Midwood, Flatbush, East Flatbush, and Flatlands neighborhoods, where a host of diverse communities and activities meet. Within this intersection is The Junction BID, on a street currently blooming as a shopping district. The core challenge for this project was to understand the varied range of languages, ethnicities, and user groups from the surrounding neighborhoods and subsequently provide recommendations for how to program and design the existing streetscape’s possible conversion into a NYC DOT-sponsored plaza. This plaza project presented a great economic development opportunity for the BID, through potential increases in foot traffic and sitting places adjacent to the eateries along the site, as well as a great social connector space for an area with scarce public space infrastructure.

An underlying challenge to this project was to establish whether potential users of the site were interested in closing Hillel Place to vehicular traffic. Throughout the project, Hillel Place was seen as an opportunity site to create a small place that is welcoming for the many different groups. These user groups range from high school students that need a place to hangout after school, commuters from the subway lines that would like to rest for a moment before they catch a bus, patrons of the local businesses who would like to eat their lunch outside and the many Caribbean immigrant communities that live in the surrounding area. In order to create this type of representative space the project focused on the history of the area, the people residing within a half mile of the site, and the potential for partnerships among community organizations and public agencies.

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Campus Rd

From Hillel Place to the BID to the Community.

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Afternoon Rush Hour Traffic at Flatbush Junction.

Photo: Jackson Chabot.

Looking Up Hillel Place Towards the Flatbush Junction.

Photo: Jackson Chabot.

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PROCESS The placemaking process of this project centered around gathering community input about how the community felt about closing the street to vehicular traffic and, if that happened, what they might want to be included in the design and programming of the site. The Junction BID director, Kenneth Mbonu, was instrumental in the initial phases of this process as he led the class on a site visit of the neighborhood and invited the class to participate in the “Taste the Junction” food festival.

The “Taste the Junction” event was a tremendous opportunity to gather public opinion with in-person surveys and user feedback place activities that asked, “How would you change the Junction?” and “Show us what you want and where!” Class reflection after the event stimulated further inspiration for additional community interviews and workshops with elected officials, the Clarendon Library branch, and Midwood High School students, among other stakeholders. Also, the in-depth study of the area brought more inputs, beyond the plaza project, revealing the will and potential of change for the whole neighborhood.

OUTCOMES festivals. These two sets of recommendations can be implemented on a parallel basis with the understanding that large changes in and around The Junction will take more time to complete. Following the completion of this project, findings were presented to the BID director Mr. Mbono, as well as to the larger audience of the GCPE on Super Saturday, and published in a physical report that Mr. Mbonu used to show the social and economic value of implementing the proposed plaza. 

Following the semester, Mr. Mbonu informed the class that the DOT has decided to build the plaza on a one year test basis with construction anticipated to begin Fall 2018. The plaza will be reviewed by the DOT, Mr. MBonu and the neighborhood throughout the test phase. The plaza will be evaluated at the end of the test phase to decide on whether it should be implemented permanently.

Community Member responds to how she feels about the Flatbush Junction.

Photo: Koichiro Tamura.

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The information collected over the course of the semester guided a dual approach of short-term and long-term recommendations. The short-term proposals, starting with Hillel Place as the foundation, recommended a seasonally based programming approach that retained a flexibility of uses given the small size of the space. Over the long term, with Hillel Place Plaza growing into its own, The Junction could also evolve to include safer streets for pedestrians and bicyclists, improved storefront design, and options for using Flatbush and Nostrand for large scale street

CLASS MEMBERS Isil Akgül; Stephanie Kim Clarke; Silvia Del Fava; Gabriella Green; Priyanka Jinsiwale; Haejin Kim; Adriana Lancheros; Andrea Lustig; Kristy McAllister; Cristina Pastore; Samuel Pressman; Aisa Rezaei; Summer Sandoval FACULTY Jaime Stein; Ron Schiffman

by Sam Hope [SES]

Chinatown SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES FALL 2017

While there is not a Sustainable Environmental Studios studio, Sustainable Communities is a required 3 credit course for SES students that is paired with a 2-credit Intro to GIS class, which work together with a similar objective.

Sustainable Communities is a core course in the Sustainable Environmental Systems program that considers issues of sustainable development at a macro level. As described by the syllabus the course is designed to look at issues of “both human welfare and resource limitations at the local and global levels that are required in order to build and maintain sustainable communities.” The main focus of this course was planning for communities for the future without marginalizing the longtime residents through all aspects of a place including physical, social, and economic dimensions.

While always centered around planning practices in NYC the study area of the course changes with the different semesters. In Fall 2017 the course analyzed the effects of the proposed or approved rezonings of East Harlem, East New York, Jerome Ave, and Chinatown (the study area used in this project followed the rezonings and not the traditional area of Chinatown). These neighborhoods were chosen because they all contain vulnerable populations that are at increased risk to gentrification because of these rezonings, effects of climate change, and economic inequality. For the Spring 2018 semester projects, each student was assigned one of the neighborhoods to study; students studying the same neighborhoods did calibrate with each other, but students were responsible for individual projects.

African Burial Ground & The Commons Tribeca East SoHo-Cast Iron NoHo NoHo East St Marks

Bus Stops Open Space & Outdoor Recreation Bus Routes Rivers Blocks Building Footprints Non-residential Areas Open Space & Outdoor Recreation

OVERVIEW

T

Later on in this report, further information regarding the Plan is going to be introduced. However, most of the content maps of this study were a result of the boundary set by the Pratt Center report as well as an additional 700 foot buffer zone that is subject to the same potential outcomes as the intial study Delancey St. |area.

Figure 4 Confucius Plaza,

his report aims to summarize all of the research data collected over the course of the semester regarding the Chinatown and Lower East Side study area. It analyzes the most important pieces of data, by highlighting the most important findings. It then Figure 3 Busy intersection Bowery and proposes indicators andofsustainable Canal St. and Bowery Figure Mix use buildings on Bowery St. | Figure 6 Sara development goalsSt.| that the 5 area Historically, Chinatown is one of the Roosevelt Parkto| Figure 7 Trobbeling level situation at Chrystie St.| Figure 8 Allen St. should aim meet by 2050. These most famous and notorious neighborBoulevard objectives will be presented in severhoods in New York City though the al steps. Firstly, A report will be prereason for this is not as glorious as it sented containing all the impressions may seem. Chinese communities have found,ofeither by the author or by Eva teenagers (mostly Hispanic and AfriMost the buildings on the streets had a tough history in America, and it Hanhardt,have the shops community advocate. analyzed on the ground can-Amercian), homeless that people is important to understand history( Secondly, all of data by mostly Caucasian) and senior citzens level.

Many of the them usecollected the pubin order to understand this area. various sources will be illustrated and lic space of the sidewalks to display (mostly Asian). discussed.

Next, the carrying capacity products and store inventory. It is likely The first wave of Chinese immigrants limitations, along with other considerthat the Chinese cultural heritage of Itto seemed though some areas of the U.S. as dates back to the late 17th ations, are goingaptitude to be set a result these two streets have been redevelthe commercial is as prominent Century. Most of them came here of all the from the prealong the observations streets in Chinatown.

The oped revitalized rencently, imlookingand for work on railway construcviously presented commercial activityresearch. on those Lastly, streetsall is proving playgrounds opention sitesupon out west.

Many ofand these imof the sustainable development goals so relevant that the same themes can ing spacessuffered for bikeprejudice lanes. There an migrants and israge andseen theirfrom indicators willstore. be suggested. be store to This type issue the resulting layout, from with Americans who felt thatwhich they of land use probably originated in an makes it more for culminatdisabled were taking theirdifficult jobs. This Initially, manner, it is important to givereguthe people to access these areas and may organic before NYC’s ed in a massive migration of the Chireader an overview as well as some lations. It is also relevant to mention also sysnese impact people rainwater to the Eastdrainage coast, where historical background the pedestrianalyzed tems. It is important to keep in mind that in areas of conflictofwith more diversity could already have location.

First of all, thisas report’s cor- that that portion of the study area is ans and vehicles, such Confucius been found. It also resulted in the responding areavacant boundary does signed as a low zone and therefore Plaza, there study are more stores.

Chinese Exclusion Act, which was apnot coincide with the actual historical more prone to flooding. Another improved on May 6, 1882. This legislaboundary as recognized by the local portant aspect observed was the poor When accessing the public gardens tion would put in place severe restriccommunity Chinatown. the public lightning system in these loof the route,ofsuch as SaraRather, Roosevelt tions for the immigration of Chinese boundary studiedSt. here a result of cations. This could become an issue Park on Chrystie (by was Canal St. and people to the United States, especially the PlanSt.) forand Chinatown SurroundGrand Allen St.and Boulevard, it for residents, especially on Allen Chinese women, which resulted in St. an ingapparent Area: Preserving Affordability and Boulevard, where 6 homeless people is that the parks play a cruarmy of Chinese men with no famiAuthenticity, a community based plan cial role in Chinatown.

Culturally, the were observed in a stretch of Prejudice only two lies and a bachelor lifestyle. producedcommunity

by Pratt Center in Mayexof blocks.

Chinese has always towards the Chinese immigrants was 2014. They considered in orpressed interest in outsidethat, activities in legitimatized by the American governder toareas. protect the historical they these It was especiallysite, interestment. This fact contributed to the Chimusttoalso some its surrounding see include the variety of communities nese community being strongly rooted ing areas, are essential the using thesewhich facilities, includingforchilin tradition and being enclosed and existence of thefamilies historical community. dren and their (mostly Asian), isolated from interactions with other

communities in the city. Thus, it has resulted in a very strong community driven society which is not easily reached by outsiders. these features are very much present in Manhattan’s Chinatown today.

The neighborhood connects the city to Chinatown Study Area physical and social analysis.

Brooklyn via the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges, and the Maps: Tina Pastore. area along the waterfront is bordered

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Chinatown Study Area Chinatown Study Area Roads Roads Blocks Blocks Rivers Rivers One & Tree Two Canopy Family Buildings Multi-family GrassWalk-up & ShrubsBuildings Multi-family Elevator Buildings Bare Soil Mixed Resid.

Water & Com. Buildings Commercial & Office Buildings Buildings Industrial & Manufacturing Transportation & Utility Public Facilities & Institutions Open Space & Outdoor Rec. Parking Facilities Vacant Land

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Floodplain Commercial Overlay Residence District (medium density) Residence District (high density) Commercial District Manufacturing Park

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Chinatown Study Area Chinatown Study Area Roads Roads Rivers Blocks Special Rivers Purpose District

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Graph 1: Land use percentages in Chinatown vs NYC

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Map 7Household Renters v. Owners Map 8 Median Income

ChinatownChinatown Study AreaStudy Area Roads Roads Blocks Blocks Rivers Rivers Population Number of People Perc. of Housing UnitsDensity: Occupied

by Renters Map / Acre Map 38 - 75 22.6% - 25% 25% - 40%75 - 100 40% - 60%100 - 125 60 - 80% 125 - 150 150 - 175 80% - 100% 20 27 175 - 200 200 - 225 225 - 252

ChinatownChinatown Study AreaStudy Area Roads Roads Blocks Blocks Rivers Rivers Perc. of Housing Units Occupied by Renters Map Income Brackets - 25% $16,000 -22.6% $33,000 - 40% $33,000 -25% $55,000 - 60% $55,000 -40% $80,000 - 80% $80,000 -60 $120,000 - 100% $120,000 80% - $250,000

Map 10 Stewardship Groups NYC 195,000 acres CSA 1,118.5 acres (0.6%)

Chinatown Study Area Roads Blocks Rivers Local Community Based Organizations Stewardship Groups (within 1 mile) Environmental related groups: 63 Total of stewardship groups: 471

Map 9 Community Facilities

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20%

Graph 2: Current Zoning in Chinatown vs NYC

Map 6v. Population Map 7 Renters Owners Density

min. of Justice

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Chinatown Study Area Roads Blocks Rivers Types of Community Facilities Administration of Government Core Infrastructure and Transportation Education, Child Welfare, and Youth Health and Human Services Libraries and Cultural Programs Parks, Gardens, and Historical Sites 22 Public Safety, Emergency Services, and Admin. of Justice

Despite being surrounded by seven historical districts, Chinatown has never been filed as a special district and it is the only neighborhood in Manhattan that has never established a maximum height for its buildings.

There are only some restrictions in the public housing developments by the waterfront. However, there is no protective tools in effect at the moment ensuring that some historical value of the neighborhood as whole is preserved. Nowadays, there is a lot of pressure from developers to increase the density of this already high-density area and to raise the value of the property.

Map 10 Stewardship Groups NYC 195,000 acres CSA 1,118.5 acres (0.6%)

Chinatown Study Area Roads

Map 2 Basemap Blocks

Rivers Study Area Chinatown Subway Entrances Local Community Based Organizations Subway Lines Stewardship Groups (within 1 mile) Bus Stops related groups: 63 Environmental Bus Total ofRoutes stewardship groups: 471 Blocks Building Footprints Non-residential Areas 23 Space & Outdoor Recreation Open

For most students the Sustainable Communities course is paired with an intro to GIS course that together serve to make a five credit course.

The GIS course not only teaches students the fundamentals but is also used to create maps of the study area to analyze and show data. The maps made in the GIS course correlate with the topics being covered in Sustainable Communities. Assignments in both courses are designed to be the foundation for the final report.

Map 8 Median Household Income

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Chinatown CDC 17

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CPC

At the beginning of the course we covered issues in planning such as CAAV inequalities and climate change and how they affect planning on a local and global scale. The class participated in an exercise that reenacted the Paris Climate Accord and negotiation processes to reach an 18 agreement.

This demonstrated the different priorities and inequalities OVERVIEW New Yorkcome T with discussing an issue that Chinese Community Center like climate change on a large scale, and the similarities to the issues raised by climate change on a neighborhood scale.

N

Chinatown Rivers CDC Historic Districs South Street Seaport 17 African Burial Ground & The Commons Tribeca East SoHo-Cast Iron NoHo NoHo East CPC St Marks

CAAV

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his report aims to summarize all of the research data collected over the course of the semester regarding the Chinatown and Lower East Side study area. It analyzes the most important pieces of data, by highlighting the most important findings. It then proposes indicators and sustainable development goals that the area should aim to meet by 2050. These objectives will be presented in several steps. Firstly, A report will be presented containing all the impressions found, either by the author or by Eva Hanhardt, the community advocate.

Secondly, all of the data collected by various sources will be illustrated and discussed. Next, the carrying capacity limitations, along with other considerations, are going to be set as a result of all the observations from the previously presented research. Lastly, all of the sustainable development goals and their indicators will be suggested.

New York Chinese Community Center

25

Later on in this report, further information regarding the Plan is going to be introduced. However, most of the content maps of this study were a result of the boundary set by the Pratt Center report as well as an additional 700 foot buffer zone that is subject to the same potential outcomes as the intial study area.

Historically, Chinatown is one of the most famous and notorious neighborhoods in New York City though the reason for this is not as glorious as it may seem. Chinese communities have had a tough history in America, and it is important to understand that history in order to understand this area.

communities in the city. Thus, it has resulted in a very strong community driven society which is not easily reached by outsiders. these features are very much present in Manhattan’s Chinatown today.

The neighborhood connects the city to Brooklyn via the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges, and the area along the waterfront is bordered

by FDR Drive, a major highway. This generates a large amount of automobile traffic daily from cars and trucks.

Drivers also use this location to cut through Manhattan and access the Holland Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Furthermore, this location is also a meeting point of the major subways lines in NYC. However, there are some parts of it that lack in good public transit service. There are only two major open areas in the location, which are vividly used throughout the day by children and senior citizens.

The first assignment was a future cities scenario, to envision a city, real or hypothetical, 50 years in the future in two different scenarios, one good and one bad, or one sustainable and one business as usual. The value in this assignment was to show how planning now can lead to either of these two scenarios 26

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Chinatown Study Area Roads Blocks Rivers Income Brackets $16,000 - $33,000 $33,000 - $55,000 $55,000 - $80,000 $80,000 - $120,000 $120,000 - $250,000

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Map 4Map Land11 Use Land Cover

4

by FDR Drive, a major highway. This generates a large amount of automobile traffic daily from cars and trucks.

Drivers also use this location to cut through Manhattan and access the Holland Tunnel that connects Manhattan to New Jersey. Furthermore, this location is also a meeting point of the major subways lines in NYC. However, there are some parts of it that lack in good public transit service. There are only two major open areas in the location, which are vividly used throughout the day by children and senior citizens.

Initially, it is important to give the reader an overview as well as some historical background of the analyzed location. First of all, this report’s corresponding study area boundary does not coincide with the actual historical boundary as recognized by the local community of Chinatown. Rather, the boundary studied here was a result of the Plan for Chinatown and Surrounding Area: Preserving Affordability and Authenticity, a community based plan produced by Pratt Center in May of 2014. They considered that, in order to protect the historical site, they must also include some its surrounding areas, which are essential for the existence of the historical community.

26

The first wave of Chinese immigrants to the U.S. dates back to the late 17th Century. Most of them came here looking for work on railway construction sites out west. Many of these immigrants suffered prejudice and rage from Americans who felt that they were taking their jobs. This culminated in a massive migration of the Chinese people to the East coast, where more diversity could already have been found. It also resulted in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which was approved on May 6, 1882. This legislation would put in place severe restrictions for the immigration of Chinese people to the United States, especially Chinese women, which resulted in an army of Chinese men with no families and a bachelor lifestyle. Prejudice towards the Chinese immigrants was legitimatized by the American government. This fact contributed to the Chinese community being strongly rooted in tradition and being enclosed and isolated from interactions with other

Despite being surrounded by seven historical districts, Chinatown has never been filed as a special district and it is the only neighborhood in Manhattan that has never established a maximum height for its buildings.

There are only some restrictions in the public housing developments by the waterfront. However, there is no protective tools in effect at the moment ensuring that some historical value of the neighborhood as whole is preserved. Nowadays, there is a lot of pressure from developers to increase the density of this already high-density area and to raise the value of the property.

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Source: The New Yorker (courtesy of Terreform).

Futuristic vision for New York City in 2050.

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After establishing an understanding on how to make observations from readings, class lectures and discussion, the students went to their assigned neighborhoods to do a firsthand analysis. This was meant to gather a sense of how the community functions, how the residents interact in public space, the architecture and character of the built environment, how many schools there are, if there appears to be any night life, who the small businesses are catering to, and how the neighborhood is connected to the rest of the city, observed through the lenses of location, scale, mix, movement, and time.

After gathering an understanding of the neighborhood from an observational perspective the students’ next assignment was to reach out to a community steward or advocate for an interview about the neighvborhood and what the rezoning means to them. In order to create some consistency the class formed a set of questions that each interviewer would ask so they could be compared. However, each interviewee was asked a few personalized questions tailored to their role in the community. The community stewards ranged from community board members to small business owners to members of nonprofit organizations.

The questions covered existing conditions in the neighborhood like daily challenges and benefits of living in the community, to the effects of the rezoning plan and

what about it might cause residents to leave the neighborhood. These interviews were very insightful to giving us the perspective of a resident in the community.

Once we had all the information on the proposed rezoning, the existing conditions in the neighborhoods, and possible effects of the rezoning, we created a SWOT analysis to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the communities, and the opportunities and threats presented by the rezonings. When then looked at the neighborhoods and their carrying capacity. This included public entities like schools and parks, infrastructure and public transit, and density of the area among other things. These carrying capacity limitations were accompanied by standards and metrics that the students developed for each of their limitations. The standards are what the student felt the acceptable level of a certain carrying capacity should be, for instance, if schools were a carrying capacity limitation then the standard could be the city wide average.

Metrics are a way that these carrying capacity imitations are measured to see if they are moving in the right or wrong direction, considering the school example depending on the specific limitation the metric can be absentee numbers or teacher to student rate. Using carrying capacity limitations helped us to analyze things that may not have been considered in the rezoning plans.

From our carrying capacity standards and metrics we developed sustainability goals.

This final submission brought the class full circle back to our future cities scenario, this time in the context of the sustainable future of the neighborhood. These goals were accompanied with indicators that would measure the success of the goal.

By the end of the semester all of these assignments, accompanied by the maps made in the GIS course, made up the context of the final report to be submitted.

While all students had different reports and conclusions on how the rezoning plans would affect the neighborhoods several themes were consistent throughout everyone’s submission. The main one being gentrification, the neighborhoods studied in this course have all been experiencing some level of gentrification and the rezoning plans seem to increase the housing cost in the neighborhoods. This of course will lead to an exodus of residents, either forced out by rising cost of living or by choice because their neighborhood will become a place they no longer recognize.

The Sustainable Communities course is designed to be a practicebased study of sustainable planning.

By having students analyze actual rezoning proposals in NYC and the processes that goes through as well as learning about the community from first hand analysis and coordination with residents we saw the importance of environmental justice, community engagement, and sustainable planning. 

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and where the rezonings fit into sustainable planning. Following this assignment, we picked something from their future cities scenario and drew a systems diagram of how this would be achieved.

This exercise was to show how many players and processes are involved in implementing change and to keep this in mind when exploring the proposed rezonings.

STUDIO MEMBERS Claudia Castillo de la Cruz; Daniel Eizo Miyagusko; Dhanya Rajagopal; Jane Kandampulli; Sam Hope; Gabriella Green; Matt Walinchus; Emma Hickey; Gambrill Foster; Sophiya Khan; Jay Skardis; Jackson Chabot FACULTY David Burney; Ron Shiffman; Jill Hamberg

by Claudia Castillo de la Cruz [UPM] & Jackson Chabot [UPM]

Los Sitios CUBA STUDIO: SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SPRING 2018.

People, the Street, and Movement in Los Sitios.

Photo: Jay Skardis.

This studio challenged the GCPE and CUJAE students to explore social, environmental and economic conditions in Los Sitios, review the extensive existing research of the neighborhood, connect with residents within a concentrated period of time, and contribute to furthering the conversation of how the residents of the neighborhood could support existing assets to overcome current challenges. Also, the current context of economic change in Cuba, with the addition of new businesses in La Habana, and political change with the election of a new president to succeed the last of the Castro dynasty, have been creating momentum for change in the country. Given these considerations, the goal for this project was to provide recommendations for Los Sitios, an underserved and neglected neighborhood surrounded by a UNESCO World Heritage designation, in the areas of Housing, Mobility, and Public Space.

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The Spring 2018 Cuba studio was a unique experience. Twelve students from varying disciplines within the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) participated in a rare partnership with a Cuban university in La Habana.

This partnership was highlighted by a ten-day trip to La Habana and a site review of the Los Sitios neighborhood in the Centro Habana municipality. In collaboration with eight architecture students and three professors from the Polytechnic José Antonio Echeverría School of Architecture (CUJAE), the GCPE and CUJAE students’ research from this collaboration was one part of an extended study initiated by CUJAE Professor Jorge Peña over seven years ago for the Cuban government.

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PROCESS The primary challenge of the studio was to understand the Cuban context is a short timeframe. The semester started with intensive research and learning about Cuban Institutions, relevant people related to the project and projects themes, and a conference call with Professor Jorge Peña to learn more about the specifics of the collaboration and his extensive research. This process laid the groundwork of knowledge that would inform final recommendations. In preparation for the trip and throughout the collaboration, the class had to reflect on what more could be added to a continuing project that has been ongoing for numerous years. The class deliberated and chose to add contributions based on their international and multidisciplinary background, with a placemaking based approach, and mostly importantly, Pratt’s community based planning approach.

