Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated

down under the brooklyn elevated A Green Valley for Cycling the area of East Brooklyn

author

Pieter Vandenhoudt

promotors

Tom Thys Ward Verbakel readers

Moji Baratloo Matthias Blondia Bruno Demeulder

down under the brooklyn elevated A Green Valley for Cycling the area of East Brooklyn

author

Pieter Vandenhoudt

promotors

Tom Thys Ward Verbakel readers

Moji Baratloo Matthias Blondia Bruno Demeulder

© Copyright by K.U.Leuven Without written permission of the promoters and the authors it is forbidden to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication. Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to K.U.Leuven, Faculty of Engineering – Kasteelpark Arenberg 1, B-3001 Heverlee (België). Telefoon +3216-32 13 50 & Fax. +32-16-32 19 88.

A written permission of the promotor is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or commercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests.

All images in this booklet are, unless credits are given, made or drawn by the authors (Studio Brooklyn).

down under the brooklyn elevated A Green Valley for Cycling the area of East Brooklyn

At first I would like to express my gratitude to all persons that helped me in the realization of this graduation project. Without the guidance of my promotors, Tom Thys and Ward Verbakel, it would never have been possible to push my limits and learn as much as I did now. I want to thank Matthias Blondia for its interest in my project and the time he spend to improve my knowledge about infrastructure and public space. As well I am thankful to Moji Baratloo and Bruno Demeulder for their time to read and comment this thesis. Finally my family and girlfriend deserves special thanks for their support through this year and for their help wherever they could.

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preface The contemporary public space is struggling to respond to the heartbeat of today’s rapidly changing cities. Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated starts by questioning the changing role of public domain in the growing network society we are living in nowadays. What is the meaning of the contemporary urban tissue, overruled by the flows of transportation and digital data, a city where every individual is on the move, where a globalized culture follows whatever happens in the market and where the grant historic plaza has been inherited by the globe trotting tourist? In order to survive the competing logics of the Space of Flows and the Space of Place[1], the public domain is in dire need of new approaches. A new focus is put on vast urban infrastructures.

These places with often a very collective character create at the same time rather distant experience. New possibilities for public design can be found in the growing importance of these transport nodes in the functioning and everyday quality of the city. The main goal of this thesis is about what those single places can mean to both local and global participants of today and tomorrow.

Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated is a design research project exploring the potential of new places in an area of flows by way of a new bicycle connection. This new bike route has the possibility of introducing a more human scale into the vast area of elevated railroad tracks in east Brooklyn. Focusing on the importance of public transport in New York City, a possibility for this approach can be found in a combination of two crossing elevated railroad tracks and the introduction of the new bicycle path. An exceptional strip of land on the border between the east Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville and East New York will be the site of my design intervention.

Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated, a Green Valley for Cycling the area of East Brooklyn is built up through the concepts of the Brooklyn Elevated and bicycling as the renewed transport mode of the 21st century. Four different scales are used throughout this work to explain the different flows and the social conditions of east Brooklyn and to translate this conditions into the design of a place for the community.

9

the brooklyn elevated

p22

assembling flows

down under the brooklyn elevated

a green valley for cycling the area of east brooklyn

p12

space of flows analysis 10

content | two stories, four scales

design proposal

p30 green valley for cycling

p52

livonia square

space of place design

design 11

The Brooklyn Elevated is a very known phenomenon of railroad tracks running above street level in Brooklyn. Where most traces of elevated railroad tracks nowadays have been erased in Manhattan, the other boroughs preserved several miles of elevated tracks, now forming a significant part of their street scenery. Most of today’s elevated tracks can be found on the outskirts of the city, distant from Manhattan.

The elevated tracks were mainly built between the end of 19th Century and the 1930s with a low point in their existence in the 1970s and 80s. Because of low maintenance parts of the elevated tracks were falling down onto the streets with some accidental outcomes. Different lines were demolished and replaces by subway lines.

