Oftentimes, massive transportation projects like bridges and highways can do more harm to a city than good. While they may bring efficiencies in the movement of people and resources, they can also end up marring a city permanently, dividing neighborhoods and bringing few quality of life improvements for residents. In contrast, some projects, like New York […]
Tag Archives: Ecology
10 Best Cities for Urban Forests
Urban Forests seem like a contradiction in term. In our minds urban settlements and forests stand far apart at the opposite end of a spectrum. So how can they be brought together in support of each other? Apparently, as cities grow hotter and spew more carbon into the atmosphere the more trees a city needs, a forest […]
Grammar of Habitat: Can we apply Muir Webs to Development and Planning?
“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.” – John Muir Expanding on this quote, Eric Sanderson, the author and lead landscape ecologist behind the Mannahatta project, helped develop an ecosystem identification […]
So, you want to build a new civilization? 50 DIY tools to help you build your perfect [insert place/thing here]
In 2011, I watched an epic TED Talk video, given by physicist Marcin Jakubowski about his team’s “open-sourced blueprints for civilization.” No, it has nothing to do with a political system, the string theory, a new religion, or even a stellar community-based plan. Rather he tried to break down modern civilization into 50 objects: 50 […]
Creative Little Garden – East Village, NY
Recently I was in the East Village and stumbled upon this beautiful little garden, tucked away between two five story buildings on East 6th Street (530 East 6 Street). This little slice of paradise is aptly named Creative Little Garden. The garden is planted with ornamental trees and shrubs with several small alcoves where people were sitting […]
Harvard Graduates Mapping Public Toilets in Mumbai Slums.
In a recent NY Times, article, Mapping Toilets in a Mumbai Slums Yields Unexpected Results (India Talk – July22, 2012), Samuel Lowenberg reported about a class of Harvard graduates in public health, mapping public toilets in a Mumbai slum called Cheetah camp. I suspect this isn’t exactly what our young overachievers had in mind when they selected […]
EVENT: Wild Urban Plants, Wed. 7/18, 7:00pm
The Gowanus Canal Conservancy has been hosting a Wednesday Night Lecture Series over the last couple of months. Tonight’s event, and the final of the series, is entitled Wild Urban Plants. The lecture will be given at the 61 Local mezzanine, at 61 Bergen Street, Brooklyn. Admission is $5 or free if you renew or […]
Organic Waste Management for Apartment Buildings
Per capita, the United States is one of the biggest waste generators in the world. We throw out almost 1,700 pounds of garbage per person, per year. For every 10 pounds of garbage we throw away per person, almost 4 of those pounds are made up of organic waste: things like egg shells, banana peels, […]
The Rehabilitation of Prall’s Island
Prall’s Island (left) from Saw Mill Creek. Factory in background is on the New Jersey side of the Kill Van Kull. The West Shore of Staten Island seems a world away from the New York City most of us inhabit every day. Factories, power lines, and tug boats are the only vertical relief from the […]