Unequivocally, the most rewarding part of the studio was visiting La Habana, and learning from the CUJAE Students and Professors. The time in La Habana was

CUJAE and Pratt Students Learning About the Neighborhood From a Community Leader.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

filled with educational tours around the City, panel discussion with notable Cubans such as Carlos García Pleyán, Ricardo Núñez, Gina Rey, and Ernesto Jiménez, and site visits to the Los Sitios neighborhood. Site visits were spent speaking with community members, identifying the existing conditions, and discussing ways to maximize the existing assets. All of this information was processed in a workshop in collaboration with the CUJAE students, generating four sets of analysis, which were presented to the Dean of CUJAE, Gina Rey, and a panel of Pratt and CUJAE professors, at the end of our visit.

Following the return from the trip, the class continued to refine these concepts. This portion of the process challenged the class to develop more recommendations that could help this neighborhood strengthen their housing, mobility, and public space, and leapfrog over previous technology to become competitive in the present and future global economy.

For the culmination of the semester, a report was written to synthesize the knowledge acquired from academic literature, informal interviews, panel discussions, and workshop collaborations with the CUJAE students and professors. The report includes recommendations pertaining to Housing, Mobility and Public Space that address the specific consideration of the neighborhood’s tangible and intangible history, with housing being the most critical, due to the lack of funding for the restoration of the historically significant but ageing building stock at a high risk of collapse.

And, throughout the site analysis in La Habana many other issues arose beyond the three proposed themes.

Collectively, our studio recognized that there were broader social and political lenses that shaped the topics

that could be addressed. The subjects breached were community empowerment, and governance in La Habana.

These were particularly relevant in light of the current economic and political conditions mentioned. The key focus within the recommendations grew to include the potential strength in connecting existing assets, namely the people in the neighborhood, to each other to build capacity. The report highlighted ways that existing governmental organizations such as the FMC (Women’s Federation) and Consejo Popular (neighborhood level governing body) could work together to solve some of the challenges faced by the residents of this dynamic neighborhood. These recommendations will also be shared with CUJAE professors as they formulate their plan to submit to the Cuban government, and will contribute to a paper to be published on the subject.

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OUTCOMES

Rendering of Potential Park Space in Los Sitios.

Developed by CUJAE Student’s Marián Morales Pérez and Adriana Peña Garcés.

STUDIO MEMBERS Anisha Athrey; Kari Bailey; Trapa Barua; Israel Burciaga; Jessica Castillo; Susan Fore; Mark Freker; Sonya Gimon; Alejandra Gómez Bolívar; Nickoia Gordon; Gabriella Green; Yeshashwini Kadiri; Sheena Kang; Sophiya Khan; Sanika Kulkarni; Rajiv Kumar Myana; Collin Lee; Daniel McCombie; M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez; Pratik Patel; Amanda Philip; Nitisha Raje; Carlos Rodríguez Estévez; Jim Shelton; Micaela Skoknic; Pavithra Sriram; Maria Teresa Ruiz Cárdenas; Patrick Waldo; Matthew Walinchus; Eric Xue FACULTY Elliot Maltby; John Shapiro; Vicky Weiner; Kevin Wolfe

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP], Micaela Skoknic [HP], and Sheena Kang [CRP]

Mott Haven LAND USE AND URBAN DESIGN STUDIO & PRESERVATION STUDIO, SPRING 2018

Mott Haven is located in south South Bronx, bordering the Harlem River, Bronx Kill and East River.

It is a culturally rich, yet historically underserved Latino community, with decades of social, environmental and economic injustice that have shaped the issues it faces today: public health crisis and looming gentrification.

Community organizing is pushing back this legacy. This is, in short, where we jumped in.

This Studio was comprised of thirtythree students from Pratt’s GCPE, with backgrounds in Urban Placemaking, City and Regional Planning, Historic Preservation and Sustainable Environmental Systems. The semester long studio was led by faculty members Elliot Maltby, John Shapiro, Vicki Weiner, and Kevin Wolfe, each of whom are cross-disciplinary professionals working in the fields of urban design, planning, preservation, and architecture. Urbanists too often operate solely from their primary spheres; the project’s interdisciplinary focus sought to dissolve these barriers.

This approach yielded a wide range of problem-solving techniques and recommendations that went beyond our client’s immediate charge of gathering data and identifying access to the waterfront.

Our client was South Bronx Unite (SBU), an environmental and community justice organization based in Mott Haven. Their most

prominent work includes an organized community resistance against the local siting of a new Fresh Direct distribution facility.

The campaign highlighted the negative public health impacts the developments have on Mott Haven residents, tying into a long history of local environmental degradation and assaults on the community’s health.

This effort guided our scope of work and inspired our focus on community health and empowerment. More recently, SBU has worked on public waterfront access and neighborhood connectivity plans, as well as initiated a Community Land Trust in partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space.

The initial work of the studio was grounded in a multi-methodological existing conditions analysis of the Mott Haven neighborhood and community. During this phase, SBU supported our team by connecting us with numerous

community stakeholders, a wide range of which we expanded through outreach. Stakeholders included business owners, representatives of local community and activist organizations, Bronx Community Board 1, local political leaders, and real estate developers.

Stakeholder interviews expanded our understanding of various perspectives on Mott Haven as it exists today and its potential paths for the future.

Direct resident outreach gleaned insight into the community members’ everyday lives. We conducted streetintercept resident surveys, which reaffirmed SBU’s concern that most Mott Haven residents are disconnected from the waterfront, rarely visiting it.

Intercept shopper surveys identified for physical improvements to 138th Street. We heard respondents’ praise for 138th Street as the vibrant spine of their community, juxtaposed with their discontent with its lack of infrastructure and disruptive traffic patterns. Finally,

our team visited Middle School 223 one afternoon to conduct an activitybased workshop with local teens.

This trip painted us an invaluable picture of what it’s like to be a kid in Mott Haven today. Some students complained about dangerous and dark street conditions through the creation of an “advocacy poster.” Others shed light on the neighborhood’s lack of healthy food and public open spaces by claiming fast food joints as their go-to after-school hang-outs.

We also conducted an extensive research on the history of the South Bronx, which was key to understanding structural challenges in the area today. Through reviewing historic maps, photos, films, papers and other documents we were able to understand the progression from countryside to factory before the 20th century, and later on the disinvestment after the Great Depression and the trauma of Urban Renewal. But we also saw a history

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138th St. represents Mott Haven’s spine. Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

Image by Alejandra Gómez Bolívar.

of self-determination. Change was also faced with continuity, resistance, and resilience. Cultural movements were born here -like salsa and hip-hop-, cultural institutions blossomed, grassroots organizations created their own gardens and housing, and community planning has been present for over 40 years as an effort to transition from a history of succession to a true history of self-determination.

Throughout this process, SBU founders Mychal Johnson and Monxo Lopez visited our classroom with Ray Figueroa –the program director at Friends of BrookPark, who works with formerly incarcerated youth– to receive our findings and offer their thoughts. These evenings of presentations, critiques, and inspired conversations with them marked the transformation of our client into a collaborative partner.

We worked together to identify and reconcile the disparities between what the studio team put forth and the SBU leaders’ vision and goals.

In the meantime, SBU kicked off their community asset mapping and planning project, Power in Place, while the studio team was selected by Pratt’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment to represent the school at the American Planning Association’s (APA) annual studio competition for planning schools in the New York metro area.

Finally, SBU graciously invited the studio team to present the recommendations – amended to reflect co-authorization by SBU’s leadership – to the Mott Haven community on March 31st, 2018.

We organized a workshop where we shared our findings and presented the recommendations to the community with the objective of starting a

conversation about the current needs of the neighborhood, how past events have shaped the community and how they envision their future should look like. Meanwhile, SBU began the launch of its Community Land Trust with an asset-mapping project, which will put in place a foundation for the CLT to move forward.

We hope that our set of ideas contributes to a healthy, self-defined Mott Haven, with its past and future owned by the community. We aimed to deliver recommendations that match the breadth and depth of the conversations led by SBU, but also broaden the scope of SBU’s ongoing, community-wide conversation about the future of Mott Haven, and to assist their ability to protect the community’s health, home, and history, as they enter a crucial phase of capacitybuilding and intervention.

Workshop with Mott Haven Community on March, 2018.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

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Acitivity-based workshop with local teens of Middle School 223.

Our outreach process brought prior research findings to life, giving way to the trichotomous lens with which we approached the recommendations: one of HEALTH, HOME, and HISTORY. These themes address what were found to be Mott Haven’s most pressing issues, respectively: an ongoing public health crisis, vulnerability to displacement in a changing real estate market, and a history of systemic neglect and appropriation.

HOME

HISTORY

Mott Haven is plagued with some of the city’s worst health issues, affecting both adults and children.

To combat this public health crisis, our recommendations call for the creation of extensive parks along the breezy waterfront; the curation of traffic patterns that halve traffic in the neighborhood’s core; the incremental rebranding of 138th Street as a healthy and safe place to socialize, shop, and dine; and, the investment in greenery and green infrastructure equal in scale to the highway and waste transfer infrastructure sited in the area. Nearby Port Morris should serve as an asset to community health rather than a threat, requiring the reversal of decades-long patterns of industrial contamination and pollution.

Over decades, Mott Haven has become home to many immigrants who aided in creating a neighborhood for those who came with the rightful expectation to have a better life. New zoning and development is on the verge of unleashing powerful gentrification.

Plans for growth not only must offset the effects of gentrification with mixed-income housing, but it should include housing that meets the real incomes of residents. Cycles of speculation and rising rents have predictable outcomes that require immediate actions, including measures that anticipate and prevent, rather than mitigate, displacement.

Finally, this last theme speaks to the neighborhood’s narrative.

The South Bronx is an area with a history of being “planned,” “fixed,” and even “triaged” by outside parties who bear little regard for the community that lives there.

Meanwhile, Mott Haven’s history has been appropriated and re-told into innumerable versions that tokenize the neighborhood and its community, failing to reflect on the systematic injustices Mott Haven has borne. Many of these recommendations aim to right past planning wrongs, protect community identity, and advocate for community participation in the planning of its future. This starts with the premise of: “what is not planned with us is not for us.”

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HEALTH

ALUMNI AT PRATT:

Beth Bingham

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

Beth Bingham is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute.

She is an Urban Planner and Historic Preservation consultant with a professional focus on sustainability and community-based initiatives. In New York she has worked for Partnerships for Parks, New Yorkers for Parks, the Municipal Art Society and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

She is a member of the Gowanus Canal Community Advisory Group, and on the Board of the Historic Districts Council.

She holds a MS in City and Regional Planning and a Certificate in Historic Preservation from Pratt Institute’s Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment, and is currently working towards a PhD in Environmental Psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

I had been working in New Orleans for a Cultural Resources Management firm as an Archeologist and Architectural Historian, and when New Orleans flooded following Katrina there was obviously a change in conditions. During the immediate aftermath and recovery period many new resources and experts began to appear, and the planning that followed either supported or threatened the historic places of the city. So, I started paying attention to the planners, and started noticing that many academic programs in the country were throwing their urban planning graduate students at NOLA. They were partnering with local groups, doing planning projects with the city - there were urban planning graduate students everywhere. A group from Pratt came down with Ron (Shiffman), Deb (Deborah) Gans and Jim Dart and partnered with a community group in New Orleans East, a flooded part of the city that I had really written off as being too vulnerable, too new, and they made me see it. They made me see it differently, through the social patterns and the assets that made it a community, and I felt ashamed that I had been so insensitive -which never happens, I’m a very sensitive person- so I felt like these were my people. That mid-century community, not old, without an

extensive historic fabric, was not a place that I had placed any value on, and all of the sudden I saw planners that were making me see value in a newer community that was built in very low-lying former wetland. I then thought that these people should be able to stay, to rebuild and be near each other because they have this social fabric that’s really important for their survival. This was the only school I applied to, and at the time I was angry with the field of urban planning. I felt that my cover letter was filled with anger about what happened in NOLA, so I wondered if these people would take me with my rage right now (they did).

Was your experience different from what you had imagined it would be? How? No. I really feel that Pratt draws people who are keenly aware of injustice. They come with this justice lens, that could come from their own life or work experience -or in my case with experience in a catastrophe. This school is doing something unique and I see it in the students. I saw it in my classmates and I continue to see it in my students. People are coming here to do social justice work that falls into the HP (Historic Preservation) program, Placemaking, SES, and Urban Planning programs.

What was your biggest challenge and/or takeaway from those years?

Finding a way to work with communities is always a challenge, because each community is unique.

Learning to be flexible with the community work is fundamental, because you have to change constantly and you need to meet people where they are. In order to amplify their work, their voices and expertise, you have to be able to facilitate and then step out of the way, and that it’s tricky and very hard to teach, hard to do, and it’s a constant challenge.

Was there a change in the way you saw your field after completing your Master’s at Pratt?

There’s some people that come to this program thinking, “I’m going to be a planner,” and other people emerge from this program as planners and they never work in planning ever again. That has happened to me. My last job had “planning”in the title, and that was the first time.

I see planning as encompassing everything, because if you are thinking about change, then you are planning. That means if you are thinking about how we have changed in the past, what might change in the future, how we got where we are, looking forward and backward, I think that’s one of the keys of managing

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What motivated you to pursue a graduate degree at Pratt Institute?

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the change that’s upon us now. What I was naive about when I came here was that I wanted to be armed with the tools to understand planners and this field. People who come from a preservation background, we tend to think that planners are the folks that come in and make changes, doing broad strokes or very top heavy things. I wanted to know how to get these types of heavy handed planners out of the picture and support grassroots planning.

Now, I don’t even think of planning being as simple or bifurcated as that, it is actually much more holistic.

When did you became part of the Faculty at Pratt?

I came in 2011. I had been doing facilitation for a Community Advisory Group that had been formed in Gowanus by the EPA, because of the Superfund cleanup of the canal. John Shapiro had decided to do a Studio in Gowanus, and was interested in having the Community Advisory Group as the client so he came to one of the meetings of the group and was surprised to see me there.

This community group came in with a lot of knowledge -it was a huge group of about 60 people- and they were able to share much knowledge and information with the federal

government, shaping a lot of how the cleanup would go, but they were not interested in being the client for the studio because they didn’t want to do anything formal together yet at that stage. So John invited me to teach the studio with four other faculty -it was one of those mega studios-.

To be honest I didn’t know why he asked me because I don’t like public speaking, I’m a super introvert and my immediate thought was “no”, but I guess I’ve never stopped since then.

What or who motivated you to be involved in training young professionals in this field?

For me it’s a bit greedy. I like what I learn from everybody. I think about being overwhelmed right now, maybe I should not teach two sections of thesis, but then I think about all the research that I won’t be able to read and so I keep doing it. I find student ideas to be really inspiring and fresh, and I learn so much not only from their individual ideas and what they bring with their life experiences, but also how they put together the puzzle pieces differently, and I really like that. I’m a learning junkie, that’s why I do it.

Beth at Pratt Center’s Alumni Reunion, 2018.

Source: Pratt Center for Community Development.

Do you see many differences between your generation and the new ones?

I think that there’s a lot more complexity in the world right now.

It’s become more polarized since I came through the program. The rate of gentrification and displacement is beyond hyper at this point, and that was not the case when I started. I mean, it was happening and it seemed like it was insane then, but now it’s really just a machine. There’s more income disparity, and things have just become a lot harder for a lot more people, which makes planning more complicated. Technology is obviously a huge thing that has changed.

I bought a laptop, for the first time, in order to come to this program.

And you can’t live without it now. No.

One thing that I find that is really inspiring is that the students don’t ever feel like “oh we’ve tried everything and this isn’t fixable” or “somebody has already written that a million times”. I never hear that, I never experience it, so I think that part of their ease with technology helps them stay visionary and thinking of new approaches to things. It’s not so much that the students are adapting to anything, but that they are better adjusted to a changing world that I myself am less and less able to adapt to.

Do you think that Pratt is adapting to these changes?

I think we are really lucky to be in an Art and Design school, because that’s really valued. If this were a more traditional school I think you’d find people doing traditional planning. We are in this super creative place, within an architecture school that’s also really creative.

I think there’s something inspiring about walking through these open studios and actually seeing crazy dynamic models all the time, it keeps everybody open minded and just forward thinking as creators of ideas.

What do you think will be the challenges that new professionals will have to face in the near future?

I think that how we live with technology is already dangerous.

The role of government is changing so wildly in this moment. There’s so much inequality that’s just getting worse and worse. I think those are the big things that are unpredictable right now, and what people are going to have to work to fix. Climate change, are we at the point where it’s

reversible? I don’t know yet. To me, it’s crazy that I’ve lived in two cities that have had huge climate related flooding events. What happened in NYC with Sandy had never happened before, and it’s normal in my experience at this point. It’s hard not to get super doomsday really quickly, but these are the big challenges, income equality, climate change and threats to our democracy.

Any word of advice to them?

Keep your eyes at the neighborhood level. If you’re talking to people and residents, people who are engaged and want to shape their own reality, that is endlessly refueling. If I look at DC, I’m going to freak out, but if I look at the Gowanus Community Advisory Group I think “yes, this democracy is working”. We at Pratt are lucky to have this focus on doing things that empower everyday people to actually shape this world.

That is a fight worth doing over and over again, forever. You have to keep your eyes on the prize, and that prize is ensuring that residents of this city have a place at the table and are able to voice a vision.

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Do you think that the students have also changed the way they approach these issues? since they are more complex and they have other tools.

Demonstration of Professional Competence Urban Placemaking and Management

BUILDING DIGNITY IN DESIGN: A Case Study Analysis of Venezuela’s Petrocasas

by Maria Gabriela González Rausell Spring 2017

A warm acknowledgement to Caitlin Cahill, Ignacio Cardona, Adam Lubinsky, Juan Camilo Osorio, Carolyn Schaeffer, and Dr. Donna Hicks. Your valuable time and insights allowed for the conversation about dignity, and for this research, to move forward.

Through an extensive literature review, conversations with practicing professionals, and a case study analysis, this thesis explores the dimensions of dignity (that is, a man’s autonomy and ability to decide over his own life3 ) and its implications for design and placemaking practices.

A particular case of social housing in Venezuela, Petrocasas, will be analyzed to understand how spatial resolution can create or hinder opportunities for self-sufficiency and community-building amongst users.

SOME BACKGROUND ABOUT DIGNITY Dignity, from the latin dignitas, translates into “the quality of being worthy”4 . Its meaning was historically tied to the possession of certain lands or farms, and to the social status acquired from having ownership of them.5 With the emergence of Renaissance Humanism and Modernist thought, the definition of dignity shifted

from that land or status, to center around the human as an individual and his or her capacity for selfdetermination, not available to other species.6 It is now legally recognized as a basic human right in regional and international treaties,7 and written into national constitutions such as those of Germany, South Africa and Hungary.8 Most importantly, there is a strong relationship between communitybuilding and dignity, where the concept of place holds a significant role. Dr. Donna Hicks,9 who has studied dignity and its role in conflict resolution for over thirty years, affirms that experiences around dignity and indignity allow individuals to shape their self-image and meaning from childhood into adulthood; a person that is treated with dignity “creates not only inner stability but a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves, whether it is an organization, a corporation or a nation.”10 Communities with high levels of social capital (understood as the collective value of social networks and the benefits that derive from them11 ) are more able to recover from traumatic events.12 In post-disaster scenarios, the preservation of social networks has become a priority, as they provide a safety net that allows individuals to cope with feelings of loss in the aftermath of a catastrophe.13 This does not happen in a vacuum, but rather in the context of a specific place, that not only provides them with means for the fulfillment of

basic and superior needs, but also the security and stability of belonging14 (a place where culture, gathering spaces, and language are familiar and openly shared). A fulfilled individual, particularly one that has the means to move beyond his or hers basic needs, will form a more resilient community, able to self-organize and to care for and advocate for their rights in different scenarios.

Placemaking, then, must be understood not solely in terms of the activation or beautification of underused spaces, but also as a means to cultivate social capital through the dignification of users.

HOW DO WE TALK ABOUT DIGNITY IN SPACE? The link between dignity and its physical expression in architectural and urban spaces is one that remains unexplored, evidenced in the small amount of available literature on the topic. This represented a valuable opportunity to continue research on the subject, and to tap into other valuable sources of information.

Conversations held with professionals in the areas of Architecture, Urban Planning, Environmental Psychology, Participatory Research, and Conflict Resolution provided important perspectives from praxis.

Dignity as a value applied to place can be broadly defined into two categories: one in relationship to minimum quality standards for inhabitation, and another that argues for a space that both

MULTIPLICITY -31- THESES

What constitutes dignified housing?

Article 82 of the Venezuelan Constitution recognizes “the right to adequate, safe, comfortable and hygienic housing, with essential basic services that include a humanizing habitat for familial, neighbor and community relationships.”1 The Constitution also recognizes the State’s role in guaranteeing the conditions for fulfillment of this goal within the context of a “fair distribution of wealth through democratic, participatory strategic planning and open consultation.”2

humanizes and is able to be humanized and socialized. That is, a spatial dimension of dignity (tangible, where the space provides all physical conditions for the individual to fend for his or herself ) and a social-psychological dimension (intangible, where the space is a vehicle or container for activities or programming to happen, involving socialization, humanization, creation of rituals, individual and collective expression, among others).

This was also consistent in the interviews with the professionals when asked about how they defined dignity and dignified spaces: Dr. Hicks explained that, in her 30 years experience working in conflict areas of Africa, Asia, South America and the Middle East, the people involved reacted similarly when they saw their dignity violated, and had a deep yearning for similar things across cultures and contexts: acceptance of identity, safety, and sense of belonging.

Another interviewee recalled her upbringing in New York City during the 70s and 80s, when the imagery of disinvestment, vacant lots and buildings, and the feeling of not being able to physically change her surroundings, shaped perceptions of insecurity and isolation in her neighborhood at a young age.

DIGNITY IN PLACEMAKING

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AS A SPATIAL VALUE

AS A SOCIAL VALUE

The space meets minimum Quality of Life standards

The space allows activities that uplift the individual’s well-being

minimum sanitary conditions

social network and socialization

no overcrowding structurally sound near public services near employment hubs aesthetics (based on local materials, technique and culture)

individual and family spaces creation of rituals and routines sense of belonging perceived safety cultural expressions

Most interviewees agreed that space in itself cannot be “dignified”. Rather, the environment or conditions generated in that space generate a sense of belonging or comfort that would branch out from a feeling of dignity being honored. In that sense, interviewees also highlighted that any assessment of dignity must combine qualitative and quantitative research, identify particular assets of the community, and be carried out by both residents and designers to better identify what conditions honor dignity in each context.

flexibility and adaptability

Interviewees also talked about barriers to achieving dignified participation in the spaces, and how often they fall creation of space out of the hands of designers and architects. Matters such as the financial capacity of the client, their ability to purchase property or land, as well as the availability of affordable land and what that means in terms of location are often after-the-fact conditions the designer is presented with. Greater systemic issues, such as social inequality and segregation, erode the sense of worth and connection of vulnerable communities, and cannot be taken on nor alleviated by built spaces alone. accessibility

However, most touched on ways that the designer can dignify through his or her practice of the profession by being aware of, and designing projects within, policy and planning structures that allow projects to be viable and long-lasting. An asset-based and participatory approach to the design process was also highlighted, particularly acknowledging communities by integrating them into the shaping of the project.