Since all the buzz about the High Line[2] a renewed consciousness about preservation and new possibilities of derilict infrastructures is put on the urban agenda. In the last decade different urban projects are set up in search for a mixture between the infrastructural modernist scale of flows and today’s approach towards a human scale of place.[3]

the brooklyn elevated

14

1939, BMT Fulton Line, Lafayette Avenue, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn George Conrad Collection

img.01

1940, BMT Fulton Line, Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn George Conrad Collection

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The Brooklyn Elevated | early 20th century elevated trains in Brooklyn

1940, BMT Fulton Line, Liberty and Euclid Avenues, East New York George Conrad Collection

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1948, BMT Fulton Line, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn George Conrad Collection

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16

2012, MTA S Train, Park Place, Brooklyn StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs

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2012, MTA LIRR, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs

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The Brooklyn Elevated | present elevated trains in Brooklyn

2012, MTA L Train, Broadway Junction, East New York, Brooklyn StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs

img.07

2012, MTA 3 Train, Livonia Avenue, East New York, Brooklyn StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs

img.08

17

18

The High Line, Meatpacking District, Manhattan, by James Corner Field Operations & Diller Scofido + Renfro 2009 phase1, 2011 phase2, 2012 planning phase 3 image from RADDblog

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Dutch Kills Green, Queens Plaza, Long Island City Queens, by Marpillero Pollak Architects, 2012 StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs

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The Brooklyn Elevated | recent urban design interventions in New York City

Growing Infrastructure, 4 Av train station, Red Hook, Brooklyn, by Manuel Avila, 2008 design proposal a Manual Avila rendering

img.11

Underline: The Culver Viaduct, Red Hook, Brooklyn, by John McGill, 2010 design proposal a John McGill rendering

img.12

19

"

The urbanistic project confronts varying briefs in which the idea of ‘integration’ between infrastructure and city, between public and communal spaces, between architecture and services, becomes the fundamental concept.

"

Joan Busquets

[4] , Urbanism at the turn of the century, 2000

"

What is critical in our society is that cities are structured and restructured simultaneously by the competing logics of the ‘Space of Flows’ and the ‘Space of Places’.

"

Manuel Castells

[5] , Local and global: Cities in the Network Society 1, 2001

"

It feels like there is starting to be an awareness of a wealth of public space, previously unnoticed. The potential is incredible; these places are magic.

"

Sandro Marpillero

20

[6] , UrbanOmnibus, Queens Plaza Infrastructure Reframed, February 13,2012.

The Brooklyn Elevated | towards new opportunities

ENY boundaries

Brooklyn boundaries

MTA subway

MTA elevated trains

north elevated LIRR

1 km 1 mi

21

Distant from Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn but close to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, a transit-rich east Brooklyn area is determined by several east-west oriented transit corridors. They all connect both nodes. The different flows resulting from those connections cut through the neighborhoods of Brownsville and East New York and divide the area in different parts with different identities.[7] Emphasizing a north-south oriented strip together with the introduction of a new bike route on the border between the two neighborhoods can bring new possibilities of assembling the existing flows. The intervention can also ground the passing flows, creating a new place for the neighborhoods.

assembling flows

East New York brownsville

The infrastructure of Brooklyn is strongly determined by two distant poles: Manhattan and John F. Kennedy International Airport, one of the main gates of New York City for freight and people. Because of the proximity of the neighborhoods of east Brooklyn to JFK, the area’s infrastructure has a mainly connecting role, neglecting the tissue and functioning of the neighborhood itself. The JFK Airtrain connects travelers with MTA New York City’s A and C subways and the Long Island Rail Road, all passing through East New York and Brownsville on their way to Brooklyn and Manhattan. By car, people can pass through the heart of Brooklyn taking Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue or drive the Belt Parkway along the Jamaica Bay shoreline.

24

Assembling Flows | east west oriented traffic corridors

ENY boundaries

Brooklyn boundaries

Manhattan& JFK

highways

main roads

MTA subway system

north LIRR

1 km 1 mi

25

[8] However New York City has one of the busiest subway systems in the world and PlaNYC achieves for an improvement and expansion of a sustainable transportation infrastructure, the east Brooklyn infrastructures are mainly addressed towards car use upon the street grid. Also the provision of safe bike routes in the neighborhoods tissue is hard to come by. New possibilities to built up a coherent network of public transit options are found in a strip along the north-south oriented L-train. In this strip two possibilities will be investigated keeping in mind the area’s needs for future developments of a stronger public transit system and greener transport in terms of strategic bike routes.

26

Assembling Flows | north-south vs east-west movements

ENY boundaries

LIRR

LIRR underground

car

bus

MTA subway

north bike route

1 km 1 mi

27

A first design proposal is launched to react to previous statements and to achieve a more coherent system of public and soft transit options. For over a decade cycling in New York is growing in populairity with a [9] significant expansion of bicycle routes . Despite of the city’s efforts, safe bicycling in east Brooklyn is still far from satisfactory. That’s why a new bicycle route in north south direction is introduced to connect two existing routes at the neighborhood’s edges. Along this new bike route several bike parkings are implemented to work together with the L-train stations.

28

Assembling Flows | a new bike route

ENY boundaries

Brooklyn boundaries

bike routes

new bike route proposal

north possibility for further expansion

1 km 1 mi

29

The selection of a strip on the border between Brownsville and East New York can mainly be explained through the concept of exception. The strip appears to be an interruption of the street grid causing a real physical border between both neighborhoods. Since the construction of the Manhattan Beach Railway and the Bay Ridge Branch freight-only train a valley has been dug, letting the train pass the grid without any interference of street traffic. Together with the presence of the elevated L-train running along the strip it creates great opportunities for a new 2 kilometer long bicycle route where to cycle away from street traffic and directly connected to the MTA transit system. Different nodes are designed to link the path with the existing tissue of the neighborhoods together with possibilities of improvement of the neighborhoods’ community initiatives and social coherence.

green valley for cycling

40

Green Valley for Cycling | topography of the valley

33.5 m

30.5 m

27.4 m

24.4 m

21.3 m

18.3 m

15.2 m

13.7 m

v

12.2 m

16

v

17 10.7 m 9.1 m

v

18

7.6 m

6.1 m

v 19

north 100 m 500 ft

41

42

Liberty Ave

1

Sutter Ave

2

Livonia Ave

3

New Lots Ave

4

Green Valley for Cycling | sections, hierarchy of transportation modes

1

2

3

4

bike route

LIRR

Bay Ridge Branch freight train

road

elevated

subway

north 100 m 500 ft

43

In the creation of linkages with the neighborhood an analysis of the existing tissue and social organizations is done. At first the bike route is strongly connected with the public transit system of the elevated and existing bus routes. Besides the assemblage of the flows attention is paid to the difference in commuting and living area. At the same time attention is given to the possibility to add different community initiatives with an important role in strengthening the social coherence of Brownsville and East New York.

44

Green Valley for Cycling | bike route plugged in on surrounding tissue

L 12 20 24 25 56

L 14

L 3

L 15

60

mobility infrastructure

commuting

#

MTA public transit stations

residential

bike route

elevated train

1-2 family housing

connections

bus route #

subway

multifamily housing

commercial

road

LIRR

housing projects

manufacturing

north 1 km 0.5 mi

45

barbecueing areas

MTA train stations

baseball fields

bus stops

basketball courts

car parkings

public bathrooms

bike parkings

cafĂŠ outdoor dog runs fitness equipment

FARMS!

ARTs EAST NEW YORK

East New York Farms ARTs East New York

football fields handball courts ice skating rinks parks playgrounds pools in/outdoor running tracks sandboxes skate parks water fountains

[10] are plugged in. These facilities Along the bike route different NYC Parks Facilities and Activities strengthen the existing conditions and add some new where needed. A more detailed drawing is included in the beginning of this book, showing the bicycle route with its facilities.

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Green Valley for Cycling | bike route and public facilities

1

2

3

4

north bike route

intersections with tissue

new buildings

100 m 500 ft

47

Liberty Ave

1 ARTs EAST NEW YORK

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Green Valley for Cycling | four different approaches

Sutter Ave

2

Livonia Ave

3

New Lots Ave

4

ARTs

FARMS!