ANALYZING VENEZUELA’S PETROCASAS. On the topic of dignified spaces, one that has been consistently branded as such by the Venezuelan government is Petrocasas, or Houses of Oil. The petrocasa is a PVC-based prefabricated housing system produced in Venezuela since 2007. Most Petrocasa compounds are located in the industrial city of Guacara, Carabobo, 2 hours west of Caracas.

Petrocasas and other social housing projects have been a government response to a chronic housing deficit that has been present in Venezuela since the 1950s, and further exacerbated by natural disasters that, since 1999, have displaced thousands of people nation-wide. This situation has translated into a significant segment of the population having to find shelter for themselves: By 2005, it was reported that 7 out of 10 houses were self-constructed, making informal settlement dwellers the main housing builders in the country.

Although Petrocasas might provide a quantitative response to the deficit, it begs the question: Are petrocasas designed to honor the dignity and self-sufficiency of its users?

To find answers, Petrocasas were studied at three levels: the site scale, the community, and the housing unit.

This made it possible to examine spatial strategies from a dignity perspective, understand their extent, and elaborate recommendations at each scale of intervention.

10

SITE LEVEL

D Ex eta ist ch in ed g F fr ab om ric

DOWNTOWN GUACARA

alk Radius in W -m

2000 ft

ANALYSIS SUMARY

COMMUNITY LEVEL MULTIPLICITY -33- THESES

CACIQUE GUAICAIPURO COMPLEX

2

4

3 2

1

3

4 *NO STORAGE SPACE

Sources: Developed by author.

Based on Google Maps Satellite Imagery and Alexander Gรณmez photos for AVN

PETROCASAS

1

• Creating a sense of scale: The rectangular and homogeneous block configuration of Petrocasas, as well as the large scale open spaces, often make wayfinding more difficult, and can hinder users from taking ownership, using or maintaining spaces on a daily basis. Clustering a set number of units physically or visually through the use of color or materials can facilitate social interaction and increase a sense of community and collective habitation. Public spaces should also be varied in their scale and use, but most importantly, should be adaptable enough and correctly sized to be easily programmed and maintained.

Attention should be paid to the size of the household and alterations already made by residents as an indication for spatial needs. Photographic documentation of Petrocasas showed many dwellers had covered the space in between their units with makeshift materials to gain storage space, and some others had fully fenced the space around their units, possibly for increased privacy. These alterations should be documented closely, and material and methodological resources should be provided for residents to make these adaptations safely and in compliance with zoning regulations.

Most importantly, information about the process and criteria for allocation of Petrocasas must be transparent and publicly available. Furthermore, guidelines must be in place for residents to be able to choose their housing according to their needs, whether this is special accessibility needs, a growing family, or even proximity to other family members and friends.

RECOMMENDATIONS SUMARY

From a social standpoint, creating a sense of belonging and purpose within the community is imperative to foster healthy communities. This can take the form of delegating responsibilities among residents for community matters such as park and sidewalk upkeep, block stewardship or organization of neighborhood activities and programming, such as block parties, farmers markets, among others. If appropriate, existing leadership structures, as well as assistance from the local government and nonprofits, should be leveraged to this end. Visible involvement of the City government at the community level is of utmost importance, both in terms of capital improvements in the community but also in terms of economic development and in building capacity amongst residents.

• Rebuilding physical connections: The primarily twolane vehicular grid in Petrocasa compounds must be modified to distinguish main streets, service access and dedicated pedestrian and bike circulation.

Reorganization of the street structure and parking spaces can help prioritize much needed internal open space, encourage foot traffic, decrease walking distances and program areas that are currently under-programmed or inactive.

The rigidity of the modular PVC system does not allow for further expansions or structural alterations.

However, the use of movable furniture that can be easily stored when not in use can allow for flexible use of shared household spaces throughout the day. The use of sliding doors can be an inexpensive solution to create more private spaces for individual use, such as resting, reading, or completing homework with the children.

From a social perspective, petrocasas do not offer the flexibility that many households need in terms of size or ADA accessibility once they are built. Focus should be given to providing a variety of housing typology options, sizes and densities. This will not only allow for a diversity of settings to flourish within the Petrocasa complexes and break the spatial homogeneity, but can also include residents with varying income levels.

From a spatial perspective, it is imperative to properly assess public service needs on the ground in all Petrocasa developments. A proper land use analysis is necessary to gather in-depth insight about housing typologies and sizes that could be offered to encourage density and also affordability for families with varying income levels. The private sector and public-private partnership can play a crucial role in this regard, and in filling the current housing gap.

From a spatial standpoint, it is primordial to reduce spatial isolation, both within the development and in relation to its urban context. This should be achieved by:

To create a dignifying space within already existing Petrocasas, efforts should be directed to make spaces adaptable to families’ needs, not only in their current situation but throughout time.

From a social standpoint, securing legal housing tenure is a priority. In the aftermath of natural disasters, securing housing has been crucial for those affected to start to rebuild their livelihoods and self-sufficiency. This must be made through granting of property title to current residents, establishing clear financing and repayment terms and timeframes, as well as providing access to legal housing resources.

Future housing projects can benefit from the creation of a local land trust that allows to identify publicly-owned lands, assess quality of land and location for development, guide investments in public transportation and guarantee access to services.

SITE LEVEL

COMMUNITY LEVEL

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PETROCASAS

RECOMMENDATIONS Recommendations were informed by different social housing design guidelines that served as baseline metrics for the analysis. The approach was to work with what was already there, considering the prolonged life cycle of PVC houses and to avoid further disruption of established networks.

However, these recommendations are preliminary, and must necessarily be subject to a Post-Occupation Evaluation, as well as the timely consultation with the community to assess if petrocasas are in fact still suitable for living.

CONCLUSIONS AND SOME REFLECTIONS “In endowing a place with quality, urban designers frame the experiences people have there, what they can do, and by extension the needs they can meet within that environment”.

Jenny Donovan, Designing to Heal: Planning and Urban Design Response to Disaster and Conflict.

An important takeaway from the research, and particularly from the exchanges with professionals, was that dignity is not created by the space itself, but by the experiences that the space facilitates.

Petrocasas, and many other types of social housing offer a one-size-fits-all solution that relieves the issue of shelter from a quantitative perspective but does not get to the core of dignity, which is how to create environments where people can become self-sufficient and fulfill higher order needs. The achievement of dignity can also be entangled with more complex dynamics: in the case of Petrocasas, the politicization of social housing alongside a general lack of technical data or publicly available records of the allocation process make it extremely challenging to ensure accountability, and attempts against the fundamental right of individuals to be guaranteed a home. As professionals serving communities and vulnerable populations, it is also the designer’s role to call out these instances and advocate for transparency.

From the perspective of practice, the act of dignifying has much deeper social, economic and legal branches, from the Right to Human Dignity, to the Right to the City. Insofar as we can understand what dignity implies specifically, and how this translates into a way of making and designing places, we can develop design strategies more oriented towards obtaining those results, and better understand the political framework in which they must be inserted so that dignity can be achieved.

MULTIPLICITY -35- THESES

Spatial interventions, of course, are necessary, but require a more crafted approach, one that involves the participant in the creation of his space. In this sense, the designer becomes a mediator, and this is particularly important in terms of civic engagement. Not only is it the designer’s role to communicate the technical aspects of the project in a way that is clear and accessible. The designer that practices dignity also becomes a partner with the community, invested in every step of the engagement process: from the elaboration of graphic materials that allow audiences to participate in otherwise complex design decisions, to finding ways to ask questions that speak to people’s concerns and that can be acted upon in terms of planning and design.

Aerial View of the Pretrocasa Compound Source: Alexander Gómez for AVN 1_ Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Capítulo V, Art. 82, 2016).

2_ Ibid.

3_ On ‘the Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for the Emergence of the Dignity of Man and His Rights’ (as cited by McCrudden, 2008).

4_ Garner (1999).

5_ Ibid.

6_ On ‘the Dignity of Man’ (as cited in Rosen, 2012) 7_ In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, dignity is recognized as a right inherent and entitled to all human beings (“all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”).

8_ Rhiley & Boss (n.d.).

9_ Dr. Donna Hicks is an Associate of the Weatherhead Center for Conflict Resolution at Harvard University, and a world renowned authority on dignity.

10_Hicks (2011).

11_ Putnam (n.d.).

12_ Donovan (2013).

13_ The World Bank (2012).

14_ Donovan (2013).

Thesis City and Regional Planning

THE GARMENT DISTRICT: Zoning for Highest and Best Use

by Daniel McCombie Spring 2017

On February 14th 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio, the NYC Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), and the Council of Fashion Designers of America announced a plan to dedicate $136M towards a state of the art “Made in NY” innovation hub in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It would include 200K SF of “small white-box spaces” for film, television, and garment production. A month later de Blasio followed up with a second announcement in a community board meeting. The City was going to certify the Uniform Land Use review Process (ULURP) and initiate a rezoning of the Special Garment Center District.

MULTIPLICITY -37- THESES

The announcement was sudden, but not without precedent. When the Special Garment Center District was created, its purpose was to discourage property owners from converting Class C factory loft space into Class B office space without deed restricting production space elsewhere in the District. Yet of the original 7.7M square feet of protected area, only 750K square feet is still actively occupied by garment manufacturing firms today, with the balance consisting of other fashion uses, illegal conversions, and vacant space.

Garment Center Photo: Wally Gobetz

The prevailing narrative behind this trend is that American garment manufacturing is not competitive with import competition. And while the demand for manufacturing spaces has gone down, a ready supply of otherwise legitimate office tenants are held out of the market. However, garment industry advocates would add to this narrative that speculative rents are causing corrosive damage to the DNA of the New York City fashion industry, a globally recognized brand that is highly competitive with import competition when it comes to specialty and couture fashions. Relocating manufacturing firms from the five protected square blocks of central Midtown, with its robust transit access, its proximity to buyers and designs houses, and fashion institutions, to over a mile of Brooklyn waterfront, means that the replication of the ecosystem and its agglomerative benefits is a virtual impossibility.

Furthermore, the promised space in Sunset Park would not be available until the year 2020, long after the rezoning would have been formally ratified.

THE GARMENT CENTER STEERING COMMITTEE

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When the Sunset Park plan was announced, opponents galvanized around Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, who issued an open letter to the NYCEDC positing a question: “[Why] would the city lift restrictions protecting manufacturing…before sufficient substitute space for these operations is ready?” She partnered with District 3 Councilmember (now Council Speaker) Corey Johnson to ensure the ULURP process did not receive approval from the City Council without further negotiation. In order to broker a way forward, on May 25th the City and the Borough President came together and convened the Garment Center Steering Committee, with stakeholders from both the property owners and industrial advocate factions meeting every other week for three months.

Most participants of the Committee agreed the preservation requirement was a blunt tool for an intricate problem, but there continued to be debate over how to protect a critical mass of production space without it. This was fundamentally a real estate question measured in square feet. While the Committee eventually established a threshold number between 500K and 750K square feet based on surveys conducted by the Garment Center Supplier Association (a garment industry nonprofit) and the Garment District Alliance (the neighborhood business improvement district, or BID), there continued to be debate on the way to preserve space, and whether the threshold number could be met before certifying ULURP. Ultimately, the Steering Committee adjourned without reaching consensus. The City did not certify and media coverage went quiet. Yet the Steering Committee produced a final report with several recommendations that had “unanimous support from the committee.”

Chief among these were developing a framework for a public/private building purchase in Midtown with an industrial nonprofit management model, and advocating for the creation of a custom New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYCIDA) program that would provide real estate tax incentives in exchange for affordable rents for manufacturers. The recommendations also needed not be exclusive of one another.

The Garment Center debate has been ongoing for no less than two decades. The fact that the disparate stakeholders were perhaps closer to a consensus decision than ever before is sufficient cause to explore whether these recommendations could exist under current market conditions. In so doing, outsiders to the debate can develop better appreciation for the longstanding tension between a historic working class industry, and the devalorization of industrial space in the name of “highest and best use.”

FACILITATORS Celeste Frye

Public Works Partners

Ben Margolis

Independent consultant

THE CITY Alicia Glen

New York City Economic Development Corporation

NON PROFITS Susan Chin

Design Trust for Public Space

Adam Friedman

Pratt Center for Community Development

MANUFACTURERS Joe Ferrara Edgar Romney

Garment Center Suppliers Association Worker’s United

ELECTED OFFICIALS Gale Brewer

Manhattan Borough President

Corey Johnson

Councilmember for 3rd District

Dan Garodnick

Councilmember for 4th District

Joe Restuccia, Brian Weber

Manhattan Community Board 4

Vikki Barbero, John Murray

Manhattan Community Board 5

Jerrold Nadler

New York 10th Congressional District

Carolyn Maloney

New York 12th Congressional District

Richard Gottfried

New York State Assembly 75th District

Marisol Alcantara

New York State Senate 31st District

Brad Hoylman

New York State Senate 27th District

THEATER Steven Epstein

Theatrical Wardrobe Union, Local 764 of the I.A.T.S.E

PROPERTY OWNERS Barbara Blair

Garment District Alliance

Mike Slattery

Real Estate Board of New York

DESIGNERS Yeohlee Teng Steven Kolb, Andrew Rosen

YEOHLEE INC. Council for Fashion Designers of America Participants of the Garment Center Steering Committee

THE RESEARCH

GROSS

SALE

SALE DATE

PRICE PSF

516 8 Avenue

ADDRESS

7,500

$25,000,000

03.30.2016

$3,333

23 W 35th Street

7,834

$19,200,000

06.12.2014

$2,451

105 W 28th Street

7,779

$11,600,000

07.08.2014

$1,491

3 W 30th Street

10,595

$13,600,000

04.21.2015

$1,284

3 W 30th Street

10,595

$9,800,000

05.28.2014

$925

44 W 37th Street

11,280

$9,000,000

03.21.2014

$798

19 W 38th Street

10,095

$8,000,000

08.16.2016

$792

315 W 35th Street

62,632

$43,000,000

09.17.2015

$687 $645

107 W 28th Street

7,754

$5,000,000

07.08.2014

22 W 32nd Street

113,000

$55,000,000

01.08.2014

$487

251 W 30th Street

104,199

$50,450,000

04.29.2016

$484

468-470 9 Avenue

16,808

$8,000,000

12.08.2017

$476 $406

338-340 W 39 Street

55,473

$22,500,000

01.15.2015

234 W 39th Street

81,763

$31,000,000

01.13.2014

$379

115 W 28th Street

9,884

$3,650,000

03.14.2014

$369

th

Department of Finance Rolling Sales Data for Loft Buildings between the years 2014 and 2017 (highlighted building was selected for subsequent proforma analysis)

Understanding the market is dynamic and irrational, there was determined to still be value in exploring the feasibility of the Steering Committees recommendations under present market conditions. A building was selected from Department of Finance rolling sales data and run through a series of three discrete proforma analyses. The first of these analyses presumed a scenario where a buyer purchased a building under normal market conditions, and would rent all non-ground floor space to manufacturers paying $30 PSF. The second analysis presumed the same building and the same space converted to Class-B office with rents of $50 PSF. The third analysis again presumed the space would be dedicated to production, paying $30 PSF, but under a model where the buyer was a non-profit industrial developer with access to additional funding sources from the NYCEDC and City Capital grants.

A comparison of the proformas found the office conversion was the most lucrative option for the building owner, exclusive of conversion costs, yielding an annual cash flow upwards of $1.7M. By contrast, the production building under normal market conditions delivered an annual cash flow of less than $55K. The nonprofit management model was somewhat more competitive, with an annual cash flow of $800K. This building, under any scenario, would still only yield approximately 100K square feet of production space, well short of the Steering Committee’s target threshold of between 500K and 750K. With this in mind, a hypothetical model of the custom NYCIDA program was developed after consulting with NYCEDC representatives and reviewing existing NYCIDA programs. The model, as conceived, would provide .05 cents PSF in real estate tax incentive for every

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The first step in landing these recommendations was to conduct a market analysis and determine appropriate sales prices and asking rents for both factory and office space, using information culled from commercial real estate databases, the NYC Department of Finance, and third party trade associations. These sources revealed there were very few loft buildings in the market, that sales prices per square foot (PSF) varied widely, and building sales had dropped off precipitously between the years 2014 and 2017, possibly a market response to the rezoning announcement.

1,000 SF of preserved space. As an example, a property owner dedicating 25K square feet to affordable production space would receive a tax incentive of $1.25 PSF, whereas an owner dedicating 50K square feet would receive an incentive of $2.50 PSF. Structured this way, the degree of incentive scales with the owner’s commitment, incentivizing maximum participation.

After applying the hypothetical tax incentive to the model building example in the proforma analyses, it was determined that it would indeed have utility across different property-ownership types. For owners of existing factory buildings, particularly those that lack capital to perform a conversion, the program provides essentially free money. For a non-profit management model, the program increases annual cash flow from $800K to over $1.3M, much closer to closing the revenue gap with an office conversion. However, a well-capitalized property owner with the capacity to perform a conversion has much more to consider, not least of which is potential growth in office rents with a rezoning imminent.

The main finding from this research was that there are no silver bullets that will both guarantee a critical mass of space and an uncontested ULURP. It was only through cobbling together both recommendations from the Steering Committee that one could start to speculate whether or not a critical mass could be reached without zoning protections.

251 WEST 30TH STREET

FACTORY

OFFICE

FACTORY + NONPROFIT

93,779

-

93,779

-

93,779

-

Retail (SF)

7,294

7,294

7,294

Management Office (SF)

3,126

3,126

3,126

$2,813,373

$0

$2,813,373

$0

$4,688,955

$0

Gross Rent Retail

$1,458,786

$1,458,786

$1,458,786

Total Gross Rent

$4,272,159

$6,147,741

$4,272,159

$427,216

$614,774

$427,216

$3,844,943

$5,532,967

$3,844,943

Net operating Income

$3,792,844

$5,480,867

$3,792,844

Annual Debt Service (-)

$3,739,531

$3,739,531

$2,992,344

$53,313

$1,741,336

$800,499

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PROGRAMMING Production (SF) Office/showroom (SF)

RENTAL INCOME Gross Rent Production Gross Rent Office/Showroom

Vacancy / Uncollectible Effective Gross Income / Year CASH FLOW

Cash Flow

Proforma analysis of 251 West 30th Street under three different models

There is one central idea behind the recommendations that should not be overlooked, which is that they are enforceable. They “have teeth,” so to speak.

A mission-driven nonprofit developer is committed to tenant curation and underwrites affordable rents into its proforma. The custom NYCIDA program requires participants lease their property to NYCEDC, wherein they “leaseback” the property to the original owner, thereby connoting the NYCEDC’s status as a tax-free entity in the process. By that same mechanism, it can revoke benefits for violating terms. Given the historical failure to effectively enforce the preservation requirement of the Special Garment Center District, most notably with the defunding of the Garment Center Enforcement Project after 1992, it is incumbent on all stakeholders to develop solutions that are enforceable in some manner or another. That the Steering Committee’s recommendations do so, and can be demonstrated to work under an approximation of present market conditions, provides cause for further investigation.

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

“Today, de Blasio Administration officials, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, and industry and community leaders unveiled a comprehensive package of support for fashion production in the Garment District. The plan, which follows recommendations from the Garment District Steering Committee, creates support initiatives including a new tax incentive program to preserve manufacturing space in the Garment Center [and] a public-private partnership to acquire a building.”

251 WEST 30TH STREET Sales Price Market Value Assessed Value Total SF Estimated RE Taxes Estimated RE Taxes PSF

$50,450,000 $17,753,000 $7,988,850 104,199 $839,948 $8.06

IDA PROGRAM ASSUMPTIONS IDA Tax abatement per 1000 SF Total abatement PSF

$0.05 $5.21

Total abatement

$542,872

New Estimated RE Taxes

$297,076

New Estimated RE Taxes PSF

$2.85 Custom NYCIDA program (with change in RE taxes highlighted)

At the time of writing, the City is seeking to certify ULURP on June 11th. While the media was quiet, Garment Center stakeholders continued to work, with the City successfully signing term sheets for a custom NYCIDA program and eventually committing $20M towards the acquisition of a dedicate production building. Though the exact terms of the NYCIDA agreement is not yet widely publicized, and the acquisition of a building is far from certain, the potential to reach something resembling a critical mass appears to be enough to have brought all the stakeholders to the table. The repercussions of a rezoning are still as yet unknown, though the author is certain that it will continue to be studied extensively by planners for many years yet.

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On June 4th, 2018, fully a year and a half since the de Blasio Administration’s announcement to create the Sunset Park campus and rezone the Garment Center, the NYCEDC issued a formal press release:

Thesis Historic Preservation

REMEMBERING AND REINTERPRETING NAT TURNER AND JOHN BROWN

by Patrick Waldo Spring 2018

The MVLA’s efforts mirrored the narrow focus of other early preservationists. In his 2010 book Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities, Andrew Hurley identified a trend in the kind of history presented to the public. “Most of the history produced for public display in town squares, along roadsides, and on building facades,” Hurley explained, “tended to celebrate the achievements of elite white men. The flip side of this bias was a blatant disregard for the contributions and sacrifices made by other social groups.4 In his book Place, Race, and Story, Ned Kaufman provides a startling statistic supporting Hurley’s claim. By 2004, in the more than 77,000 listings on the National Register of Historic Places, “only about 1,300 were explicitly associated with African American heritage.” In other words, thirteen percent of the U.S. population was represented in less than two percent of the country’s historic sites.

For more than a century, this lone historical marker was Southampton County’s only public acknowledgment of the largest slave rebellion in United States history. Southampton County, VA Photo: Patrick Waldo

With the roots of historic preservation intrinsically tied to the subjugation of Black people, it is imperative that the field’s practitioners focus on the history and achievements of the Black community. Historians and academics must study and understand the ways in which history is interpreted and presented publically, recognizing the ways in which racial biases affect both.

One such investigation concerns one of the nation’s most important Black figures, historically silenced by white America, and the white man who followed in his footsteps and has received tenfold the attention.

Both staunch abolitionists and devoutly religious men who plotted violent resistance movements to achieve Black liberation, Nat Turner and John Brown have been remembered in decidedly different ways. While the fire engine house John Brown occupied during his ambitious attempt at liberating enslaved people at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia is now a nationally significant historic site administered by the National Park Service, the battleground on which Nat Turner’s last stand was fought is now a peanut farm with no public access. Brown’s last home and gravesite in upstate New York is a New York State

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The field of historic preservation has a race problem- it has ever since its earliest efforts in the United States. Ann Pamela Cunningham, sometimes referred to as the nation’s first preservationist, is widely known and highly regarded for founding the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA), the group responsible for preserving George Washington’s estate, Mount Vernon. Scholars describing Cunningham’s career, however, conveniently gloss over her support for the Confederacy. During the Civil War, she left her work at Mount Vernon to defend her family’s 2,100acre plantation, where enslaved people were forced to farm tobacco and cotton.1 Cunningham’s devotion to white supremacy carried over into daily operations at Mount Vernon. The MVLA “had an exclusive contract with the white-only excursion steamer the Charles Macalester and refused the docking of the River Queen,” a steamer used

by Black excursionists.2 Additionally, Black visitors to the nearby site of George Washington’s birth were forbidden from enjoying their lunches at the picnic grounds, “forced to eat their lunches a mile away from the mansion.”3

This erasure of Black history is compounded by the Southern tradition of erecting statues and monuments celebrating the losers of the Civil War, the Confederacy.