EAST NEW YORK

49

basketball courts (2) public bathrooms (2) cafĂŠ outdoor dog run fitness equipment football field handball courts (8) ice skating rink park pool indoor pool outdoor running track skate park in/outside water fountains

Marked by high violence , crime, drugs and unemployment rates, the east Brooklyn neighborhoods are stigmatized as one of the worst areas in Brooklyn. To respond to these social difficulties the Brownsville Recreation Center was set up hoping to built up a better future for the children in the neighborhood.

However, the center was plagued by violence and robberies and was not really a safe place for children until in 1997 a breath of fresh air came in with Greg Jackson. This former NBA player has set a new, high standard in the neighborhood and turned the Recreation Center into a new place for hope and helping hands. Since this upsurge the center kept growing and is playing a very important role in raising children and keep them away from drugs and violence. Nowadays the center has reached its full capacity and is creaking at the edges. Together with the location next to Linden Boulevard, one of the busiest roads through the area a relocation can be desirable. By giving the Center a new place at the strip between Livonia and New Lots Avenues, it can be implemented on the proposed bike route and easily reached by the 3 and L trains at Livonia Avenue, away from dangers of busy traffic.

50

Green Valley for Cycling | Brownsville Recreational Park, a place for sports and social activities

north bike route

original B.R.C.

100 m 100 ft

51

"

In 1997 I came in with a new plan, with a new team, with new ideas and new ambitions and I had the chance to do it. And maybe it worked because I’m from the neighborhood.

"

Greg ‘Jocko’ Jackson

[11] , Brownsville Rec. Director

"

This keeps me from doing anything bad because when you come in you spend a lot of time. You can play basketball, you can go to the pool, you go work out, you can do ping pong or other stuff. When you’re on the streets it’s a different thing ‘cause you’re in danger of getting hurt or killed. So I think this is a good place where on project case you can come here or chill out or all other stuff.

"

Quran Mitchell, 11 and member of the BRC

"

The Brownsville Recreation Center is essential in the lives of families of Brownsville, and Brooklyn itself. We have to give young people hope that tomorrow it’ll be better than today. And that’s what the Brownsville Recreation Center does.

"

[12] , Brooklyn Borough President

Marty Markowitz

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Green Valley for Cycling | Brownsville Recreation Center

Brownsville Recreation Center Board picture from nydailynews.com

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Brownsville Recreation Center youth members picture from BRC facebook page

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Fresh Food Market picture by East New York Farms!

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Children at work in a community garden picture by East New York Farms!

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East New York Farms is founded in 1995 as a collaboration of Pratt Institute, East New York community centers and local organizations. Because of a lot of vacancy as an effect of redlining in the 1970s East New York alone has over 60 community gardens compared to a total of 810 in entire New York City. [13] The gardens are mainly places for the community to gather and to start an awareness of the importance of fresh and healthy food. The produced food is sold at local markets where others can buy it.

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Livonia Square

| East New York Farms

north street grid

vacant lot

community garden

100 m 500 ft

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Raphael Niles and Catherine Green, executive director of ARTs East New York Inc. picture from nydailynews.com

img.27

Another community initiative is the ARTs East New York Inc. providing access and affordability to high quality artistic programming. Arts are used as a tool to challenge socio-economical disadvantages the neighborhood is confronted with. Such as the Brownsville Recreation Center use sports towards a better future, this initiative starts from arts and culture as essential components of community life. Because artists can have a powerful impact to cheer up a place, the possibility is given to show their skills along the bike route and the elevated L-train. In this way cyclist are put in touch with local culture and revival is brought to the vast urban structure of the elevated.

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Green Valley for Cycling | ARTs East New York Inc.

img.

img.