Still to this day, cities and towns across the United States honor the men who gave their lives for the right to keep Black people in bondage. An extensive study of Confederate monuments conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2016 found 1,503 “Confederate place names and other symbols in public spaces, both in the South and across the nation,” including 718 monuments and statues, with Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia displaying almost 300 of those. More than 100 schools, as well as 80 counties and cities, were named after Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures.

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No sign or indicator of any kind marks Cabin Pond, the site where Nat Turner and his comrades plotted their legendary rebellion. Southampton County, VA Photo: Patrick Waldo

Historic Site, and homes that he lived in across the country have been pain-stakingly preserved and turned into house museums. No monument, plaque, or even headstone marks the final resting place of Nat Turner, and the few remnants of his rebellion in Southampton County, Virginia lay largely in ruins. Little more than a few historical markers even mention the largest slave insurrection in U.S. history, one that played a major role in precipitating actions that led to the Civil War and the ultimate emancipation of enslaved people.

Correcting the erasure of Nat Turner from the built environment will involve more than restoring or rebuilding decaying historic houses and erecting a memorial, although both of those steps are necessary.

Bringing Turner into the position of historical prestige that he deserves will involve a major reinterpretation of his life and legacy. As part of this effort, professional and amateur historians who have the privilege of interpreting Nat Turner’s history must resist giving space to reactionary whites. Those with no understanding of the way in which the institution of slavery has inflicted trauma on Black people past and present need not weigh in on the moral compass of Nat Turner.

In an op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Michael Paul Williams addressed the revolutionary violence of Turner and his army.

“Almost any uprising of the enslaved was bound to be violent — how could it be otherwise? In a nation that

allowed such a brutal institution as slavery, were there really any rules?” Williams questioned the indignation of those who vilify Turner on the grounds that his army killed women and children. “It seems anyone with concerns about the action of Turner and his men are holding them to a much higher standard than their oppressors.”

Williams continued, “I wish the folks so enraged over the women and children slain by Turner’s rebellion were nearly as empathetic about the enslavement, rape and brutalization of black women and children, or the genocide of Native Americans, including women and children.5 Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates stressed similar points in his essay for the Atlantic, “Was Nat Turner Right?” “Does Turner stand out because of the massacre,” Coates asked, “or because of the fact that the massacre was perpetrated by a slave in revolt?”6

Carefully preserved in a glass enclosure, John Brown’s tombstone marks his final resting place. The gravesite and home, seen in the background, are open to the public as part of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in North Elba, NY. Photo: Patrick Waldo

A log cabin in which John Brown stayed during his years in Kansas has been restored to its original historic condition and opened to the public as the John Brown Museum. Osawatomie, KS Photo: Patrick Waldo

Framing John Brown as either a “martyr or madman” suggests both viewpoints can be correct, validating the racist assumption that fighting for Black liberation means John Brown must have suffered from mental illness. This lazy framing device must be abandoned altogether, as it normalizes the arguments of white supremacists. White supremacists accused Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of being a crazed race-baiter. That doesn’t mean the National Park Service should create an exhibit at his National Historic Site titled, “MLK: Hero or Race-Baiter?” or that a display at Auschwitz should ask, “The Nazi Party: Heroes or Villains?” Viewpoints with no historical basis, especially those that support and advance an ideology of white supremacy, deserve no place in our textbooks, museums, or historic sites.

By rooting out oppressive practices in historic preservation, whether overt like the Confederate statues lining streets in the South, or more subtle like the language used to describe Nat Turner and John Brown, a welcoming and inclusive field can emerge. When the interpretations of Nat Turner and John Brown are freed from the grasp of white supremacy, historians will be able to more adequately explain the militant tactics used by these men that led to the emancipation of four million enslaved Black people.

Coupled with intensive research and a thorough analysis of the racism and inequality that continue to shape today’s built environment, these efforts can play a critical role in bringing equity to the field of historic preservation.

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And while John Brown has been memorialized in monuments and museums to a far greater degree than Nat Turner, it would be a failure of any careful study of the two abolitionists to suggest Brown has been interpreted fairly.

Like Turner, Brown’s impact has been significantly lessened by misguided and racist historical narratives that have labeled him as a “terrorist,” “treasonist,” or “fanatic.” These narratives are often expressed in an either-or option, posed as an academically fair and balanced question by historians afraid to comment on the ethics of the radical freedom fighters. This safe approach intended to not rock the boat leaves the academic free of criticism but amounts to little more than a deflection of moral responsibility.

1_ Stokes, Karen. Confederate South Carolina: true stories of civilians, soldiers and the war.

Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015 [here in after Confederate South Carolina].

2_ Kahrl, Andrew W. “The Political Work of Leisure: Class, Recreation, and African American Commemoration at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, 1881-1931.” Journal of Social History 42, no. 1 (2008): 57-77. http://www.jstor.org. ezproxy.pratt.edu:2048/stable/25096598.

3_ Ibid 4_ Hurley, Andrew. Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2010.

5_ Williams, Michael Paul. “Williams: Is Richmond Ready to Commemorate Nat Turner?”

Richmond Times-Dispatch. September 22, 2017. Accessed April 13, 2018. http://www. richmond.com/news/local/michael-paulwilliams/williams-is-richmond-ready-tocommemorate-nat-turner/article_244ce1157838-584d-b34b-061a40d0925f.html.

6_ Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “Was Nat Turner Right?”

The Atlantic. September 27, 2012. Accessed April 15, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/ archive/2012/09/was-nat-turner-right/262967/

Thesis City and Regional Planning

FROM REDLINING TO BLUELINING: The NYPD’s Policy of Stop and Frisk

by Jesse Such Spring 2018

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Photo taken during the aftermath of the Michael Brown killing by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri Source: The New York Times

On Halloween in 1963 three men—John W. Terry, Richard D. Chilton, and Carl Katz—were standing near the corner of Euclid Avenue near East 14th Street in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. Terry and Chilton were walking back and forth along this block until they were joined by Katz moments later. Terry, Chilton, and Katz were approached by Officer McFadden who, after watching them for several minutes, decided they were behaving suspiciously, and went with his gut to stop, question, and frisk them.

Officer McFadden was a veteran of the Cleveland

Division of Police, and his specialty was identifying pickpockets. What, if any, resemblance did Terry, Chilton, and Katz have to being pickpockets?

McFadden’s assumption was spot on; as he frisked the three men he found two guns and realized through questioning them that these men were casing a jewelry store with the intent of robbing it. And five years later, on June 10, 1968, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Officer McFadden had the right to stop, question, and frisk these three men before a crime had been committed.

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The implications of this Supreme Court case, Terry v.

Ohio, has reverberated across inner cities in the United States for almost half a century, including in New York City, where the New York Police Department (NYPD) has come under the spotlight for its aggressive policing tactics.

Over the nearly two decades since the NYPD first began tracking Stop and Frisks, there have been so many people stopped and frisked that there are hundreds of thousands of points of data per year and over several million points of data during the last decade. These data points also include how many Stop and Frisks led to arrests. “An analysis by the NYCLU revealed that innocent New Yorkers have been subjected to police stops and street interrogations more than 5 million times since 2002, and that black and Latino communities continue to be the overwhelming target of these tactics. Nearly 9 out of 10 stopped-andfrisked New Yorkers have been completely innocent.”1 What bound these two eras of policing together in New York City is a lesser-known police officer who went by the name Jack Maple. Maple reinvented the way crimes were documented by mapping where crimes took place, and then by flooding the area with a high presence of police officers.

It was Maple, not Police Commissioner William Bratton who gets most of the credit, who was responsible for the development of CompStat –a computerized data center to track where, when, and what crimes were occurring. David Remnick of The New Yorker profiled Jack Maple in 1997.

It was Maple who helped develop the software program that allowed the NYPD to “map” where high crime areas were. The NYPD then attempted to curb crime in these neighborhoods by saturating the areas with large police presences that were also heavily militarized.

Maple called his maps “charts of the future.”

In 1994 Maple’s maps became known as CompStat, or Complaint Statistics and his methodology was implemented throughout the NYPD. The maps pinpointed where crimes were occurring. The NYPD then decided Jack Maple Source: The New York Times

This “military” type of response to crime by Jack Maple actually began at the national level a decade earlier as Michele Alexander points out in “The New Jim Crow: the transformation from ‘community policing’ to ‘military policing,’” began in 1981, when President Reagan persuaded Congress to pass the Military Cooperation with Law Enforcement Act, which encouraged the military to give local, state, and federal police access to military bases, intelligence, research, weaponry, and other equipment for drug interdiction, and subsequently “stop-and-frisk programs were set loose on the streets.”3 The research here presents data that was analyzed between the years 2006 to 2016. The data that was analyzed was obtained from the NYPD and their records on Stop, Question, and Frisk. During this time criminal justice reformers had already filed multiple lawsuits against the NYPD for the discriminatory practice of Stop and Frisk, and in 2013 Judge Shira Schiendlin ruled that the manner in which the NYPD practiced Stop and Frisk was unconstitutional based on racial profiling. The most well known case was Floyd v. City of New York. But there were two other cases more pertinent to urban planners: Ligon v. City of New York and Davis v. City of New York. These cases focused on private and public housing. Consider for a moment the testimony of the plaintiffs from all three cases: -- “Violated” -- “Disrespected” -- “Angry” -- “Defenseless” -- A cop calling you “a fucking animal” -- “It’s like when you’re a kid, when someone is bothering you or someone is like threatening you, you run to your parents for protection, and when

--

----

you’re an adult, you’re supposed to run to the police. But who are you supposed to run to when like the police are harassing you or like threatening you…, who are you supposed to run to then?”

A police officer “told us that we can’t stand in front of our building, so when they come back we would need to be gone.”

“Helpless” “Embarrassed” “Worried”

The stop made him feel the officers were biased “because I am being stopped all the time just because of the kind of neighborhood that I live in.”

From an urban planning standpoint there is also something much more insidious than just a heavy police presence.

There is also an architectural police presence looming even when the police are not there that make certain communities in New York City feel as if you are in a crime zone even when no crimes are being committed. Mike Davis states that there is an “architectural policing of social boundaries,” and that what is taking place today is the “militarization of city life.”

He delves deeper by indicating that this is “only visible at the street level, to merge urban design, architecture and the police apparatus into a single, comprehensive security effort. The social perception of threat becomes a function of the security mobilization itself, not crime rates. White middle-class imagination, absent from any firsthand knowledge of inner city conditions, magnifies the perceived threat through a demonological lens.”4 If crime rates are not the cause of a heavy police presence as Davis astutely points out, what is? The Stop and Frisk data that was analyzed from 2006 to 2016 obviously points to racial discrimination, but also a new form of discrimination that I coin as “Bluelining.” In a sense, New York City went from Redlining in the 19th Century to Bluelining in the 20th Century. The term Bluelining refers to a heavy police presence that essentially cordons off one neighborhood from

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how to rapidly and aggressively respond to these crime areas, akin to what later was called shock and awe (in connection to the War in Iraq). Maple believed that conventional policing was “dysfunctional” and preferred a more “military” type of response to crime.2

the next, making residents feel as if they cannot come and go as they please, and that they have no right to the City.

There are 77 police precincts located throughout New York City. Using a variety of variables I was able to identify 10 out of the 77 police precincts that are being bluelined by the NYPD. In order to identify these 10 precincts that are being bluelined, I analyzed the top quintiles of the total Stop and Frisk Rates between the years 2006 to 2016; the discrepancies between Stop and Frisk and Crime Rates; and the discrepancy between Stop and Frisk and Arrest Rates. Figure 3 identifies the 10 precincts that are being bluelined in New York City, as well as the NYCHA footprint that is being overly targeted by the NYPD.

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In summary, criminal justice reformers, alongside urban planners, must ask themselves how to prepare for not only racial discrimination among police departments, but also about geographical discrimination. How do police officers attitudes change depending on what borough or neighborhood they are working in? Do residents fare well if they are living in middle or upper class neighborhoods versus poorer neighborhoods?

What the map in Figure 3 shows us is not only police discrimination in less wealthier neighborhoods, but also racial discrimination and discrimination based on public housing. If these three indicators demonstrate how people are policed, much more reform is needed.

It is possible that the end of an era in Stop and Frisk has come to pass in New York City; that we will no longer see the extreme numbers of Stop and Frisks we witnessed during Mayor Bloomberg’s extenuated time in office. As soon as Bloomberg left office, Stop and Frisk rates dropped by 175 percent from its peak year in 2011. Yet, the violence that is perpetrated by police officers in communities of color predates Mayor Bloomberg and can logically be expected to persist or evolve without a concerted effort to assure otherwise.

Examples of Architectural Policing and the Militarization of City Life Leading to Blue-lining: Cranes for Surveillance and Generator Lights for Sidewalks Photos: Jesse Such

Describing neighborhoods as “occupied territories” with roving checkpoints, where the atmosphere has such police hostility you feel as though you are being discriminated against because of where you live, points to a rogue police force where the only rhyme or reason in policing strategies in New York City is to persecute communities of color.

Overlapping Top Quantities of Total Stops, Questions, and Frisks Source: NYC Police Department and NYC Housing Authority

More radically, perhaps the results of the landmark court case, Floyd v. City of New York, to reform the NYPD, should not be compared to Terry v. Ohio, as it has been for so long. Maybe the Floyd case should be compared to Plessy v. Ferguson or Brown v. Education, where individuals stood up for their human rights to demand an end to segregation. And maybe the individuals that we reviewed in the three court cases should be compared to other individuals: Rosa Parks, Jane Jacobs, and Eric Garner. Activists, advocates, and martyrs for police reform.

People who fought to end racism and segregation.

1_ New York Civil Liberties Union.

“Stop and Frisk Data.” Accessed December 6, 2017. https://www.nyclu. org/en/stop-and-frisk-data.

2_ Remnick, David. 2014. “The Crime Buster.”

The New Yorker, February 16, 1997 Issue. https://www.newyorker.com/ magazine/1997/02/24/the-crime-buster.

3_ Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press, New York.

4_ Davis, Mike. 2006. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. Verso.

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Stop and Frisk in New York City is a policy that explicitly blue-lines communities—where the NYPD creates random perimeters in neighborhoods within certain precincts keeping people in and out—by concentrating police officers in the most vulnerable, isolated, and disconnected parts of the City to intimidate primarily the poor and public housing residents. In wealthier areas of the City, the same policy is designed to keep people out. This policy, over the course of several decades, has turned into residential segregation through police enforcement. This study and thesis recommends that urban planning principles on how to remove the call for Stop and Frisk, and in some respects reform the NYPD, be presented to lawyers working towards these remedies. The testimony from the Plaintiffs in the three court cases is too powerful to ignore.

“I can’t breathe,” is an expression where communities of color and the streets and sidewalks that they walk on are being asphyxiated by the NYPD’s policy and tactics that are being abused through their use of Stop and Frisk.

Thesis Historic Preservation

THE WHOLE PRESERVATION STORY: Let’s Make Waterfronts Work for All

by Micaela Skoknic Dockendorff Spring 2018

“Making Magic on the River” is the title of a New York Times article printed on Aug. 10, 2018. Along with the recently opened Domino Sugar Park, it discusses the green transformation of three former industrial areas along the BrooklynQueens waterfront. What’s there not to like? First, magic for whom? and second, as the article points out, “City waterfronts have been changing everywhere, often hand in hand with private development. If anything, the pendulum may have swung too far. Public-private partnerships have many benefits but they always come at some cost, and cities also need industry and economic diversity.”

INTRODUCTION

Looking at New York City, I argue that the economic argument for industrial heritage rehabilitation is too narrow, focusing mostly on land value increase, expanded retail opportunities, tourism and cultural renaissance. Industrial conservation tools are contributing to a type of development that raises environmental, economic and social concerns. Rehabilitation techniques are being challenged by the displacement of the people whose memory is set to preserve.

This article is a critique on how we are managing change, but it is also an invitation. To research, practice and advocate without losing sight of an essential fact. Which is, that our object of study ultimately includes land. And in New York, a place that epitomizes the urban crisis of affluence1, this is a great responsibility.

If we as preservationists care for vitality and beauty, if we work to make places livable, viable and equitable, we need to be proactive about this essential fact.

We need to be responsible of how our tools are shaping urban life. For they integrate the dynamic of destruction and construction that fuels the economy and politics of this city; tools later exported as tried and true methods.

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What follows is an opinion about the impact of adaptive reuse projects in New York City’s transitioning waterfronts. It is the initial piece of an ongoing thesis research, and part of what I will be presenting before The International Committee for the Conservation of Industrial Heritage (TICCIH), in their annual Congress to be held in September this year. This version of the presentation has been adapted to be shared with prospective Pratt students and fellow preservationists, planners and placemakers; with all of us concerned with urban life.

Render of the upcoming Williamsburg waterfront look.

Source: 6sqft.

Preservationists are architecture historians. Hence, a peculiar type of problem solvers. This research hopes to inspire fellow colleagues to harness our skills to contribute to a different kind of development. One that is just and sustainable, and that protects diversity as the standard of all that is vital and beautiful.

BUSINESS AS USUAL. Urban living has come a long way in the last century.

Deindustrialization transformed ports and waterfronts into vacant lots and abandoned brownfields. Following waves of economic crisis, white flight, suburbanization and urban disinvestment, industrial waterfronts became home to poor and marginalized communities.

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Towards the turn of the 21st century, settlement patterns changed yet again. Waterfront living became desirable and a synonym of the contemporary urban experience.

Looking south from the nowadays fenced Port Morris waterfront.

Source: CurbedNY.com

Since the conversion of the Ghirardelli chocolate factory in San Francisco, turning historic industrial waterfronts into hot property has become a trend, crystallizing as an industrial heritage conservation tool. Adaptive reuse, the conversion of obsolete buildings to foster new uses, “has blossomed in recent years and is often seen as the only means of retaining old industrial buildings or areas.� 2 In New York City, industrial heritage conservation plays a debated role in urban regeneration. Early discussions looked at the role of artists and industrial loft-living in neighborhood transition. Gentrification scholars have extensively covered the displacement of working class communities as part of wider urbanization processes. All along former river banks and waterfronts, public property is reframed as the economic motor for a new postindustrial society3.

The efforts to exploit these opportunities are aligning.

Patterns of private investment and public regulation can be traced. As if there was a checklist for high-value redevelopment at a very low cost. It often involves large industrial, transportation and/or utility waterfront sites. Underutilized or abandoned, a considerable amount of them are publicly owned vacant land and buildings. For decades they are leased by city agencies to polluting industries, corporations and developers, instead of serving public purposes. And, as current residents are vulnerable communities, business and residential displacement is set in motion with shameless ease.

Examples for this phenomenon are manifold. Starting with informal conversion of former industrial buildings during the late 1980s, jointly Williamsburg and Greenpoint (rezoned in 2005) have lost 8 million square feet of manufacturing uses, while gaining 12 million square feet of housing. The area is today predominantly white, and the remaining historic Latino population is isolated in small pockets. The High Line park transformed the Meatpacking District, spurring luxury developments in Chelsea and causing local businesses to struggle.�4 In Long Island City, the onceindustrial area has given rise to more new apartments since 2010 than any other neighborhood in the country5 Trends in residential and commercial waterfront development raise several questions. Are we irresponsibly trespassing beyond optimum levels of density in waterfront areas? Are these places prepared for new residential influx, or are we overburdening already neglected transport and energy infrastructure? Amidst a renaissance of urban manufacturing, how desirable is it to forego productive sites for the sake of building more luxury condos?

RE-TOOLING INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE PRESERVATION Most notably in dense urban centers, there is an ambivalent relationship between preservation and development. But historic preservation is a form of sustainable urban development, and it is urgent that we find greater points of convergence between the two. Part of the research I am carrying out at the moment intends to bridge that divide.

It is no surprise that our society is going through a moment of deep transformation. Partly accelerated by a global environmental crisis, the technological advancement in communications, transportation and, most evidently, energy, are reshaping the way we think of urban living.

An industry and site-based analysis will provide the grounds for a model. To illustrate the potential of preservation, I will focus on the global transformation of urban energy systems precipitated by the rise of renewable power sources.

Simulating the implementation of a neighborhood-scale utility, I will explore what factors interplay in preserving industrial districts to encourage local growth, while contributing to preservation and resiliency goals.

This work emerges from the conviction that new technology opens a window of opportunity for preservation. And that in cities like New York, historic industrial areas provide a chance for responsible land stewardship. Because of its scale, location, typology and ubiquitousness, these places could accomodate the infrastructure that future cities will need. Preservation regulation can be a tool to reserve these areas to plan cities that are economically productive, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.6 “History is repeating itself, but in urban form.”7 We should embrace this new iteration of technological revolution, and have a greater say in the answer to an essential question: how do we want to live?

Former Marcus Brush Co. on Willow St, Port Morris.

Source: Author

1_ Baker, Kevin. The Death of a Once Great City. The Fall of New York and the urban crisis of affluence. Harpers Magazine. July 2018.

2_ Cossons. Neil. Why preserve the industrial heritage? p. 12 and 13 IN Industrial Heritage Re-tooled. The TICCIH guide to Industrial Heritage Conservation. 2012.

3_ High, Steven and Burrill, Fred. Industrial Heritage as an agent of gentrification. National Council on Public History. 19 February 2018.

Available at: http://ncph.org/history-at-work/ industrial-heritage-as-agent-of-gentrification/ 4_ Far beyond planning and design, “the most critical point in these projects is social equity around their neighborhoods” says Robert Hammond, founder of Friends of the High Line. IN: Dezeen. “High Line creators launch website to advise on avoiding gentrification”.

June 22, 2017. Available at: https://www.dezeen. com/2017/06/22/high-line-network-websitelaunch-offer-advice-avoiding-gentrification/ 5_ NY Curbed. Long Island City outpaces the rest of the U.S. in new apartment construction. June 26, 2017. Available at: https://ny.curbed.com/maps/long-islandcity-development-boom-construction-map 6_ Sachs, Jeffrey. Op cit. p. 366.

7_ Katz, Bruce and Nowak, Jeremy. The New Localism. Brookings Institution. 2018. p. 15.

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Based on the existing conditions of Port Morris, a historic waterfront in the South Bronx, I intend to develop a program that can spur new ideas for preservation policy. In particular, it analyses the environmental, social and economical benefits of retaining industrial and manufacturing uses in this area.

Capstone Sustainable Environmental Systems

ANSWERING TO THE ANIMALS: Utilizing an Integrated Approach to Strengthen the Responsible Down Standard’s Parent Farm Transparency

by Emma Hickey Spring 2018

ABOUT to sleeping bags, and more. This project follows the down supply chain and how to improve its animal welfare accountability by utilizing various approaches to collect, consolidate, and maintain data for risk assessment measures.

The down industry is an entity that is important for sustainability because down is a by-product of the geese/ duck meat industry and a product that would otherwise be waste if it were not used in textiles. However, it is important to understand that in sourcing all of the world’s products, there are always environmental and social considerations to take into account. In the case of down, it comes from ducks and/or geese, which presents a number of animal welfare concerns. All of these are considered in this project’s final recommendations.

Image Source: Responsible Down Standard.

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This past semester, Emma Hickey of GCPE’s Sustainable Environmental Systems program completed her demonstration of professional competence project on the subject of traceability and sustainability in global supply chains for the fashion industry.