57

Special attention is paid to the elevated crossing of L and 3 trains at Livonia Avenue. At this place theories of Space of Flows and Space of Place are coming together in the design of a connection between the stations of both trains, organized within the design of a new public square. A place where vast infrastructure and the provision of a new community/youth center, a fresh food market together with the new Brownsville Recreation Park complement each other in the creation of a new meeting point for the community.

livonia square

68

Livonia Square

| aerial siting

30

31

v

v

v

v

28

29

north 50 m 200 ft

69

train crossings

3

L

This area is signed by the presence of the elevated 3 train above Livonia Avenue and the elevated L train running along the strip of intervention together with the Bay Ridge Branch freight train on ground level.

Although the public transit trains are crossing one another, there is no possibility of getting from one station to the other without leaving the station. Neither there is any possibility for disabled to get on the elevated tracks in the entire area.

street grid

Because of the freight train, running at ground level of the valley, the street grid is interrupted. An existing small bridge provides the possibility for pedestrians to cross over the freight train, but not for disabled people or bikers.

built vs open space

The elevated L train running above Livonia Avenue involves different vacant lots along its passage, sometimes taken in by a park or a community garden. Surrounded buildings vary from the 14-story Van Dyke housing projects to 2-storey small houses.

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Livonia Square

| present situation

71

pedestrian passage

The existing passage is removed and replaced by a new pedestrian bridge and slope for disabled and bicyclists.

station connection

To provide a more efficient connection between the stations of the L and 3 trains a new platform is designed and can be reached by stairs or by elevator. The elevator makes it possible for the disabled to reach the stations.

bike route

1

2

Together with the pedestrian bridge a slope is designed for bicycles passing Livonia Avenue or as an accesspoint at both sides of the freight train. Secondly a bike share and repair point plus a bike parking are provided.

1 2

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Livonia Square

| designing the flows...

bike share and repair point bike parking

73

new buildings

1

With adding new buildings, different places are marked with different activities. Their programs can strengthen the community and provide possibilities for a more coherent social network in the area.

1 community/youth center 2 bike and repair point

+ storage for fresh food markets 3 reception, cafetaria and multivalent sports hall

of the new Recreation Park

2

3

open space

2

6 1

7 4

3

5

The public space is designed by the orientation of the buildings to create different places with different atmospheres and different users. The central square is opened to the existing Livonia Park, a quiet place to sit down and to the Powell Street Livonia Garden, a community garden in the west. At the east side the place is connected to the slope and elevator in connection with the eastern part of Livonia Avenue.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Livonia Square Childrens garden grass field outdoor cafĂŠ outdoor sport fields Livonia Park Powell Street Livonia Garden

public private domain

The central square is non-fenced and thereby opened day and night in connection with the subway station and bike and pedestrian slope towards Livonia Avenue. The other places at the youth center for the smaller children and the Recreation Park can be closed at night.

24h accessibility 8.00 AM - 10.00 AM accessibility

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Livonia Square

| ... into a new public place

75

directions

perspectives

station

flows

All the interventions together with the new Livonia Square are designed as a place where different flows of people with different directions and atmospheres come together. These flows are organized in the creation of the central square with different perspectives.

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Livonia Square

| Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated

77

section at Liberty Avenue, looking southwards

section at Riverdale Avenue, looking southwards

78

Down Under the Brooklyn Elevated | design sections

section at Sutter Avenue, looking northwards

section at Livonia Square, looking northwards

79

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conclusion This thesis has been a research for new possibilities of public spaces in today’s rapidly changing cities. An investigation towards the meaning of a Space of Place in the Space of Flows that our contemporary cities are. This terminology can be rephrased in the search for a place of standstill in a city where every individual is on the move. The main goal of this investigation was to apply different theories about this subject in the existing urban fabric by design. By doing this I started realizing that the most significant difference between two terms is a difference in scale, a difference in users, a difference in bottom-up and top-down planning, a difference in how to handle the different characters of places.

The larger the scale the more abstract it grows and the more difficult to understand and tackle an area in its complete range. This difference in scale and perception of the city was already significant in the 1950s and 60s in the battle between Robert Moses[14] and Jane Jacobs[15].

Until today it happens in many cases that communities resist against new proposals for their neighborhood, set up by planners without knowledge of the local qualities and everyday life.