Her specific project trajectory focused on addressing the issue of the optional parent farm module under international organization Textile Exchange’s Responsible Down Standard (RDS). For the purposes of this project, parent farms are defined as the farms on which the producers or the “parents” of ducks/geese that are used for down are raised.

They are also known as egg farms.

Additionally, down is defined as the very soft and fine material that sits under the outer feathers of ducks and geese; it is used in a variety of different products from pillows, to comforters, to jackets,

ENT FARM S

R PA Currently, one of the biggest problems right now in the down supply chain is the live plucking of birds at parent farms in the down supply chain, which is the first step in this supply chain (see Figure 1).

R GHTE HOUS AU

Live plucking is the act of taking live birds and pulling out their feathers for the ES purposes of down. It is a process that is very bloody and harmful to these animals. Between duck and geese down sourcing, geese are the highest concern for live plucking because geese-produced down has something called a “higher fill power”, which refers to the fact that their down is higher quality and therefore more valuable than duckproduced down. If an RDS-certified farm is found to be practicing live plucking, they immediately lose their certification throughout the entire supply chain.1

ISING FARMS RA

THE ISSUE: PARENT FARMS & LIVE PLUCKING

OCESSORS PR

UFACTURER AN M

Figure 1_ Down Supply Chain (Information by RDS & Ashley Gill.

Photos by Modern Farmer, The Sunday Times, Erika Feng, Ohio Feather Company, Nanotech Down Comforters Ltd, Urban YVR, The Trek)

TOMER CUS

Under the Responsible Down Standard, Textile Exchange includes guidelines, audits, and reports to eliminate live plucking. Additionally, the RDS undergoes both announced and unannounced audits, cares for animals throughout their entire lives, and assures that RDS-certified garments only use 100% RDS-certified down and are not mixed. The RDS started in 2013, a time during which major outdoor brands Patagonia and The North Face committed to establishing down standards for their prospective supply chains. Patagonia established the Traceable Down Standard and The North Face established RDS.3 Upon completion of the RDS, The North Face gifted the standard to Textile Exchange who – in conjunction with an International Working Group – own the current 2015 version of the standard. The RDS offers a resource for the entire textile industry for ethical down.4 For textiles and even more specifically for down, the RDS can be equated to fair trade certifications and USDA organic certifications, both of which are more commonly known and set third-party, unbiased standards in their prospective industries.

RECOMMENDATIONS

RETAIL

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SL

Although prohibited under the RDS, Textile Exchange is currently trying to understand the probability that there could be live plucking at parent farms. The reason this occurs is S because many parent farms want to make extra money by selling down that is harvested from living parent geese. The certification of these standards has not been incorporated into the down supply chain yet as required, but they are presently detailed under a “Parent Module” in the RDS that is currently optional for brands.2 Some of the key research components the organization is looking for are still in the research stages, which is where this project’s recommendations become important.

RESPONSIBLE DOWN STANDARD (RDS)

The overall most important fact about this issue is that there is simply not enough data to create any type of solid risk assessment for estimating live plucking on parent farms in the RDS supply chain. Because of this, this report centers its recommendations on the idea that the RDS needs to take steps over a number of years before it is ready to incorporate accurate risk assessment models for live plucking at parent farms into its approach. These steps are listed throughout four phases. These are listed in order of priority and feasibility. They are depicted in Figure 2 and described in greater detail.

PETA, Four Paws, Animal Rights Campaigns

PHASE I

The first recommendation is compiling a list of the information that already exists for live plucking on parent farms. This will include research and collection of research of existing campaigns that already exist around live plucking on parent farms, data associated with them, and consolidating all of this. Organizations Four Paws, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), and Animal Rights (a Dutch animal rights organization) are key players in this phase because they have all done work in the past on the issue of live plucking and have published public pieces on it.

Existing Stakeholder Information

Data Consolidation

PHASE II

Recommendations Phase I: Consolidate Existing Information on This Topic

Tool for Consolidation

This recommendation includes initiating a database via Google Sheets to consolidate all of the existing information on incidences of live plucking. This is the methodology that this paper recommends to be shared with the RDS and its stakeholders. After the initial research and consolidation is completed in Recommendation/Phase I, the key task would be for RDS stakeholders to actively add in information as they experience incidences of live plucking. An important feature of this mechanism would be that it would be anonymous.

Recommendations Phase III: Ensure A Neutral Party Will Hold Data

Neutral Party Takes Ownership and Maintains

PHASE III

Overall, the purpose of this tool in Phase II would be to not place blame, the point would be to collect neutral information. Because of this need for neutral data, there is also the need to identify a neutral third party outside of the certification that could maintain this mechanism of data storage. One of the key groups for this could be the Roundtable on Ethical Down. With the involvement of a neutral party, this data could then eventually be aggregated.

Finally, this paper recommends partnering with an academic institution for free/low cost research. Overtime, a university could use all this information that the standard collects in Phases I-III; therefore Phase IV includes partnering with an outside institution for an impartial study on this subject.

Because there needs to be data in order to do this, this phase would come last. The outcome of this study would be a usable risk assessment.

PHASE IV

Recommendations Phase IV: Impartial Study Relationship with Supply Chain Management Graduate Programs

Impartial Study by University Graduate Program(s) Figure 2_ Summary of Recommendations

CONCLUSION This project is a culmination of a semester’s worth of research that took into consideration various risk assessment models, other down standards in the textile industry, stakeholder phone calls, professionals interviews, and other animal welfare standards. The above recommendations include a consolidation of the advice, concerns, and experience of those involved.

1_Gill, Ashley. Review of Topic Interview.

6 Mar. 2018.

2_ Textile Exchange. Responsible Down Standard 2.0. 2014, pp. 1–36. http://responsibledown.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/07/TE-ResponsibleDownStandard-2.0-opt.pdf.

3_ Four Paws. Down Traceability from an Animal Welfare Perspective. http://www. europeanoutdoorgroup.com/files/Down_ standards_comparison_by_Four_Paws.pdf.

4_ Textile Exchange. “Responsible Down Standard.” Responsible Down Standard. http://responsibledown.org/.

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Recommendations Phase II: Establish A Tool To Hold Data in One Place

ALUMNI AT PRATT:

Lisa Ackerman

by M. de los A. Muñoz Martínez [HP]

Source: World Monuments Fund

Lisa Ackerman is a visiting Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute. She was named Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of World Monuments Fund in 2007, having previously served as Executive Vice President of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. She holds a B.A. from Middlebury College, an M.S. in historic preservation from Pratt Institute, and an M.B.A. from New York University. She serves on the boards of Historic House Trust of New York City and New York Preservation Archive Project.

In 2007 she received the Historic District Council’s Landmarks Lion award and in 2008, was named the first recipient of the US/ICOMOS Ann Webster Smith Award for International Heritage Achievement.

I had been working about 20 years, and my interests had changed a little bit. I loved my job at the Kress Foundation, but had developed this strong interest in preservation. I had been thinking about going back to graduate school, and was interested in a program at Columbia that focused in 19th century studies, so I had talked to somebody there about perhaps applying, but I wasn’t quite convinced that it was the exact right path for me. Then, somebody came to talk to me about Pratt launching a Preservation program the next year and was interested in my thoughts about this new opportunity. By the end of the conversation I said “actually I would be interested in applying as a student.” Somehow in that conversation it all clicked for me. Being a part of something new appealed to me, and it was exciting to go back to school after working for so many years. Good thing I was accepted because I had no backup plan.

Since it was a new program, did you have any ideas or expectations about how it would be?

There was a curriculum that was part of the materials that were given to prospective applicants, so I knew in theory what courses were going to

be taught. The biggest surprise was, in a way, the benefits of using New York City as a laboratory. However, it also made me realize towards the end of the program that the way that the curriculum was structured there was very little opportunity to learn about the way preservation plays out in other parts of the world. After I graduated, Eric Allison (founder and former academic coordinator of the HP Program) and a couple of other administrators at Pratt convened a meeting with some of the students from the first and second year, and asked us how we felt about the curriculum -and the lesson here is never speak at such a meeting. I mentioned my concern about the lack of information on international preservation issues, and thus a lack of explaining to students how preservation in New York fits into a larger universe of preservation activities. A year after that conversation, Pratt asked me to teach the International Conservation course.

That must have been interesting, to end up trying to solve a flaw that you had pointed out.

It was a big challenge. I had expressed a view about what was lacking in the curriculum and now suddenly I had to figure out how to insert that piece of information into the overall curriculum. Over the years, I have changed the way

I teach that class. Sometimes it’s about what’s going on in the world, and sometimes it’s about what’s on my mind about international preservation. For me it’s been a continuing learning experience.

It’s a mini-course, so trying to put a coherent comprehensive amount of information into 5 weeks is a challenge, but I think about it as almost the vehicle for having good lookup tools later on. It’s a good jumping-off point for future discussions about international preservation.

Do you see many differences between your classmates and the new generations that come through the program now?

Pratt has attracted a diverse group of students. When I was one, nearly everyone had gone to college in the US and there was a strong interest in architecture and art history. As a faculty member what I really notice in both my classes is a very significant increase in the number of international students, which makes them more interesting to teach. Having had students from different countries makes the conversation that much more dynamic because you have people that can draw upon their personal experiences to describe national values, heritage identity, and other topics we explore.

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What motivated you to pursue a graduate degree at Pratt Institute?

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There’s also a lot of shared things. My fellow students were very engaged people who were interested in participating in class discussions. As an instructor in the program I find that the students and where they come from around the world differs, but the program is still attracting people who enjoy discussion and sharing their knowledge. The one thing that astonishes me every year is that, as a group, students are incredibly prepared week to week. I always feel that everybody has read the assignments and comes prepared to talk.

What was your biggest challenge and/or take away from when you were a student?

The downside of being a student in the first and second year of the program was that they were still working out the curriculum and lining up faculty. As students we realized that some pieces of it didn’t quite work, and that can be frustrating.

There was nothing grave that didn’t work, but you realize, for example, that you need a greater diversity of faculty members. In those early years, a small group of people taught the classes, so in the program you didn’t have a variety of voices.

Now, after a decade of activity, the program has matured and has a robust faculty that represents a wide range of interests in the field.

And what do you think is the main challenge now that you are a faculty member?

Do you think that the students have also shifted their interest? Have you seen it?

This is a field that started off very focused on the conservation of buildings, so the curriculum was initially designed to train people to be cognizant of architectural conservation issues. Even if you were not going to be a hands-on conservator, as a graduate you were likely to seek employment with an organization involved in physical conservation work. We are now saying that heritage conservation connects to a lot of things, whether it’s poverty alleviation, illiteracy, or empowerment of local communities.

So the aspirations of the people in the field have ratcheted up, and the curriculum has to try to keep up with these demands. That is very challenging, because you can’t be all things to everybody. Keep in mind that it’s a two year program, so you have to try and stuff all this information into a limited number of classes. The field is pushing outward more and more, trying to show that this is an important component of social engagement and impact. Pratt’s curriculum reflects this, so a lot of materials have been added around sustainability, resilience, community development, as well as knowledge of digital tools that are increasingly part of the preservation arsenal. I think we are doing the best we can, but it’s a field that is still evolving.

Definitely. A lot of the people that I started out with in the program were very much thinking about getting jobs working for the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, or an architectural or design firm, and very much thinking about physical conservation activities. I think when you look at the student body now, it has students who are interested in traditional preservation jobs but it also has students who are very much interested in economic development, public policy, planning, and social enterprise. I definitely see students reflecting the fact that this is a field that lets you go in a lot of different directions, with people coming from different backgrounds and aspiring to different jobs. When I started, the majority of people had come out of art history programs and were rooted in preservation aesthetics. You still have a number of people with art history and architectural backgrounds, but I’ve had students in the last couple of years interested in public housing, local enterprise development, community activism, preservation law, and other areas that reflect the desire to connect preservation to improving the lives of people living in historic cities.

I enjoy my teaching experience. I’ve grown immensely fond of Pratt and I personally enjoy meeting students and helping them understand the broad nature of the preservation field.

The courses are a way for me to share the knowledge I gain each day at World Monuments Fund with those interested in entering the field. I’ve managed to stay in touch with a lot of students over the years, and even had the chance to hire some Pratt graduates at WMF. I probably spend way too much time preparing for each class, but I really enjoy putting the curriculum together each year, selecting the reading assignments, thinking about the lectures. There are always some repeat materials, but often the subtle shifts in topics and discussions reflect what is happening in preservation today.

In my Concepts of Heritage class, which is a full semester course, I really like the transition when I start talking less and the students start setting the pace for discussions.

What do you think will be the challenges that new professionals will have to face in the near future?

You know, the challenges are pretty much the same all the time. Graduating with a Masters Degree in any field and going out and finding a job where you feel you can capitalize on what you’ve learned is never easy.

Pratt’s preservation program is now maturing and has an Alumni body to which students and recent graduates can connect. When I graduated the program was new, so my classmates and I had to explain what being a Pratt Graduate meant. If you came from Columbia or the University of Pennsylvania, those programs were more than 25 years old and had a track record and a large Alumni network that you could reach. Now that Pratt’s HP program is maturing now, those same benefits are accruing to graduates.

That’s a big change from when I was a student, and that’s a big thing for any graduate program to have. That sense of going out into the world and there are other people who have come before you who have demonstrated that that Pratt degree has value.

And even though you get jobs for any variety of reasons, I think that when people have hired successfully from a program, they will see another Pratt graduate as a desirable candidate.

I think that makes a difference for people; there’s a certain name recognition value that carries weight.

Source: World Monuments Fund

Any word of advice to them?

Advice is easy to give out, but not always that meaningful. You just can’t ever discount word of mouth.

If you want a certain job--and this was hard for me when I was much younger--you have to be bold, you have to assert yourself. I was always one of those people who was afraid to talk to people, so it took me a long time to get there. Now I realize that if you don’t let people know that you are interested in a job they can’t help you. They don’t know your thoughts by telepathy. You have to be willing to send that email or make that phone call. Let people know that you are out there looking for a job, and know that people are never insulted by knowing what your interests are.

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You mentioned before that you ended up being a professor for making a suggestion about a change in the curriculum, but what else motivated you to keep being involved in training young professionals in this field?

Final Four at HUD

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by Jay Skardis [CRP]

Now in its fifth year, the Federal Agency for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Innovation in Affordable Housing (IAH) competition is open to teams from graduate schools throughout the country. For the 2018 competition, a group of five students from the City and Regional Planning (CRP), Sustainable Environmental Systems (SES), and Real Estate Practice (REP) disciplines within the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) at Pratt Institute were chosen by the faculty to

compete. And in December of 2017, Isil Akgül (SES), Larissa Ly (CRP), Olivia Norfleet (CRP), Brandon O’Halloran (REP), and Jay Skardis (CRP) submitted their application.

They were one of 106 teams.

architecture, environmental impacts, and social services programming.

The more innovative the better, while being able to justify how these solutions would work, within a timeframe, and within the budget.

An affordable housing project scheduled to be built, or renovated, is chosen by HUD each year as the location for each team’s theoretical design. HUD’s directive for the competition design was to bring innovative solutions to all aspects of the process, from finance to design,

Topographical and zoning maps of a two-and-a-half-acre site two miles from the center of Dover, New Hampshire, with existing buildings, was provided to each team. The directive was given to increase the density of the site by 154 units to accommodate the senior and disabled

Research was delved into throughout the winter break on the location, zoning, building typologies, demographics, economic, social, and environmental factors, local and regional influences, financing and federal loan possibilities, and social services for the senior and disabled population that would join those already living on the property. A conviction to design for these seniors and disabled residents became the driver of the project. And, this and the social services aspect, became the focus that influenced the concept and design that was distilled from this extensive process for the Phase I submission, of a narrative and four slides, in January.

It is this conviction, conveyed in the narrative, and shown in the effort put into the renderings and slides, that convinced the judges to choose Pratt’s entry as one of the ‘Final Four’ teams selected from the 106 entries. These four teams were invited to present their projects, as Phase II, at HUD’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. in May. After the excitement of being selected, work continued. A presentation narrative was developed, and six slides were created, which would serve to convey the extent of the research and design for the 20-minute presentation to the judges and audience at the headquarters. It was a large endeavor, but worth it in the end to return to Pratt and present the GCPE Chair with the award.

Hopefully, it will be the first of many gained by future Pratt teams.

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residents of two downtown properties slated to be sold, the funds from which would partially be used for the new construction, with a total budget of $30 million. It was up to each team to figure out everything else.

The Village Model. A systems approach to sociability, sustainability & replicability.

Render: Isil Akgül.

summer

The Sustainable Village.

Render: Isil Akgül.

The Sustainable Village

Final Four presentations for each year can be viewed on HUD’s website: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/challenge/home.html

winter

Art, Culture, and Social Justice: New Orleans MULTIPLICITY -66- FIELDWORK

by M. de los A. MuĂąoz MartĂ­nez [HP]

Headed by Prof. Caron Atlas, this experiential course takes place every year after the APA conference, and aims to investigate how the arts and culture are a fundamental part of the vision and the construction of equitable and sustainable communities. For the Spring of 2018 the location was New Orleans, and with the collaboration of Mimi Zarsky -local artist who has been working with the artist community in NOLA for over 20 years- we went on site visits, guided tours, cultural events and had conversations with people representing multiple perspectives, thus exploring the intersection between arts and culture and social justice.

Through this trip I realized that the city is in fact a complex mixture of people, history and places, and that behind the façade of tourism there are strong and interconnected communities with rich histories that are valued and protected by them, even if they are left out of the mainstream narratives or have been reduced to their aesthetic value by others. The arts are not seen as a place for exclusion or social barriers, but rather a strong platform to communicate people’s issues as well as their pride and accomplishments.

Unfortunately, like many other historic cities, the disconnect between tourism and cultural institutions or community organizations is deep. The people that create the culture that attracts millions of visitors rarely get the financial benefits from that exposure, and like many of our presenters told us, there are no policies that effectively protect intellectual property against exploitation. The need to provide tourists with a positive and enjoyable experience has resulted in gentrification and displacement, art forms have been distorted and the uncomfortable parts of history have been muted or downplayed.

I couldn’t help but think how much preservation has contributed to this. None of the people we talked to mentioned preservationists as one of their partners nor preservation laws as a resource, and for what I could gather during the conversations with my colleagues there, it is a field focused almost exclusively on physical conservation. Preservation represents mostly the interests and views of the elite and focuses mostly on aesthetic value, telling the stories that only a group of educated people deem necessary or important. The language and tools are also designed to be excluding, and even though they are quite robust here, they are not something that community organizations can access and use effectively.

This was a very challenging thing for me, mostly because in New York -and especially at Pratt- this field its moving towards community engagement and values based preservation. I was reminded then that we are the exception, not the rule, and that those making decisions and providing Land, industry, and ancestry tour of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans with Nick Slie, from Mondo Bizarro.

Photo: Mimi Zarski.

Drum Lesson at Congo Square with Luther Gray, co-founder Congo Square Preservation Society.

Photo: Koichiro Tomamura.

funding still have to be educated about the importance of expanding the scope beyond physical conservation and grand architecture. The cultural heritage of any city or town is not just buildings or people, is the combination of both and how they influence each other over the years, so strategies and tools must be planned and used accordingly.

I was glad to see that in NOLA the arts world has reached a level of complexity that exemplifies what I believe are the goals for values based preservation. Their strong ties to community justice and activism causes one to be a direct reflection of the other, debunking the notion that art is only about and for artists.

Their commitment to being an artist AND something else is very refreshing and proves the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to any issue. Despite their differences, there is a sense of being part of a larger community that builds up from each other’s experiences rather than just individual examples of cultural expressions or discussions about social injustice.

There were many lessons to be learned from the New Orleans experience, and there are many more to be explored in other areas, but I can venture to say that at the core of all of them are people driving change. Natural disasters serve as a magnifying glass for the existing problems that were already in a city or town, but can also be an opportunity for improvement if everyone involved is willing to put the common good before individual interests. This could not be more true for New Orleans after Katrina. Despite all the shortcomings, communities came together to overcome their challenges and share their achievements, using the arts as an effective medium to rebuild and preserve the social fabric after the trauma. For me, this was a lesson in learning how to engage people by using a language –in this case art and cultural expression- that they feel comfortable with and that they see as their own, instead of forcing our own preconceived ideas of what works and what doesn’t. We will never know more about a community’s needs than the will, so we must become bridges for them to have access to all the available resources and tools, and facilitate processes rather than lead them. This is what I strive for in my practice, and hope to strengthen through experiences like this one.

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I had been to New Orleans only once before for a couple of days, so I came to the class with a very superficial notion of what the city was and the role of the arts in the construction of its identity. Thinking it would be similar to other historic cities, I looked forward to being exposed to a more complete or at least a more diverse set of cultural expressions, and to be able to really meet the people that live and work in New Orleans, beyond what the French Quarter wants us visitors to see.

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Pratt’s Environmental Weeks

by Isil Aksgül & Tina Pastore [SES]

Co-chairs of Leaders of Environmental Advocacy at Pratt (LEAP)

This year for the first time, organizations were invited to set up tables on Pratt Institute’s main lawn in order to discuss their initiatives and network with students. The Water Fair has become a legacy event for Blue Week and we will continue to strive for better iterations every year. During the Water Fair, students were afforded the opportunity to meet people from New York City Department of Environmental Protection, who are working on various Green infrastructure typologies. In addition to the specific details, there were detailed models that showed how the system worked. We believe that one of the most important benefits of inviting professionals to aid in the learning process, is their ability to provide clear and concise information which is imperative for the practice.

While Blue Week and the Water Fair make for a casual learning environment, Green Week has a more constructed crash course event

series, which is a brief and intensive courses of instruction. In these crash courses the subjects range from Biomimicry to Citizen Enforcement in Anti-Idling. Students also had the chance of proposing crash courses that they would like to see in the future which made this event even more exciting for the students.

One of the most exciting achievements of Green Week 2018 was the handover of more than 700 signatures endorsing the banishment of plastic bottle commercialization on campus. The petition campaign was organized by the undergraduate student group Envirolutions. At the opening event, the group gave the petitions to Pratt’s new president Frances Bronet. They explained in their speech that they were motivated to create this campaign after Blue Week’s discussion panel event on plastic pollution in the oceans.

The new president’s response was highly positive. She promised to discuss the issue with the board of trustees and said that she is very interested in making changes, especially towards more sustainable practices. However, in order for her to be able to carry on projects like this, she must see numbers. The practical aspects of it needs to make sense financially or to have a great effect on the Pratt Community.

In summary, it is noticeable that the Pratt Community, especially students, are starting to be more aware of sustainability issues thanks to Blue Week and Green Week events.

Once aware and motivated, students may be more interested in becoming engaged and be a part of the change.

That is something remarkable that unites us all and makes our community stronger. In a more and more individualist world that is a big achievement. Another interesting aspect of the events is that they seem to be creating a thematic cycle, where once the theme is debated and reflected amongst us, a plan of action comes to light. It is to be expected that this cycle can be cultivated in the upcoming environmental weeks.

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With the collaboration of LEAP, the GCPE, Envirolutions, Center for Sustainable Design Strategies and the Sustainability Coalition, Pratt offers a great opportunity for students to expand their knowledge on Water and Environment related issues by organizing two major series of events every year; Blue Week in the Fall and Green Week in the spring. This year we had the chance to attend and participate in both events.

(on previous page) Environmental organizations tabling at the Pratt Green Lawn, Blue Week 2017.

Photo: Tina Pastore Volunteers of the Beach Cleanup event in Far Rockaways, Blue Week 2017.

Photo: Eve Baron.

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EPIC at UN:Winter Youth Assembly

by María Gabriela González Rausell [UPM] & Alejandra Gómez Bolívar [UPM] María Gabriela González R. and Alejandra Gómez B. at the UN Youth Assembly Winter 2018.

Photo: EPIC.

EPIC is a partnership created from a shared desire to make positive social change in cities through clever, inclusive design and active civic participation. It was founded by Alejandra Gómez B. and Maria Gabriela Gonzalez Rausell in 2017, whose experience in architecture and placemaking has taken place in contexts as diverse as Caracas, San José, Medellín, Bogotá, New York City and Philadelphia.

Alejandra is a proud Colombian architect, highly interested in community service and improvement in quality of life in actual cities. At present, she is living in Philadelphia after completing her Master’s Degree in Urban Placemaking and Management at Pratt Institute in New York City.

During the past years, Alejandra has had the opportunity of traveling, working, and studying in different countries around the world learning from different cultures, people, and experiences. Her main goal as a young professional is to enlarge this multicultural knowledge and giving as much as she can to create new alternatives to make more equitable and inclusive cities through community based plans and social participation.

Maria Gabriela is an architect, researcher, and cofounder of EPIC. A native Venezuelan, she is passionate about social and humanitarian causes, and has special interest in the relationship between architecture, public

space, dignity and civic participation. Maria has been part of community-based projects in Caracas, San José (Costa Rica), Bogotá, New York City and Philadelphia, ranging from civic engagement events to the creation of placemaking strategies that address matters of equity, quality of life and inclusion in urban environments.

Maria holds a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Universidad Simón Bolívar, and a Master’s Degree in Urban Placemaking and Management from Pratt Institute.

practice engagement techniques that were familiar from the Placemaking program and other experience as students. On a fortunate turn of events, EPIC was instead invited to a panel about “Social Inclusion in Cities”; also at the table were Dr. Gregory Donovan (Professor at Fordham University); Elka Gotfryd (Senior Project Associate at the Project for Public Spaces), Sahar Moazami (UN Program Officer at OutRight Action International), and Dr. Setha Low (Director of the Public Space Research Group at CUNY) as moderator.

Alejandra and Maria founded EPIC with the goal of designing places that diminish social barriers, using placemaking as its main inclusive tool. This partnership’s values are to take part in the process with curiosity, creativity, and wholeheartedness. Its audience are people from any background who are moved to make sustainable impact by putting people first. From local leaders and community organizers, to academics, professionals, and anyone eager to elicit change in their communities, all are invited to be EPIC.

EPIC’s role during the panel was to provide the perspective of a young organization started from scratch and that was coming together. In this sense, Maria Gabriela and Alejandra envisioned a presentation where civic engagement could still be touched on and, most importantly, the motivations behind forming a social initiative or partnership from scratch, such as we did with EPIC.

The 21st Session of the Youth Assembly, organized around the theme of “Innovation and Collaboration for a Sustainable World”, brought together students, young professionals, activists, social entrepreneurs and participants from a myriad of backgrounds to discuss collaboration and multidisciplinarity as pathways for sustainable development.

Alejandra and Maria Gabriela were deeply inspired after having participated as delegates in a previous edition of the Youth Assembly. What both noticed on that occasion, and what moved them to become more involved, was how little was actually being talked about cities and their relation to community development. Considering the relevance of the Youth Assembly as a platform to reach out to a young and diverse audience, and the critical need to talk more intentionally about cities and public spaces, Maria Gabriela and Alejandra decided to team up and apply as panelists to the 21st edition of the Youth Assembly this past February.

Both speakers and delegates must go through a selection process that involves explaining the motivation behind participating in the conference. In the case of those applying as panelists, the application process required Alejandra and Maria Gabriela to also think thoroughly about their new organization’s mission, values, and strategies to put them into action, particularly related to equity and to the event’s theme. And so, EPIC (Engaging People, Including Communities) was born.

EPIC’s original application proposal to the UN Youth Assembly was to facilitate a civic engagement workshop with students, where Alejandra and Maria Gabriela would put into

For Maria Gabriela, she is moved by talking about dignity in design, what constitutes a dignified space, and how can architects, planners and professionals alike honor it, with a particular focus on the negative impact of PVCmade social housing projects in Venezuela, her birth country. If you’d like to learn more, go to page 30 of this publication to find the thesis “Building Dignity in Design.”

The resulting presentation, titled “Placemaking as a Tool for Social Inclusion”, integrated both Alejandra’s and Maria Gabriela’s experiences, which were also part of their respective thesis.

EPIC’s strategies and work principles.

Developed by the authors.

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In the search to promote this initiative, EPIC found in the United Nations Youth Assembly the perfect platform.

It is a conference celebrated twice per year, and gathers over 600 delegates from 16 to 28 years old, representing over 120 different countries around the world.

For Alejandra, her inspiration was Cartago, her birthplace in Colombia, and using placemaking to engage residents, neighbors and friends into protecting and advocating for La Vieja Riverfront an, important environmental and community landmark.

Three Days in Turin

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by Jay Skardis [CRP]

Castello del Valentino.

Source: Politecnico di Torino.

The Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) convenes their annual conferences every summer. The main conference, for professors, was held in Stockholm this year, with workshops for PhD. students and professionals on specific disciplines held in rotating locations throughout Europe. This year’s workshop on Sustainable Food Planning, a relatively new field, was held in the city of Turin, in the Piedmont region of northern Italy, and hosted by the Polytechnic University of Turin Department of Regional Urban Studies and Planning.

The workshop was held over three days in June, in the Castello del Valentino, the UNESCO world heritage site that houses the engineering school of the University. Arriving there through a series of unexpected events, from being invited to submit a short paper for presentation, to having the paper accepted, and with thanks to the Pratt Graduate Student Engagement Fund, I found myself participating in this event with a group of about 20 people visiting from various locations within Italy, and several other European countries, as well as Indonesia. The majority of attendees were PhD. students, currently working on their theses on food planning related topics, with a few participants already in the field in both local and global organizations.

Environmental Planning, Polytechnic of Milan) engaged the group in building theory and conceptualization of Sustainable Food Planning through a thought-provoking lecture, which became the interactive discussion.

Turin is at the forefront of innovative food planning, at the community, municipal, and national levels.

The Turin master plan, in progress, with green infrastructure initiatives, protection of open space, and restrictions on new building for soil preservation, aims to be a pioneer in incorporating food planning in the agenda. A recent national law has been passed to mitigate food waste, offering tax deduction for the daily donation of leftover food from grocers, small shops, and farmer’s markets. This is being implemented at the municipal and community levels; a City initiative to collect this food for free distribution to people in need is being developed; and local community centers and restaurants are preparing this food to provide affordable meals to the public.

An interactive training session on public speaking and communication with Lorenzo Tesio started the day.

We then applied the approaches he presented in a session for individual student presentations, followed by peer and professional feedback. An interactive training session on PhD conflict management with Professors Pettenati and Santangelo, from the university followed, with break-out groups reviewing assigned literature and discussing scenarios that were later presented to the group at large.

The first day of the workshop was held in the frescoed Sala della Caccia, in the upper castle, for keynote speeches and an interactive discussion. The PhD. Planning coordinator of the University, Umberto Janin Rivolin, greeted the group, and Professor Egidio Dansero, PhD. (Political and Economic Geography, Department of Cultures, Politics, and Society at UNITO) spoke first on The Food Atlas of Turin. This is a current project looking to map the movement of food supplies from the regional area to the central city, the processes by which it is done, and the stakeholders involved at each stage. And afterwards Professor Andrea Calori, PhD. (Territorial and

A schedule of interactive sessions at the University filled the second day, and were followed by talks on sustainable cities and food planning at the municipal level, and finished with a dinner at a restaurant serving locally sourced foods.

The group met at the restaurant Via Baltea that evening for two successive round table presentations before dinner. Delegates from Almere, a closed loop sustainable city outside Amsterdam, spoke of their work, the upcoming 2020 EXPO, and challenged the group to think beyond current food planning initiatives.

A talk about Torino food policy and the Torino Master Plan with Simone Mangili, from the Office of the Deputy Mayor of Turin for Environment, Sustainability and European Funds followed, who spoke of the initiatives included in the plan.

The third and last day was spent, literally, in the field. The group travelled to the Stupingi Natural Park just outside of the city, a former hunting castle with surrounding property being used for natural farming. Panacea, a cooperative cultivating heritage wheat, grows six varieties here, that are ground at a local mill and sold to local bread

shops to bake traditional baked goods from the Piedmont region; a thriving CRFS. They are partially funded by the city, and incorporate outreach, educational programs for children, and work training programs for high school students.

A closing lunch was held at the edge of the city, in an underserved neighborhood, in a community center on public open space. Casa del Quartiere at La Locanda del Parco is a gathering space open to the public, and an open space for many different community organizations to share and collaborate. Their kitchen reclaims unsold, donated food from the forty-two open air markets of Turin, and prepares one or five euro meals on a sliding scale for all guests.

It was an inspirational three days that brought together a collective of individuals with the common goal of advancing food policy and food planning for cities and their surrounding regions.

†To read the journal publication of the collective academic papers from the workshop, go to: http://www.dist.polito.it/content/ download/693/5358/version/1/ file/AESOP_newdist.pdf

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This year’s area of focus was to explore the concept of Sustainable City Regional Food Systems (CRFS) within a planning framework. Still in its nascent form, the context of the CRFS is one that looks to address the connection between cities and their surrounding regions as “dynamic spaces of interaction,” and bring together research, initiatives, and policy for planning direct food system networks between the urban market and the peri-urban and rural agro-ecological supply.†

Travel Reflections: Mexico Tour

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by Sanika Kulkarni [HP]

During my second semester of graduate studies in Historic Preservation at Pratt Institute, Lisa Ackerman, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of World Monuments Fund, had arranged for a meeting of various professionals involved in the field of preservation in New York City and students who were taking her class. During the meeting, Liz Waytkuz, Executive Director of DOCOMOMO US mentioned about the travel fellowship to Mexico City.

I have always enjoyed travelling and experiencing spaces. Hence I submitted my application which consisted of an essay stating why I need the travel grant, essay on my goals as a preservation professional and a letter of recommendation along with some other documents. Three weeks after the applications were closed, I was informed that I was one of the travel grant fellows. This travel grant was an opportunity to see and interact with various preservation professionals from all over the US and Mexico. Many of the fellow travellers briefly knew about Indian architects Charles Correa and B.V.Doshi (Pritzker Prize Awardee 2018) and were curious to know about modern architecture in India. This is what helped me focus on the two architects I studied for my graduate thesis.

Travelling and experiencing spaces definitely helps in better understanding and appreciation of architecture.

Being selected as a DOCOMOMO US- Mexico Study Grant, I consider myself very fortunate as it helped me develop an appreciation for the preservation of Modern Architecture which wasn’t something I would have prioritized earlier. It was fascinating to see most of the participants of this tour Modernism in Mexico City were architecture enthusiasts,which was a surprise as not only architects and historians, like I always assumed were involved in preservation efforts.

A group of locals dressed as the Aztecs performing various dances in the historic core of Mexico City.

Photo: Sanika Kulkarni.

When we were walking through the tiny lanes on our way to Casa Barragán, mentally I started to go through the images I had seen of it in the books and on the internet during my undergraduate studies of architecture. I wanted to take a picture on the terrace of the house - which was the first image I had seen of Barragán’s project - but, I was disappointed to hear that there was an additional fee for taking pictures. Now, reflecting on my experience of Casa Barragán, I recall each and every moment spent in the house and do not regret not being able to capture the spaces in pictures. Sometimes not having the artificial eyes (Camera Lens) helps in absorbing the actual experience.

To visit Teotihuacán, we had to travel outside of Mexico City for about an hour and half. While we were on road, just after leaving the confines of Mexico City, we saw a few hills full of temporary and permanent dwellings where many immigrants coming to Mexico City from different small villages had settled in search for better livelihood, making these hills their homes. A large wall constructed by the government was visible along the hills beyond which there were no dwellings. This wall was meant to stop any further encroachment of the hills.

This site reminded me of squatter settlements in India which over time become thriving economies in itself.

Another destination I was excited to see was “Los Manantiales Restaurant”, a building designed by Félix Candela. Unfortunately, due to the structural damage the building had suffered during the devastating earthquake of September 19, 2017 we couldn’t visit it. On a very short notice DOCOMOMO team arranged for us to visit one of Candela’s other projects: the Bacardi Factory and Bottling plant. During this visit we got to see the corporate building designed by Mies Van Der Rohe along with the bottling plant designed by Félix Candela. As an architect, I was amazed by the innovative use of free standing sheels to house the bottling plant, especially for a 1950’s building. Candela’s design provided an elegant column free space with natural light peeking through the glass windows at the seems, all in perfect alignment with the practical requirements of a plant like this one. This high quality design has allowed the building to continue being used, which has been instrumental to the maintenance of the structures to this day.

Every small thought and action matters to achieving a goal. A massive earthquake had struck Mexico City on September 19, 2017 just a month before the DOCOMOMO US’ Modernism in Mexico City tour. While interacting with the local scholars during the trip, I found out that a lot of architectural professionals had volunteered to document the effects of earthquake on all structures in and around Mexico City. This act speaks of how much the community values its architecture as they did not limit the documentation to only important structures. Dr. Juan Ignacio, a Félix Candela expert and a faculty at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México i.e. UNAM has been actively involved in documenting, maintaining and bringing awareness about Félix Candela’s shell structures. Some of his students had volunteered to document the damage sustained by Los Manantiales Restaurant. The seeds of volunteering for preservation are sown through the academic setup. An example of volunteering was at Casa Barragán, where the tour guides were architecture students from Mexico. This is something that I believe should be implemented in architecture schools in India, where only academic excellence is given a priority.

Casa Gilardi, one of the houses designed by Luis Barragán is currently privately owned. When we visited the house, they were working on the exterior maintenance. The owner said, every few years they inspect the external facade for any damages and make sure everything is in good shape. The effort taken by the current owner to maintain architect’s original design intent (including the color palette used for the whole house) was fascinating for me. Overall during my 10 days stay in Mexico City it seemed like a lot of importance is given to understand the architecture of the region and efforts are being made to preserve not only the colonial architecture but the modern architecture of the 20th century.

Hillocks located at the outskirts of Mexico City with temporary and permanent dwellings.

The yellow wall see behind the dwellings is the boundary set by the city to avoid further encroachment of the hillocks.

Photo: Sanika Kulkarni.

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The feeling I had from the aerial view of Mexico City being similar to India was confirmed on the first day during our exploration of the historic core. As we were visiting it on a Sunday, we could experience how the locals use the space with a few weekly pop-up markets, along with a group of locals dressed as the Aztecs for entertainment. Exploring historic core of Mexico City allowed me to understand the architectural evolution of the city, and wandering through the streets filled with colonial architecture kept reminding me of Mumbai, India. The next few days of the trip were dedicated to exploring the modern architecture, along with a day trip to the historic city of Teotihuacán.

Go West, Young Woman!

And Then... Return!

To Write Your Thesis

by Gambrill Foster [HP]

For a second, we thought we might not even get to see Arizona. “We” is the six Historic Preservation students on a trip for our Concrete unit in Theo Prudon’s Material Conservation class. After an eventful flight -that included a woman passing out in the aisle mid-turbulencewe picked up the paperwork and keys for two rental cars and headed into the garage. Theo and our adjunct professor Jennifer Schork grabbed one and headed out. The six students piled into our other car and were right behind them...we thought. The parking garage attendant wouldn’t let us out because the person who rented the car (Theo) wasn’t driving it. It was not, we were told, an acceptable excuse that he was driving the other car.

Finally, after a trip back upstairs and even more back and forth, we were let of of the garage and were on our way!

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The trip was designed as 5 days in Arizona, visiting Taliesin West, Casa Grande Native American Ruins, Cosanti and Arcosanti. We had been studying concrete, the first unit of three in Special Topics in Material Conservation, the sites that we were to visit had unique uses of concrete construction. The bulk of our time was going to be at Arcosanti, where we would spend two days on site and practice doing field assessments on different areas of the compound.

Arcosanti is a compound begun by Paolo Soleri in 1971, as an example of his solution to Urban Sprawl: Arcology. Arcology is a principle Soleri pioneered and worked on for most of his career, and life. The word itself is a mash-up between Architecture and Ecology, and the structures were composed to be able to feed and house large groups of people on less land than traditional cities.

Gambrill Foster field testing concrete with sounding mallet.

Photo: Anisha Athrey.

When we first arrived, we had a tour by the Executive Director. He walked us all over the compound, from visitor center to communal kitchen to bronze forge, even his own apartment (which was once soleri’s drafting room!). Everyone knew him and in turn he knew all the faces and made us feel welcome immediately.

We began to work as a whole group of six on a powerpoint presentation and written report that not only detailed our site (x3) specific analysis but also the history of the compound as well as our recommendations for preservation planning. The project was a hands-on, on-site preservation project first for me; to have the building, the material and physical space so closely inform my preservation recommendations was eye-opening as to how important place and context truly are.

I came back to school after Arizona mid-February, already a few weeks into my thesis about marketplaces and historic foodways. But I kept returning to the views of Arizona and the quirky, improbable, beautiful, organic structure that is Arcosanti.

I spoke to Beth Bingham, one of my Thesis professors about switching topics, and with her go ahead, I took the leap. I would be using Arcosanti as the main case study for a thesis aimed at exploring the changing opinions on material authenticity. Theo teased me for drinking the Kool-aid when I announced in class what I had done.

I began to research the shifting attitudes on authenticity over the years, and found myself gravitating toward articles on the preservation of modern architecture--with its use of

concrete, the focus on cutting edge or avant garde technology, Arcosanti was a good fit. I was also reading work on Preservation and Sustainability, along with Preservation and Technology.

After another incredible trip with a GCPE Interdisciplinary Studio I started to lose focus. Arizona felt far away during the cold and wet spring.

In our Materials Class we had moved onto metals, and I was thinking more about cast iron than concrete. I was still committed to Soleri and his vision made manifest, but I was stuck. I continued to believe the idea had academic merit and the concept of authenticity in preservation is such a hotly contested one that there’s a lot of material to mine. But the topic didn’t feel like it was moving ahead. Rather it just seemed mired in my same few thoughts on why material authenticity shouldn’t rule preservation efforts without taking into account the psychology (or soul or purpose) of the building.

The end of the semester always comes more quickly than you anticipate and so I suddenly found myself nervously pulling together my Thesis I presentation, concerned at my lack of progress and more importantly, frustrated that I hadn’t pushed my vision for this topic even further. But as my time at Pratt has made clear, Preservation (and Planning, Placemaking, and SES) are collaborative disciplines. Beth Bingham, Ayse Yonder, Ron Schiffman, John Shapiro, and Jen Becker were my audience and brilliant as they all are, had multiple suggestions as to where I might focus next, or what other sites I might consider and draw analogies to. The experience of talking about the place again, telling the story of Arcosanti and showing photos, along with the suggestions they presented and I don’t feel nearly as stuck anymore. I am spending the summer researching experimental and/or living architecture, looking into Auroville, Hundertwasserhaus, even Gaudi. I’m also looking at the role performance criteria or social criteria can play in making physical restoration decisions.

Arcosanti is a principled place, an unexpected place, an off-the-beatenpath place, a special place. I am excited to see what secrets it reveals to me as I push toward a completed Thesis, hopefully to be submitted in December. So maybe I did drink the Kool-aid, but why not? Sometimes it’s the most unusual stories that teach us the most, that help push our thinking and make us re-fall in love the the field. And if you’re thinking it seems overly romanticized that only two days at this desert compound could be enough to change my entire thesis and the way I view the importance of material authenticity, then let me just leave you with this small story. After being of the belief that Arcosanti’s communal kitchen was entirely vegetarian if not vegan, four of us ate the meatiest, cheesiest, ooey-gooeyist lasagna (with a pepperoni crust) you’ve ever had.

We spent ten minutes marveling at its existence and trying to wrap our minds around how vegan lasagna could so perfectly mimic the real deal. Hint: it wasn’t even a little vegetarian, nor at all vegan.

Group Selfie Post-Hike.

Photo: Anisha Athrey.

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Then we began to explore the site ourselves, walking around and looking at concrete in various applications, taking photos, inspecting the material, writing questions. We divided into three teams of two and each team chose a site on the compound to further explore. We spent several days sketching, measuring, writing down materials and techniques used for concrete construction—notes about both what we did and didn’t know. We took samples, reported back and gave tours of our sites to the other teams. We talked to Jeff, showed him our work thus far and our plan once back in New York. We ate in the communal kitchen and talked to residents. We went on a short hike our last day, saw a javelina, took lots of cactus selfies and sang along to hours of classic 80s rock.

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Two Paths for Havana

by Carlos Rodríguez Estévez [UPM]

During the last couple of years, the group Friends of Havana have been encouraging one noble idea: To help find a balance in Havana’s future urban transformations that preserve its assets, and perhaps, helps it become a model city for the rest of the world. The production of a short animation to visualize these possible futures is one of the main initiatives of this group to put the word out there.

Moving images have been, for over a century now, a powerful tool to communicate ideas and engage any kind of audience. That is the purpose of this video, to illustrate the principles behind the vision of a coalition of mainly Cuban planners, and engage decision-makers in a conversation about the future transformations of the Capital of the island.

The film intends to show two possible paths for the city.

The first one visualizes a chaotic future, with a dramatically increased use of the automobile, speculative developments and the lack of any economic strategy. Then, an alternative path reveals a future with an equitable and sustainable transportation system, new developments emerge in balance with the preservation of the existing heritage; and all of these obviously after rooting the city’s economic future on its unique cultural and people-centered assets.

During the last decade, it has become evident that Havana is about to face a series of urban planning choices that will make a defining impact on its built environment, infrastructure, and livability. The planners and officials from Havana and Cuba must lead the city together towards

Source: Squint Opera.

These were solid reasons for Friends of Havana to catalyze the organization of a workshop held there in February of 2017. The event brought together international and local experts and officials to discuss a vision for the future of the city that took into consideration economic aspects, transportation and infrastructure issues, and also preservation, architecture, and community-led planning. But one imminent conclusion came out of the meeting: the need to disseminate the ideas behind these findings to continue the discussions and broaden what the coalition built during the workshop. Thus, the group identified as the first follow-up project to provide the necessary tools for this dialogue: a short video and an executive summary of the proceedings that could be shared

by Cuban planners with other agencies and governmental decision-makers.

Movie Screenshot.

Currently, I am still involved in the production of this film, which is taking place in the headquarters of Squint Opera, a creative company based in London that has been very successful in working with media addressing the built environment.

This project represents their first one contextualized in Havana, even though they have a broad list of clients that range from leading architecture firms to government and grassroots institutions. Since the very initial stages of this production, there has been intense feedback between the Cuban leaders of the event and the filmmakers. The team has also rehearsed about a dozen versions that started with live footage and evolved into a vibrant fully animated 3-minute video, to finally begin spreading the word during the fall of 2018. I have been able to participate in almost every stage of the production: From the initials meetings, playing the role of an ambassador between the Cuban planning officials and the team of filmmakers; during the shootings or producing the scripts -a cameo was once considered for one of the initial versions. And while these lines are written, I have been directing and animating some shots for the film, making sure the film represents the city’s possible future paths.