The planners work mainly in order of the city with the focus on its functioning and economical development in the perspective of the future. Last decades this resulted in dissatisfaction of residents and communities that have to follow whatever is decided from the top.

For that reason more and more designers try to find their way into the community of their design area, to learn the local qualities of everyday life by the users themselves. That is why they set up workshops to work together with the residents to embed the local qualities in the bigger picture and its visions towards the city. Eventually, everybody knows that cities have to move on in their competition with other cities all over the world to attract new people and businesses, but what that means for the local level is often of a different nature.

It is the task of the urban designer to bring these competing logics together in contemporary design in order to meet in the needs of both. We cannot neglect the visions of a city towards the future and therefore not relapse into the romantic visions about great historic plazas we’ve lost to the amusement city only used by tourists. As Denise Scott Brown ever said: “Urban designers […] are generally behind the times, when they should be the most up front.” [16] Down Under The Brooklyn Elevated is a first step for me working with both flows and places and weave them together in a place of meaning for the communities of east Brooklyn, to create a wider support for the neighborhood and at the same time solve a large scale issue of green corridors and bicycle routing. It is a design approach dealing with issues of different scales trying to emphasize each other.

On the scale of east Brooklyn the design of the bike route is dealing with the high amount of car usage in the area and creating consciousness in the qualities of public transit and soft traffic, embedded in the visions of Bloomberg’s PlaNYC towards a greener, greater New York*. The provision of a bike route in the area cooperates with the goals of the Brownsville Recreation Center that make kids aware of health, sports and livability issues to work on a better future for their neighborhood.

On the scale of Livonia Square an approach has been made to the local conditions of the neighborhoods, dealing with the presence of the elevated railroad tracks and social needs and initiatives like the youth center and a place for fresh food markets.

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It is impossible to handle all current issues of the neighborhood in this one-year thesis project. For example the area of east Brooklyn is struggling with a tremendous shortage in affordable housing and is signed by crime, drugs and high unemployment rates. However, it has been a deliberate choice not to involve these issues in order to come out with a design proposal about the dichotomy between mobility and public space. However the social concerns are addressed in an implicit way, through careful programming of the surrounding buildings and locations, attention is given to this long neglected neighborhood.

As a final consideration it is essential for the contemporary city to maintain and improve a strong and reliable transportation system together with an accent on open spaces and community initiatives. It is in this way that flows and places come in contact with each other and emphasize and strengthen the social coherence of its neighborhoods to prove the street is not dead, hopefully ending the debate between Moses and Jacobs.

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references

references LIST OF NOTES [1]

terminology by Manuel Castells, first used in CASTELLS, Manuel, The Rise of the Network Society, Blackwell, Oxford, 1996.

Chapter 6 The Space of Flows, pp 407.

[2]

The High Line is a public park, designed on a remained elevated railroad track above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. Since the opening of the first of three parts, the park has been a great success for both the neighborhood and the tourists the park attracts. The High Line is maintained by Friends of the High Line, founded in 1999 by community residents in a fight for the structure’s preservation.

[3]

More information about these projects is given in StudioBrooklyn 2012, Case Studies, not published graduationthesis, K.U.Leuven. Case 8, Revaluating the Elevated.

[4]

Joan Busquets is a Spanish architect and urban designer and theorist who recieved his degree in architecture in 1969 at the Technical University of Catalonia. In 1975 he recieved his doctoral degree from teh University of Barcelona. Busquets is mainly known for its contribution in the transformation of Barcelona’s public space in the 1970s and 80s. Today Busquets is professor at the Technical University of Catalonia and first Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School od Design. Next to his professorship Joan Busquets has his own firm BAU, based in Barcelona. In 2011 Busquets recieved the Erasmus Prize for its special contribution to European culture, society or social science.

[5]

Manuel Castells is a Spanish Professor of Sociology and Director of the internet Interdisciplinary Institute at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), in Barcelona. Castells is also University Professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles and Professor Emeritus of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, berkeley. His research and theories are especially associated with information society and communication research.In the 1989 Castells introduced the concept of the ‘Space of Flows’ and published his trilogy The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture in 1996.