There is a lot to say, but little time in which to say it. It is crucial that this piece of animation becomes a sharp, sensitive and encouraging message that engages all the possible forces to help Havana be preserved and become an exemplary city of this century.

My workstation at Squint Opera’s Studios.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

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a sustainable and consciously planned future, or otherwise, opt for the chaotic development that has been evident in many other global cities. The Cuban capital is sort of an unpolished jewel that can leapfrog over urban mistakes made during most of the second half of the 20th century.

The 15bikes Story

by Adriana Lancheros [SES]

“I’m happy because with my bike I can get to school easily. I won’t miss class anymore.”

Although Laura loved to go to school, she had to walk four hours a day to get there. Her routine was to get up at 4:30 in the morning, make breakfast, and help prepare to walk to school with her two brothers. They walked one hour in complete darkness, and one more as the sun rose.

Laura and her brothers sang their father’s favorite song while they were walking. Once in school, they completed their daily journey and went back home.

Walking two hours more.

But soon, their shoes were worn down and they began to feel tired. They did not perform well in their classes, and slowly began to lose interest in getting up. With parental permission, Laura stopped attending school, and stayed at home for two years.

Education is the engine of our economy, it is the foundation of our culture, and it’s an essential preparation for adult life. Delivering on our commitment to social justice requires us to uphold these three objectives to achieve this goal.

The simple action of empowering young people by providing them with bicycles for transportation can be the bridge for them to get the knowledge and skills they need to finish their education, secure a place at a good university, start an apprenticeship, or find their first job. We must provide the tools necessary for all children to have the opportunity to receive an education.

This is the commitment which has been at the heart of the 15bikes Campaign since its inception in 2017.

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“Within two weeks, I had no time to do my homework, and my mom asked me to help at home,” said Laura.

The campaign was inspired by the rising number of initiatives around the world that bring together government departments, communities, service providers, foundations, banks, friends, family, and more to address complex social problems. The Campaign engages organizations from these sectors to participate in the realization of the 15bikes objective.

Results from the campaign have shown the positive impact on the attendance and academic performance of the children who have received a bicycle.

And this has helped the campaign to grow quickly. So much so, that it has inspired a 15bikes pilot campaign for India in the coming years.

Painted Post and Riverside Fellowship

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by Angie Koo [CRP]

Some 250 miles northwest of Pratt’s Higgins Hall are the villages of Painted Post and Riverside. In 2015, the villages’ regional planning board, the Southern Tier Central Regional Planning and Development Board (STC), was awarded a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) grant under the “Cleaner, Greener Communities Program” to update each village’s respective comprehensive plan. Over the course of the Spring 2018 semester, a team of GCPE faculty—Professors Jamie Stein and Ira Stern—and students Angie Koo (CRP), Nikita Malviya (CRP), and Tina Pastore (SES), have been creating eco-friendly design guidelines for these two villages. These guidelines will be appendices in their comprehensive plans and serve as reference points for all types of future development.

Notes from Painted Post and Riverside Public Meeting. March 2018.

Photo: Tina Pastore.

Being that the team was so far removed from the villages, physically, proved to be as challenging as one can imagine. How do you offer design guidelines for a place you’ve never been to? A hallmark of Pratt’s GCPE programs has been to work with and in communities, prioritizing advocacy over technocracy. Yet, until late March, only one member of the team had been able to visit the villages and talk to stakeholders in-person. We are grateful for STC being very open to communication and having phone meetings with us. We also heavily relied on GIS and Google Maps (and Street View!) to study and visualize the villages as best we could.

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Our work began with an examination of the comprehensive plans that STC had drafted, recent Brownfield Opportunity Area documents and maps, and the notes, recordings, and photos Professor Stern took from his visit. By evaluating these documents, it was possible to analyze the existing conditions and identify issues of the villages. Both Painted Post and Riverside face common issues of flash flooding, inadequate stormwater systems coinciding with lack of curbs, sidewalks and driveways, disconnections with the river, a paucity of public transportation and biking infrastructure, fragmented trails, and vacant or underutilized sites.

Source: City Trackingr

The identified issues were then consolidated and divided within four design typologies namely; Reconnected Streets, Community Solar, Stormwater Management, and Opportunity Sites, as strategies to solve the challenges. Reconnected Streets aims to connect all the hotspots of the villages where people go, adding biking and green infrastructure, stimulating street character, and pedestrian friendly elements to provide the users with an eco-friendly experience.

Community Solar intends to promote clean and renewable

Sources: Google Earth; Waquoit Spring Farmers Market; Radnor Lake State Natural Area.

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Summary of Four Typologies.

energy as well as a new source of income for the villages.

It also builds community pride as an asset. Stormwater Management utilizes strategies that reduce surface runoff and retain stormwater to be reused or infiltrated into the groundwater, reducing flooding. This typology, in particular, draws heavily from the work taught in the Water Quality Management course. And finally, the Opportunity Sites, identifies underutilized and vacant parcels in the villages which can be used for various revenue-positive projects such as solar, pop-up markets, public spaces, and more.

At last, in March, we made the drive up to the villages to present to STC, their steering committees, and the public about what our initial ideas were. In keeping with Pratt’s ideology, we were not there to tell the villages what to include or implement. Rather, we were there to gather their feedback and make sure we were on the same page about what eco-friendly design guidelines are, and to workshop whether our typologies fit what they envisioned for their villages.

Painted Post and Riverside Public Meeting, March, 2018.

Photo: Tina Pastore.

It was both a tremendous relief and joy that the meeting attendees responded enthusiastically and were in agreement with the typologies we presented. We heard from STC that the attendees were particularly attracted to the visuals and conceptual renderings we prepared.

The villages have been grappling with the issues in the typologies, some for decades, and that the visuals affirmed their visions of their village, as well as made the ideas more tangible.

We are now working to formalize our work into written and graphic design guidelines that will be presented to STC and the community in late May. These guidelines will heavily feature narratives, images, and options.

They will contain broader value statements that new development in the villages can reference and that align with the villages’ vision of being eco-friendly. Then site-specific strategies will be discussed for each typology with references to case studies.

We will also provide parameters for the villages to gauge their eco-friendly progress. These will be developed by the Sustainability Indicator course led by Professor Stern.

This experience has been enriching and challenging in many ways. To work with communities where detailed spatial data is unavailable and where we could not readily

visit has meant relying on information provided by the regional planning board and what can be gleaned from our research. We have been even more cautious to not assume the villages’ needs and wants. Moreover, the meetings we attended in March were the first community meetings for many of us involved. It has been encouraging to receive positive feedback to our work thus far and it affirms our path as planners and sustainability professionals. 

Painted Post and Riverside Public Meeting, March, 2018.

Photo: Tina Pastore.

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by Isil Akgül [SES]

Every year architects, designers, contractors and professionals from related sectors come together to participate in the Greenbuild Expo, organized by the US Green Building Council (USGBC), to learn from each other about the latest advancements in green building technologies. This past year the Expo took place in Boston in November and included students from Leaders in Environmental Advocacy at Pratt (LEAP). Işil Akgül, Rishika Shrivastava and Ankita Nalavade attended the expo, accompanied by two other students—Ishita Dimri and Sophiya Khan.

LEAP. Photo: Isil Akgül.

This year’s expo started with an inspiring speech from former President Bill Clinton and ended with an entertaining speech from Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson. The CEO of the USGBC, Mahesh Ramanujam, was also present at the event. It was very interesting to hear famous people speak about their career journey, especially Mahesh Ramanujam, an immigrant from India who excelled, despite hardships, and became the CEO of one of the most influential institutions in the green building sector. Other than these major addresses, which were held in the main auditorium, the smaller meeting rooms were filled with panels of professionals in related fields.

Students attending these panels had the opportunity to receive LEED AP and AIA continuing education credits.

Students can also attend the Expo for free by volunteering for two shifts in the garbage disposal stations. During the volunteering shifts students help

the attendees choose the right bin to discard their trash. The USGBC pledges to leave the venue cleaner than they received it and they reinforce this by engaging students with waste management training at disposal stations throughout the building. By making a contract with the local waste disposal companies, they pledge to obtain a 100% waste diversion rate by the end of the event.

In addition to these activities, Pratt students attended various educational sessions. One of particular interest was about how cities are reacting to and planning for rising sea level, especially New York. The panelists were Alan Glynn (from Arup), Michele Moore (from NYCHA), Bruce G. Nelligan (from Nelligan White Architects), and Alan Poeppel (from Langan). These panelists spoke about how New York City is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Sandy and retrofitting buildings to make them more resilient for future storms.

Major efforts include implementing coastal resiliency plans on a larger scale, and making affordable housing sites resilient against flooding through integration of landscape architecture elements. According to the panelists, most of the New York City Housing Authority developments are in flood zones, which puts these residents in pressing danger.

Another panel, which was about low-carbon high-rise construction, using timber as an alternative material, included Scott Breneman (from WoodWorks, Wood Products Council), Amir Lotfi, and Eddy Santosa (from CallisonRTKL).

The speakers talked about a case study done in Seattle for a highrise building. Despite the project currently only being a case study— due to the fact that building highrises with wood is currently not permitted by building code—the data results of the testing showed that, in terms of building performance and life cycle analysis, the wood building excelled tremendously over a conventional one. But it is still a challenge to convince developers to build wood structures because of higher costs. Nevertheless, in spite of these obstacles, use of wood as a construction material is on the rise in innovative design.

Overall the event was a success for the students, and LEAP is excited to take more students to the Greenbuild Expo next year, which will take place at Chicago’s McCormick Center in November. Don’t forget to check your email during the Fall semester for an invitation to apply!

Student Team: Rishika Shrivastava, Ishita Dimri, Sophiya Khan, Isil Akgül, Ankita Nalavade.

Photo: Isil Akgül.

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The Expo made it possible for these Pratt students—representing the Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE) with a table at the event—to learn more about green building systems from professionals and to network for their future endeavors. As a reward for the group’s substantial advancement of their understanding of the subject through independent study, the team was honored to have the Graduate Student Engagement Fund to pay for the trip.

From Public to Private, and Vice Versa PRATT INSTITUTE’S HIGGINS HALL COURT AS A TRANSITIONAL SPACE MULTIPLICITY -88- FIELDWORK

by Claudia Castillo de la Cruz [UPM] “ [...]they establish the staging for threshold spaces” Tim Boettger

Spaces in-between or transitional spaces The human condition of movement leads us to be continuously crossing spatial and perceptual boundaries. We always go from the exterior to the interior, from confined spaces to open, from private to public, and vice versa. As a result of this movement, “we live in transition” (Boettger, 2014).

When we are able to recognize a place it is because we are identifying its boundaries, where it starts and where it ends, or at least a perception of it (Cresswell, 2015). But when its boundaries are blurred or subtly managed, the transitional spaces have the main role in this change. They connect, link, and prepare us for the physical change and create the sequence in which we move on.

Boettger refers to the “human ability to separate spaces—that is, to establish a boundary between them—and the need to then connect them again. With the connection, we create a threshold, a possibility to enter and to exit” (Boettger, 2014). The spatial threshold’s contradiction is implicit and depends on the contexts and users to define or demarcate it.

Detail of the pavement.

Photo: Ahmad Shaibani.

Case Study: Higgins Hall Court Higgins Hall has hosted the School of Architecture and Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment at Pratt Institute since 1965. After the fire that almost consumed the entire building in 1996, the renovation project by Steven Holl in 2005, in collaboration with RogersMarvel Architects, modified the central wing which connects the remaining old buildings, thus creating the current Higgins Hall Court.

Today, the Higgins Hall Court is the preamble to the entrance, while also being the entrance as well. Its proportions, textures, and features promote the ambivalence of the place for the building and its context. The design of the place also plays around the idea of the public space inside a private space, as an agora or plaza that includes the long bench, bike racks, and a setback entrance door, blurring the boundaries between the sidewalk and place itself. The gesture to create a transitional space supported by design prepares the user for the change.

Before the renovation, access to Higgins Hall were featured by traditional entrances that each building had (currently referred to as the North and South Hall).

The complex had an “H” form, and it was formed by three main buildings.

North Hall, South Hall and the Central Hall which connect those before mentioned. The Higgins Hall Court was a clearly marked private internal courtyard and was at the time physically split, an attached small building to the Central Hall and a half basement. The limit between this space and the sidewalk was marked by a fence and a wall.

NORTHERN

The redesign by Steven Holl completely transformed the space and it was reconfigured as the main entrance of Higgins Hall. The new access became a distinctive mark of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute.

SECTION

The idea of changing the spatial distribution of the area entailed a new meaning for the space. As a transitional space, the design of the Higgins Hall Court blurred the boundaries between the sidewalk and private property.

Furthermore, because of the fire that destroyed the Central Hall, the site was totally rebuilt and its new image was marked by a more transparent material, and perhaps most importantly in relation with the Higgins Hall Court, the setback of the entrance door.

SOUTHERN

SECTION

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According to Elizabeth Grosz, the in-between or transitional space is “[a] strange space… a space with-out boundaries of its own, which takes on and receives it-self, its form, from the outside, which is not its outside” (2001). The author recognizes the spaces in-between with the function of the transition as a recent incorporation in the topic of architectural analysis.

Before the last century, those spaces were considered as residuals of other physical interactions. Today the space in-between or transitional spaces are identified as spaces themselves where things are going to happen. Considering these visions, this essay analyzes the role of the Higgins Hall Court as a transitional space and the current perception that its users have of it.

NORTHERN ENTRANCE

The relationship between its boundaries and users Transitional spaces are usually complex spatial structures. In terms of perception, they are a challenge to the interacting human senses. Oftentimes, they have multiple functions that can be derived from the respective typology of the architecture. Based on their particular use, each architectural endeavor has particular demands regarding access. Furthermore, additional functions can be integrated into a transitional space, which are no longer simple anterooms that provide access, but rather independent, complex spatial sequences and spatial structures. (Boettger, 2014)

SOUTHERN

SECTION

SOUTHERN

ENTRANCE

Diagram of historical pictures highlighting old entrances of the building and the existing wall.

Developed by the author.

Source: Pratt Institute Archives Image Collection.

(on previous spread) Collage of pictures of Higgins Court.

Developed by the author.

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BIKE RACKS

MAIN ENTRANCE

2

Considering Boettger’s idea, the Higgins Hall Court is a transitional space that involves the complexity of functions related to the school and its context. It is mainly used by people strongly related with Higgins Hall (students, faculty, and staff ), who use it as an access point and gathering place.

5 4

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SIDEWALK

The conception of the place as a public space -despite its status as private property- support the points of Boettger, that is, it is not simply a prelude to another space. The included features confirm the intention for its use as a public space, especially considering the elimination of the wall and fence that separate it from the sidewalk, and the homogenous transition among the floor levels encouraging the perception of openness. Moreover, the condition of the place to remain open, and considering its inability to be physically closed, enhances this ambiguity. The difference of colors and textures of materials from the pavement on the sidewalk and the court enforces the subtle boundary of the space.

Saint James Pl

MAIN ENTRANCE

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BIKE RACKS

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SIDEWALK

Observed boundaries

Saint James Pl

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Mapping activity of meeting places at Higgins Court.

Developed by the author.

MAIN ENTRANCE

174

31

25

SIDEWALK

4

Saint James Pl

10

MAIN ENTRANCE

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SIDEWALK

Saint James Pl

The general observation and mapping show the movement of users through Higgins Hall Court which is heavily used as a thoroughfare. Another use observed was the gathering of students, faculty, and staff of Higgins Hall. The gathering usually involved sitting on the large bench, meeting at the entrance door or clustering in conversational groups, many times outside of the official property line as a result of the current smoking policy. Users coming by bike continue riding through the court until reaching the bike racks.

The use of the Higgins Hall Court by the local community and neighbors is particularly interesting. The majority of adults do not cross into the brick pavement, while children use all the features as a public space. The ramp is very attractive for scooters, skateboards, and the like.

The new smoking policy adopted by Pratt Institute does not allow smoking on university property, displacing the smokers onto the sidewalk and reducing the role of the court as a gathering place. Now only a few users stay on the bench or inside the space. The rest go to the sidewalk immediately in front of the court or move to the right or left spot on the buildings frontal.

BIKE RACKS

BIKE RACKS

10.03.2017_6:00-7:00 pm

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6

3

Mapping activity of circulations at Higgins Court.

Developed by the author.

It was noticeable that not all users smoke, but if in their group at least one person smokes, the whole group is displaced out of the court. Furthermore, when the smoker finishes, the group does not return to the court.

The perception of the boundaries of the Higgins Hall Court was collected through surveying a group of 45 users. The group included students, faculty and staff of Higgins Hall, and neighbors. During the survey two questions were asked: 1. Is Higgins Hall Court a public or private space?

2. What are the boundaries of the Higgins Hall Court?

The first question provided answers to varying degrees, mostly depending on the status of the user. Faculty, neighbors and most graduate students (33%) replied that Higgins Hall Court is a private space. A few people (7%) responded that it is a semi-public space. Most undergraduate students and staff of the building (60%) classified the space a public. The confidence in the latter classification is particularly interesting.

PRIVATE OR PUBLIC?

The second question was polemic due to the diversity of responses.

The majority of faculty and graduate students defined the boundary of the space as the line marking the pavement of the sidewalk and the brick of the court. Their answer

PRIVATE (33%)

BUILDING WALLS (40%) CURB AND STREET (6.7%)

I DON’T KNOW

SIDEWALK, PAVEMENT MARK (48.8%)

SEMI-PUBLIC (7%)

ENTRANCE DOOR

BOUNDARIES?

PUBLIC (60%)

(2.3%) (2.3%)

Tree map of survey results.

Developed by the author.

seemed to appeal to their professional knowledge. The next group marked the boundaries in the walls that of the buildings marking Higgins Hall.

Others respondents pointed to the street curb, the entrance door, and some didn’t know. The answer of the neighbors was more consistent with the property line on the sidewalk.

The survey exemplified the different perception of the space that the users have. One particular answer should be mentioned. One expert faculty of the university answered that he does not really know where the boundaries are and he prefers not to define them.

Perhaps the identification of the boundaries may cause him to lose the feeling of transition through the space.

Conclusions We are permanently in transition through spaces. The spatial experience is singular and as Peter Eisenman asserts “is the fraying of the possible edges of any identity’s limits. It is the undoing of the bounding conditions of presence.

Such a possibility does not exist in philosophic or linguistic space but only in architecture” (Grosz, 2001). The creation of places is an important condition and subtle characteristic of transitional spaces.

The Higgins Hall Court qualify as these types of place. Through the analysis of the relationship between its boundaries and users, I have defined as a transitional space. The Higgins Hall Court was designed to play the role of the transition from the public realm to the private space.

Furthermore, its configuration as an open and accessible space, as well as the addition of features associated with public spaces reinforce that classification. The users, mostly related to the school, have a different perception of its boundaries as well as its definition between private and public. The general perception about it is blur itself, it is ambiguous and unclear, and marks the Higgins Court as an interesting place for all of us.

A temporary intervention at Higgins Court.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

_architects, _ R. a. (2005). Rogers Marvel Architects.

Retrieved October 7, 2017, from http://www.rogersmarvel.com/projects/Pratt _Boettger, _ T. (2014). Threshold Spaces.

Trasitions in Architecture. Analysis and Design Tools. Basel: Birkhauser. _Cresswell, _ T. (2015). Place: An Introduction (Short Introductions to Geography).

Oxford : John Wiley & Sons Ltd. _DOF. _ (2017). NYC.gov . Retrieved from Tax Map: _http://gis.nyc.gov/taxmap/map.tm?search_ Type=BblSearch&featureTypeName=EVERY_B BL&borough=Brooklyn&block=01947&lot=0001 _Franck, _ K., & Quentin, S. (2007).

Tying Down Loose spaces. In Loose Space.

Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life (pp. 1-33). New York: Routledge. _Grosz, _ E. (2001). Architecture from the Outside.

Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. _Institute, _ P. (2017, August). Smoke- and TobaccoFree Policy. Retrieved October 2017, from Pratt Institute : www.pratt.edu/smoke-and-tobacco-free-policy/ _Pratt125. _ (2012). Retrieved October 7, 2017, from http://125.pratt.edu/timeline _Quintanilla, _ B. M., & Braker, K. (1996, July 22).

Retrieved from Daily News. Archive: _http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/ _ hisoric-school-burns-pratt-landmarkhigginshall-hit-3-bravest-injured-article-1.737525 _Szakolczai, _ A. (2009). Liminality and Experience: Structuring transitory situations and transformative events. Retrieved from Academia: http://www.academia.edu/8343072/ Liminality_and_Experience_Structuring_ transitory_sit uations_and_transformative_events _Troy _ Zimmerman, P. (2008). Liminal Space in Architecture: Threshold and Transition.

Knoxville: University of Tennessee. Retrieved from http://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/453

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User’s perceived boundaries

Tokyo Experience 2017

Mukojima, Residential Neighborhood in Tokyo.

Photo: Alejandra Gómez B.

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by Alejandra Gómez Bolívar [UPM]

Tokyo’s workshop 2017 was not only a class, but a professional and a life experience.

Since I started Placemaking at Pratt, I was pretty curious about this workshop, not only about the journey but also with about relationship between the traditional and modern Japan in terms of architecture, city planning, culture, and social development.

They were the most intense two weeks of the year and probably of our lives. We lived Japan physically and emotionally, and like 40 percent of the Japanese, we got less than six hours of sleep either by jet lag or the tight schedule.

Tokyo is an “organized chaos” and in the middle of this mess, everything functions at is supposed to. We were there, eleven students from seven different countries, far away from our families and traditions, immersed into the japanese culture, good manners, respect, and order.

We traveled by plane, bike, foot, public transport, and Shinkansen (the bullet train). This allowed us to feel and live the city in different scales.

Scales that we enjoyed as planners, architects, placemakers, and tourists, showing us the magnificence of Tokyo’s infrastructure and the simplicity of life.

During the journey, the weather didn’t let us have an overview from the plane, however the colors and sensations of the arrival were special and unique. Then biking through the center city and waterfront gave us the capacity of feeling as a locals. We walked throughout tiny residential streets, where the road is share with cars, bikes, and motorcycles. This let us understand the dynamic of the place, respecting one to another, no matter which way are you using to shift.

The Shinkansen is high tech, neat, and precise. The most significant ride was crossing Japan from south to north, the same day just in few hours.

The speed hinders the view but the experience of traveling geographically such a long distance was incredible.

The trip was amazing! We did a lot but still missed many other things to do. The mix of lectures, site visits, workshops, and tours made this experience an interesting and enriching, as well as a great opportunity to meet people and do networking. Japan 2017 workshop was a wonderful first visit and gave me the desire of coming back soon to know the rest we missed.

It was magic for me as a Colombian architect studying placemaking in New York. Visiting Tokyo let me think broader, opened my eyes bigger, and made me a better professional.

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The public transportation is surprising! It runs perfectly in timing and movement. Platforms, trains, and stations can be the busiest places of the city, but at the same time the loneliest. People are just following the flow, the human interaction is minimal and gives a feeling of emptiness and solitude, some of the most important challenges that japanese society fights today.

View from Sangubashi Station, Tokyo.