[6]

Sandro Marpillero is a partner of Marpillero Pollak Architects, an office he founded in New York City together with his partner Linda Pollak. His practice includes urban design and architectural projects in the United States, Italy and Japan. Currently different projects are under construction in New York City including the Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Improvement Project. Besides his profession as an architect he is adjunct associate professor at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Marpillero recieved several awards, including fellowships frol the New York Foundation for the Arts, Design Trust for Public Space, and the Fulbright Program.

[7]

StudioBrooklyn 2012. East New York, the border condition. not published graduationthesis, K.U.Leuven, p 29-35.

[8]

PlaNYC is created as a bold agenda to meet different challenges the City of New York is facing focussed on a more sustainable future for the city. The plan is set up under the Bloomberg Administration to handle the city’s growing population, aging infrastructure, climate change, and an evolving economy. Since the release in 2007 significant progress is made towards the city’s long-term goals.

In 2008 the Institute of Urban Design published The New York 2030 Notebook as an abstract of the New York/2030 symposium, an examination of PlaNYC.

[9]

PlaNYC Full Report. A Greener, Greater New York, update april 2011, Chapter on Transportation, p 94. http://nytelecom.vo.llnwd.net/o15/agencies/planyc2030/pdf/planyc_2011_planyc_full_report.pdf, last visited: 02/05/2012..

[10]

NYCPARKS, Facilities, http://www.nycgovparks.org/facilities/, last visited: 22/05/2012.

[11]

Greg ‘Jocko’ Jackson is considered by many as the unofficial mayor of Brownsville since he started the revitalization of the Brownville Recreation Center in 1997. From the start Jackson created an important shift in the social arrears of the neighborhood and started awereness for the children of healthy foods and recreation. Unfortunately Jackson suffered an apparent heart attack on may 1, 2012 at the age of 60.

Because of Jackson’s importance for the B.R.C. and for Brownsville itself Brooklyn borough’s president Marty Markowitz proposed the renaming of the center in ‘Jackson’s honor’.

[12]

Marty Markowitz came borough president of Brooklyn in January 2002. Born and raised in Crown Heights, Marty graduated from Wingate High School in 1962. He received his B.A. in Political Science after attending evening sessions at Brooklyn College from 1962 to 1970. Because of his involvement in public service for more than three decades Markowitz has enacted programs to boost civic pride, improve health, promote tourism and empower young Brooklynites besides the everyday issues of housing, neighborhood preservation and community development.

[13]

WISTON, Perry, Urban Agriculture: East New York: Asset Mapping, http://urbanomnibus.net/2009/01/urban-agriculture-east-new-york-assetmapping/, last visited: 24/05/2012.

[14]

Robert Moses, also known as New York City’s master builder, is one of the most significant in changing and planning the city during the first half of the 20th century. Nobody changed the city’s physical landscape as radical as Moses did. Building 13 bridges, 2 tunnels, miles of highways… contemporary developers look back with nostalgia to this man who got things done. Until late 1950s Moses had no restrictions in his bold infrastructural reformation untill the day Jane Jacobs crossed his path.

[15]

Jane Jacobs was a woman of the streets, observing the very life and vitality of the street which she wrote down in her 1961 book Death and life of great American cities. According to Jacobs, this is what planning should be about. No longer the broad rush, bold strokes and big plans of Moses, but understanding and appreciating the integral character of diverse neighborhoods.

[16]

SCOTT BROWN, Denise, Urban Concepts, New York, Academy Editions, 1990, p 8-20.

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LIST OF IMAGES img.01

NYCSUBWAY, BMT Fulton Street El, http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?113363, last visited 17/04/2012.

img.02

NYCSUBWAY, BMT Fulton Street El, http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?116185, last visited 17/04/2012.

img.03

NYCSUBWAY, BMT Fulton Street El, http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?113367, last visited 17/042012.

img.04

NYCSUBWAY, BMT Fulton Street El, http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?113450, last visited 17/04/2012.

img.05

StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs, September 2011

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StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs, October 2011

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StudioBrooklyn 2011-2012 photographs, October 2011

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