Sketch: Alejandra Gómez B.

Overview of Tokyo Station.

Sketch: Alejandra Gómez B.

A Trip to the River

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by Ahmad Shaibani [CRP]

This past summer, I interned at the Center for Civic Engagement and Community Services at the American University of Beirut.

At the center, we connected nongovernmental organizations with the resources at the university and facilitated programs for vulnerable communities in Lebanon. Part of my work was to attend to and assist classes in a community center at a refugee settlement. Every day was a journey of doubt, questions, and self-discovery. One day, I am told that there will be a field trip that the community center will need help with, so I volunteer to chaperone, and thus the day began.

The children’s face expressed excitement for their upcoming field trip. The morning routine prompted them to get in line and rehearse their chants as they walked into class, many in their swimming clothes.

We promised them that after one class we would go to the river, but their enthusiasm for the field trip would prove the class short and futile. There was nothing to do but get them ready to leave for the river.

In 2011, the Syrian Civil War broke out, prompting the refugee crisis we see today. The children at the community center and their families originate from a farming village in the fertile plains of West Syria. Their references to home

They, like so many in Syria, fled the violence and settled in Lebanon. The small coastal republic hosts a large number of those fleeing the war, and while gracious and accepting at first, many are getting tired and weary of the status and future of the refugees. The Syrian’s temporary status is stifling them from settling roots and developing a community.

The river park is public, but access is gated. The children are generally not allowed to enter the park without an adult, usually the parents. The community center chaperones in place of their parents, allowing the children to use the park. As we enter, the park-goers stare at us and the children while we walk towards the furthest end.

Once we arrive, the community center’s director announces that the children cannot swim today because of strong water currents, all the while our children are watching other kids playing in the river.

One of the children, who is normally shy and reserved, makes several attempts to protest and run to the river. At one point, his efforts prompt a group of his peers to run with him. We stopped this behavior by recruiting some of the teenagers in the river to kick them out of they try to swim. The teenagers abided and felt pride

(All photos by Ahmad Shaibani)

in their newfound power. The children and chaperones, defeated, sat in a row atop a stone wall while watching the other kids playing.

The Syrian refugee crisis poses new challenges for institutions and academia. Families and communities are divided along political and factional lines, and the semblance of society is being fractured from within. The war, its effects, and responses have been stemmed by frameworks and guidelines based on old assumptions, namely that of temporality and practicality.

Continuing the day with games and snacks to occupy the children’s time, the river became a backdrop of their misfortune. None of them begged to stay when we announced the beginning of our return. We distributed bags and asked everyone to put away their trash, one by one. As that happens, I decide to pick up any other litter I see. Then, one by one, the children began picking up litter, and they did it with excitement, eventually cleaning up nearly an entire portion of the park.

You can only help what you can reach.

There is certainly a place for great ideas and big pictures, but those fall by the wayside of little actions.

Cleaning up the park was one step towards the children claiming a home, and developing a community.

The action gave them a sense of duty to their place and each other, and it was all within their reach.

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commonly include a river, a river that sustained their farms and provided them their livelihoods.

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by Samuel Pressman [SES]

EarthPact Team: Summer Sandoval, Samuel Pressman, Isil Akgül.

Photo: Elizabeth Olguin.

Did you know there are a bunch of tree huggers on campus? And did you know that these nature lovers are working hard to bring the student body together to create a greener Pratt for you? At the same time, some of them are also developing plans to turn sustainability into a business!

That’s right, Pratt’s very own Sustainable Environmental System’s department (SES), and the bright minds that are part of it, are striving to enhance sustainable practices

throughout campus. Three graduate SES students, Isil Akgül, Samuel Pressman, and Summer Sandoval— decided to form the EarthPact team to test their idea for a social-mediaoriented sustainable-lifestyle tool.

Through Pratt’s brand new Ignition Lab entrepreneurship program, their team gained invaluable business education, collaborated to turn an idea into a viable business model, and went on to win second place in the program’s final pitch competition!

The team explains the EarthPact concept: “After conducting field research and a general analysis of the lifestyle interests most popular today, we found that various age groups not only share a desire to lead a cleaner and healthier lifestyle, but also want to live in a positive, safe, and engaging community. Through evaluation and inputs of people’s habits, interests, motivations and goals, EarthPact will generate a personalized sustainable lifestyle plan that informs the user as to how he or she can go about lowering their carbon footprint both easily and economically.

This project was supported by Pratt’s Ignition Lab— an educational program focused on aiding aspiring entrepreneurs to develop their business concepts and startup ideas. Organized by The Center for Career and Professional Development, the Ignition Lab program is comprised of a series of seven monthly sessions—held from September to April. Each session focuses on a different area of business development and entrepreneurship supported by guest speakers with relevant professional backgrounds.

Accepted participants gain insight into the most effective business practices today from successful entrepreneurs, renowned business startup gurus, and motivational speakers. Reinforced by a wonderful trio of program instructors who offer confidence-building public speaking activities, teams are provided the resources to develop their ideas into professional business proposals.

The program culminates in a final Pitch Competition, in which each team has the opportunity to present its startup proposal to a panel of judges (composed of industry professionals, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurship experts) who then chose the first and second-place winners.

The success of this year’s Ignition Lab has opened a new door that will give any Pratt student or alum the opportunity to express his or her ideas, and get the professional guidance needed to help those ideas evolve into potential future companies. Applications for the 2018-19 Ignition Lab will be accepted this August.

Earthpact Logo Credit: Isil Akgül.

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While our ultimate goal is to cater to a broad range of populations, our plan for our first prototype is to target college students. We believe that by helping to educate colleges about sustainable practices, students will be able to influence their peers and households—who otherwise may not have consistent access to eco-friendly education—eventually helping to fast-track the flourishing of micro-sustainability cultures within surrounding neighborhoods and communities.”

Trip to the Netherlands

by Tina Pastore [SES]

MARCH 11 1

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AMSTERDAM Waterfront (Walking Tour)

MARCH 12

AMSTERDAM Municipal Office for Historic Preservation (Lectures) 3 Ijburg’s Floating Architecture (Walking Tour)

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MARCH 13

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OUWERKERK Watersnoodmuseum · Flood Disaster Museum (Tour) VROUWENPOLDER 5 Delta Park Neeltje Jans Expo (Tour) Museum & Easterscheldt Barrier (Tour) HOEK VAN HOLLAND 6 Keringhuis Public Water Center Maeslant Barrier (Tour) 4

MARCH 14

DELFT School of Architecture, TU Delft (Lecture) Inge Bobbink, prof. of Landscape Architecture DAN HAGUE 8 Mauritshuis, The Hague (Lecture & Tour) Quentin Buvelot, senior curator 7

The Dutch people are widely famous for being a very resilient culture. Historically, they have struggled through severe weather events in order to prevail in their strategically positioned geographical territory, and as a result, they have developed a strong built and cultural and heritage. As a matter of fact, the Dutch have learned how to manage water in a very unique way. If one analyses the evolution of their territorial map, it becomes apparent that they have almost doubled in land area, by draining wetlands regions across their country. In face of these particular characteristics of the Netherlands, a global joint partnership for a study abroad between M.Sc. Historic Preservation, M.Sc. Sustainable Environmental Systems, and the Consulate General for the Netherlands in the USA was made. It’s aim was to explore the nexus between resilience and cultural and built heritage.

MARCH 15

UTRECHT Werkspoorkathedraal (Lecture & Tours) Hof van Cartesius (Lecture & Tours) 10 Gabrielle Muris, principal, Urban Impact Rietveld Schröder House (Tour) 9

MARCH 16 11

ROTTERDAM Van Nelle Factory (Tour)

Trip Itinerary Map. Developed by Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

The excursion took place during the 2018 Spring Break, from March 11th until the 16th. The schedule was ambitious and over the course of the week, the students were able to visit innumerous study cases throughout the entire country.

The first meeting took place on the central Amsterdam riverbanks, on a walking tour around the upcoming developments on that side of the city. It was interesting to see the number of buildings dedicated to public use in that particular side of the city and the way in which these public spaces seemed to invite pedestrians to discover the shops and restaurants scattered along the waterfront. The highlights of the walking tour were Amsterdam Centraal (the central station), the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (public library), and the EYE Filmmuseum (movie museum).

Later that same day, the group visited IJburg, a new concept and housing development at the outskirts of Amsterdam, where the government have leased the water territory to residents and developers to build their own floating houses. The whole concept of that type development is very intriguing, and the architecture was very impressive. Some of the challenges of building a floating house were pointed out, such as load distribution.

In a floating house the flexibility of moving furniture around is more limited than that a normal structure.

Having a busy party may be a stressful event if many of the guests decide to stand in one certain spot.

The Mauritshuis Museum, Den Haag (example of adaptive reuse).

Photo: Tina Pastore.

On March 13th, the theme of the places to visit was coastal resilience. The group traveled to the northern coast on a bus to visit the Watersnoodmuseum (the Flood Disaster Museum) in Ouwerkerk, where they highlight the historic challenge of the Dutch during flood events and how they have managed to overcome these challenges.

The museum was a reminder of the power of water and storm disasters and of the importance of proper disaster prevention measures, especially for the Dutch people.

After the museum, we visited the Delta Park Neeltje Jans Expo in Vrouwenpolder. It is truly an amazing feat of engineering. The immense system of storm barriers spreads across two artificial islands where the North Sea flows into the Oosterschelde. The system is designed to be able to close down remotely at the push of a button, completely blocking off the Oosterschelde the case of a storm. The system remains open the rest of the time to allow the tide to flow in and out and preserve the rich ecosystem found in the area.

Van Nelle Factory, Rotterdam (example of adaptive reuse).

Photo: Tina Pastore.

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The second day of the trip started at the historic building of the Municipal Office for Historic Preservation, where they gave a lecture on the challenges of preserving architectural heritage and how they have designed an interdisciplinary and inter-office approach to preservation.

Later that morning, another lecture on resilience strategies on water issues was given by a representative of the Dutch Waternet, which is the public company that provides and manages the water cycle in the entire country. These two lectures were highly informative of the way the Dutch people deal with their preservation issues as well as the complexity of water management in the Netherlands.

This highlights the unique approach of the Dutch people to develop sustainability solutions that take into consideration the wildlife and existing ecosystems.

Floating Houses in Ijburg Neighborhood, Amsterdam (Resilience and Climate Change Adaptation example).

Photo: Tina Pastore.

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Next, the group went to Maeslant Barrier at Hoek Van Holland. Similar to the first barrier, the Maeslant Barrier is capable of being opened and closed remotely in order to prevent flooding from extreme weather events. It is important that the barrier remain open to allow ships to enter and exit the port at Rotterdam. Both barriers were designed as part of the Delta Works master plan. the plan encompasses a system of dams, sluices, locks, dykes, levees, and storm surge barriers all in place to prevent flooding in the southwestern Rhine-MeuseScheldt Delta in the Southwest of The Netherlands.

On the 14th, the group traveled to Delft to visit the school of architecture at TU Delft where we attended a lecture with professor Inge Bobbink, who gently explained to us the history of water management and landscaping in the Netherlands, including the intriguing reason that the whole country is actually under sea level. The Dutch mastered the techniques for draining wetlands soil, thus this process results in soil compaction. This practice is still in practice across the nation and in most areas the results would be 10 cm per year on the soil level.

Later that same day, the group traveled to the Hague, the administrative center for the country. We were received by the museum’s senior curator Quentin Buvelot at the Mauritshuis Museum. He walked us through the original construction as well as the expansions and newer wings of the museum. This particular site is a remarkable tourist attraction, home to some of the greatest dutch painting masterpieces.

The following morning, the group traveled to Utrecht.

Guided by Gabrielle Muris, local entrepreneur and principal of Urban Impact, we visited two interesting sites. One is a remarkable example of adaptive reuse,

Het Hof Van Cartesius Development, Utrecht (Circular Economy and Reuse Example).

Photo: Tina Pastore.

Werkspoorkathedraal, a late rolling stock for railways and bridges factory in the industrial zone of the city.

It is a fairly large building which now hosts some great public events, as well as some offices, mainly from the creative industry, who is currently not coping with the high rent prices in the city center.

Adjacent to Werkspoorkathedraal is the Hof van Cartesius, which used to be a vacant lot but is now under development by a collective of artists and artisans who have partnered with Urban Impact. Hof van Cartesius is essentially a group of small pavilions, where the artists offices and workshops are located. As a community effort, this development is completely made with the local labor force of the group, and more importantly, employing solely used construction materials. It was very exciting to visit this new type of development, lead by the local community and mindful of sustainable practices.

Later that day, we visited Rietveld SchrĂśder House, which by itself, is an icon of the modern De Stijl movement at the Netherlands. It is always very impressive to visit

The last event on March 16th was a tour at the Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, another study case on adaptive reuse. Van Nelle was one of the most prominent coffee, tea, gum and tobacco goods processing company in Europe during the 20th Century. The iconic modernist building was concluded in 1931 and was operational until 1997.

Since 2014, it has been designated as a World Heritage Site. In order to keep the building running businesses, it underwent some minimal refurbishments and now hosts some upcoming offices of the creative industry of Rotterdam.

All in all, the trip proved to be an informative and impressive overview of the ingenuity and engineering prowess of the Dutch people. The way in which water management seems to be designed with consideration for the preservation ecosystems and wildlife, serves as a role model for what is possible when we respect our planet and it’s resources. 

Class at the Eastern Scheldt Barrier, Vrouwenpolder.

Photo: Gita Nandan.

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sites like this to see the richness of detailing one designer could put into their creation is astonishing.

Some of his designs can be considered contemporary today.

ALUMNI AT PRATT:

Ron Shiffman Ron Shiffman has been the consummate student, and professor at Pratt, since finishing his undergrad in architecture and then M.S. in City and Regional Planning in 1965. His work in the field of planning, which he began while still a graduate student, has taken him through indelible historic moments in the evolution of planning in New York City; from urban renewal to the rise of community planning, and the navigation of the politics of advocacy.

The documentation of the more than 50 years of this work, which we’ve all seen collected in the migrating stacks of file boxes in 406, has now been donated to the Brooklyn Historical Society, where it will be archived as part of history. In the following, he speaks to just a few of the experiences during his graduate studies that shaped the foundation for these years.

It was not too dissimilar from now.

It was a studio oriented program.

It basically started my involvement in planning. I was offered a job in November of ‘63, on the day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

I had interviewed with George Raymond who was Chair of the department who had taken on a job to do a study of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

I didn’t start until late in the Spring of ‘64, when I became the field director of what was a study for a group called Church Community Services. It was a group in Bedford-Stuyvesant that had been concerned about parishioners moving out of the area to the integrating suburbs. They wanted to create a healthier community in a way that people would want to stay rather than just leave.

Photo: Carlos Rodríguez Estévez.

They had come up with ways of addressing the housing problem, among others, and went to the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation to ask them for assistance. And Rockefeller had, in about late ‘62 or ’63, given Pratt a grant which came out of a controversy that Pratt was involved in-which I should have began with- A Pratt studio had done a plan for an area called Dare, a Downtown Area Renewal Effort (not done by my class, but was done a year or two earlier). It’s what we now call Boerum Hill. And that downtown area renewal effort came up with a proposal for substantial new development within the community with a significant amount of housing to be retained, more than most urban renewal plans-but it was still an urban renewal plan. Smith street and Court street were streets that were part of it.

The area was seeing an out-migration of white families, an in-migration of Latino families, and a significant number of African Americans who

were moved into Gowanus Housing.

And so people were afraid that the area would become abandoned, like East New York was becoming. It was still before the mass evacuation of the city, but you began seeing people moving out of New York to the suburbs and a whole bunch of things were all coming together that led to out-migration, particularly of the white population in the early 60’s.

And this was all at the time that the Pratt Center began?

Well, what happened was opposition grew to the Pratt plan. George Raymond was pushing for the Pratt plan and wanted the City to adopt it. But there were two people who opposed it. One of them was Elliot Willensky, who wrote the classic AIA ‘Guide to New York Buildings’, and the other was Jane Jacobs. And they defeated the plan. George Raymond was upset, and felt people didn’t know enough about housing and urban renewal plans.

So then Pratt got a grant to educate communities about housing and urban renewal. But then George made the mistake of hiring me to run this study of Bedford-Stuyvesant. He was a great teacher. We started working in Bedford-Stuyvesant and started working with a group there, and out of that, the template for what actually became the Pratt Center was formed.

That church group was for a short time attacked by some local residents for not really addressing the needs of all of the folks who lived there. And the community was rightly suspect of Pratt, a white institution, and what they were going to be doing in the community. And so, after about two or three very contentious meetings, we started working with the groups that were attacking us. We did that in a way that didn’t alienate the group that initially invited us in, but eventually enabled us to continue to stay there-until this day.

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THEN

by Jay Skardis [CRP]

You graduated from one of the first cohorts of the CRP program in 1965. What was the program like then?

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And was the coalition that came out of that the BedfordStuyvesant Restoration Corporation [the first community development corporation in the country]?

That gave birth to BedfordStuyvesant Restoration Corporation.

It was originally Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation. There was a split in the group. Basically, an accusation that the group was nominated by the patriarchy. We sided with the matriarchy. They lost out, and eventually they came back and started working with the Bed-Stuy Restoration. So it continued one group that split apart and came back together about four years later, and continued working with all sides.

So you come together and try to see a situation from all angles? Do you think this was a main influence in your approach to planning?

What really motivated me and a number of others at that time was the fact that ‘64 and ‘65 were a very important period in a lot of people’s lives. It was the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the growth of the anti-war movement, with a real debate going on in educational institutions. In other words, what should the role be of the professional in our society? Schools of architecture were teaching you how to design beach houses, and yet we’d look around the neighborhood as see poverty, we saw buildings declining.

Schools of planning were teaching how to work for the powerful, the Mayors, for civic organizations.

Some of us began to say, how do we really begin to represent the needs of the poor? Paul and Linda Davidoff later wrote a seminal piece, titled

‘Advocacy and Pluralism.’ Paul was a friend. And when he was writing he would say that we were ‘advocate planners’, we were representing the poor people within Bedford-Stuyvesant who never had access, or a voice.

We entered into, in many cases, what was considered and adversarial relationship with the City. What we were trying to do was balance that dialogue. We didn’t try to speak for the people, but were trying to help them articulate what they wanted to say, and how they could achieve it. And what were the alternatives?

Too often participation is looked at as just talking to people to see what they want, and tell them how they can achieve it. Rather than knowing that there are different pathways to achieve what they want and that the process is just as important as the product. And so the idea was to work with people in such a way as to enable them to make informed decisions based on alternatives that were available to them.

With the 2018 Mid-Term elections nearing, I sat down with Ron Shiffman to look back at the Democracy, Equity and Public Space Lecture series that spent two semesters covering the current Administration. As the Graduate Assistant to the class for the Spring ’18 series, I was able to work closely with Ron as he curated a panel of guests that addressed topics such as: Tax Laws, Environmentalism, Infrastructure and how to create an agenda that moves people forward through the often murky waters of the Presidency. At one point Ron looked at me and said that never in all of his time of activism did he see such a divisive atmosphere in this country and it truly worried him. You could see it in his eyes. This was a lot to take on when one considers how fully and deeply Ron’s activist roots go.

In 2017 we decided to focus on the election because there was a great deal of anxiety – in fact, I think it was subtitled “The Age of Anxiety” – we really didn’t know what was coming.

Trump may have been unknown to the country, he was not unknown to some of us in New York. A lot of his work and what he did, dates back to the 70’s.

I met him (Trump) a couple of times while I was on the City Planning Commission. He was very erratic back then and had already been showing signs of being a racist and xenophobe.

So when he got elected President, not only was the campaign an indication of who he would become, but also the history behind him.

People who believed in democracy and free press and an integrated society were all concerned, including, I think, a great number of people in the Republican party and the Conservative side. Many of these people I have disagreed with over the years, but shared a set of values and goals such as freedom of the press and a respect for the checks and balances system. Those were perceived to be under threat and unfortunately our worst perceptions have become a reality. That lead to an idea to say no and resist, but to figure out a way, or start a dialogue about an alternative or vision we want to espouse. At the same time build alliances with those that may not share all of our objectives, but a share a level of support for the basic institutions that make democracy work.

You say that you are more pessimistic at this time, than your normal optimistic view… let’s talk more about what is fueling your pessimism but aiding your optimism.

Well I am very concerned that if we don’t exert our voices, and sort of translate those voices into political action and votes, and win back the House, that we will not have the kinds of check and balances on this administration going forward. The attacks on the press – which I have never seen as sustained as they are today, become part and parcel of what Americans expect. I think there always has to be skepticism about some of our institutions there has to be a healthy respect and questioning of them. We have a multiplicity of invasion on our norms, one of them is the self-dealing of the family and the connections the President has in development and international relations.

The manipulation of these dealings and of the social media goes hand in hand and raises substantive questions about where this country is going. We were never perfect, but we always strived to be better and now that seems to be reversed.

The optimist in me says we are going to win the elections, but I want to run scared until we do.

When I see the discussions I had with the students of the lecture series, and when I see the students around here, that is when I get optimistic.

That is why I come to campus a lot.

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NOW

by Kristin Brown [UPM] Ron Shiffman’s Rolodex: 50 years of contacts in planning.

Photo: Jay Skardis.

You decided to focus the Spring 2017 Lecture Series on the election and resulting Administration.

Can you tell me more about that?

How did you see the Spring lecture series help with your concerns?

We needed to begin a dialogue about how we start the conversation around income disparities and the discussion itself has hopefully had a ripple effect that will eventually take root in different places, like throwing seeds out.

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The lecture then turned to environmental justice issues and we were able to inform a broader audience, who had not heard, particularly, from people of color people and what was happening in their communities.

The third lecture probably had the most conservative group there, talking about infrastructure that included social and physical elements. It had an impact raising the issue of how we deal with infrastructure in a different way.

The last was, I thought, probably one of the best that we had and it sorted of wrapped up a lot of the other feelings that were in the previous lectures. I think the key is going to be September and October of this year and how we roll out a way of getting a couple of Congressional people from New York elected and keeping what we do have. Also sharing it with networks we do have and the rest of the country.

Part of it is the connections we make through different national organizations. The idea here is to build momentum for people, particularly people of color, lowincome people, and young people to

come out and vote. Maybe we should work with other universities around the country to vote, particularly with programs that deal with urbanism.

We need to convert resistance into something substantive, so that you are not addressing fears, but address their aspirations.

You mentioned earlier that we needed to have these conversations amongst ourselves first. It seems like we need to be on the same page and to be organized going forward because if we aren’t, it can be more detrimental than saying or doing nothing at all.

Can you elaborate on that?

We need to have a vision. We at least have to know what direction we are going. I have two perspectives on this that sometimes I wrestle on within myself. One is that I do strongly believe, because we don’t address the issues that are raised by people of color, low-income people, people that have been disenfranchised, that they recede and don’t participate.

So I think it is really important that we raise that. At the same time, I do believe that we can’t be so pristine and so absorbed, that we can’t compromise in order to win. I think we need to find a way to speak so that we are bringing in the suburbanite, as well as the radical who is struggling.

We need to find somebody that can speak to both and we need to have an agenda that speaks to both.

That is the way we get around. It’s the connections. You branch out and it multiplies very quickly.

keeping

406 open

61 St. James Pl. Brooklyn, NY 11238 www.pratt.edu/gcpe 2017 - 2018