Street Corner Campaign Stop

A campaign stop on a street corner is a politician's opportunity to connect with voters by speaking directly to them. When you draw a crowd, people walking by tend to stop to see what is happening. It is also an opportunity to produce images for campaign material, so the backdrop can make a difference in choosing the right corner.

In the Norwood neighborhood in The Bronx, one street corner stands out after a couple campaign stops:

It was great to be out in Norwood this morning with our dedicated team of volunteers! Looking forward to many more days like this as we work our way through every corner of our district. pic.twitter.com/Z0vRFIb00x

— Jessica Haller for NYC Council 2021 (@JessicaHaller) August 21, 2020

The mural creates a distinctive, identifiable place, while its bright colors lend positive energy to the scene. The wall without building entrances, combined with a relatively wide sidewalk, make it function well for drawing in a crowd to listen without blocking anyone.

Sitting on Public Stairs

They are a place to rest, to wait for someone you're meeting, to relax and watch the world go by. On a thriving city street, large public stairs are naturally filled with sitting people.

Steps at the New York Public Library https://maps.app.goo.gl/2mDZYiMqBh4AhmRH9

Steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art https://maps.app.goo.gl/AUwfbgf6ENYpHErr5 

So when I see an image of a large staircase on a busy street with nobody sitting on it, something is wrong with the picture:

Going Back to Work

Sure, there was the ridiculous "New York Is Dead Forever" article that came out this week everybody is hating on twitter, but Richard Florida is supposed to be an urban planning expert that people take seriously. So it was odd to see him announcing the demise of Midtown Manhattan:

1. Rebuilding the Central Business District (CBD):
My view is that the central business district like you see in Manhattan—the financial district, the Mid-Town Headquarters District—is a relic of the past. It’s kind of the last echo of the industrial age.

— Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida) August 16, 2020

It's hard to see what Florida could think was "industrial age" about Midtown Manhattan. Midtown was the epitome of the age of FIRE (Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate). Its development was New York's coming of age as a post-industrial city. 

2. There is no reason that hundreds of thousands and millions of people need to get in cars and trains and busses and subways and commute a half hour, 45 minutes, an hour, 90 minutes each way to go to work

— Richard Florida (@Richard_Florida) August 16, 2020

There has long been a reason that so many people have continued to commute into Manhattan to work: it is a center of specialized work that draws on the entire metropolis to assemble teams with the necessary skill sets. Additional workers are drawn in by relatively higher wages to provide support services. As long as teamwork for specialized work relies on collaborative work spaces, and the workers have living preferences and family circumstances that disperse them across the metropolis, central locations with strong transportation access will continue to draw commuters.

An Alleyway and the Joker Stairs

In a dank alleyway, far beneath the metropolitan skyscrapers, there exists a temporal loop. A rich couple, having taken an ill-advised shortcut from the theatre to reality, are shot dead over and over, each time in slightly different variations but always with the same outcome.

Darran Anderson, Imaginary Cities

On Halloween, I watched the new Joker movie at a cinema in The Bronx. There has been a lot of discussion locally about the influx of tourists to "the Joker stairs," but as an urban planner, I would have been scrutinizing the details of the newest version of Gotham City anyway. As I noted in a review of Imaginary Cities, the variations of Gotham over time show changes in the fears lurking in the dark places of our collective consciousness.

Joker almost entirely abandons any effort at developing a fictional Gotham City. With almost no alterations, it is unmistakably New York City. More precisely, it is the mythos of the "bad old days" of New York in the 1970s and 80s, complete with the 1981 garbage strike. Stylistically, it draws visual and acting cues from Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), a reference that is directly reinforced by Robert De Niro's character in the film. The details in the streetscape that were altered to recreate the appearance of New York in 1981, and even those that were missed, can be informative. The tagging on the subway and the porn titles on the theater marquees (channeling the Times Square's era of infamy) keep the sense of disorder palpable. Choosing this period was an effective way to capture the grit that has always defined Gotham in the comics and movies, something that has become more difficult as cities have been largely rebuilt into glossier places that are much safer. More importantly, it captures current anxieties about going back to the "bad old days."

The only significant real fictional change to New York's built form in this movie was the insertion of an alley into the old Deuce. Although it appears much of this may actually have been filmed at locations in Jersey City and Newark (places where commercial strips have not been as extensively redeveloped), there is no doubt this was a recreation of 42nd Street in the Time Square area. New York is not a city of alleyways, but the filmmakers revised the infamous streetscape of porn theaters to include one. As usual in dark urban fiction, an alley is a residual space where garbage collects and the retreating effects of society no longer reach. The opening sequence of the movie concludes in this lawless Gotham locale; we see the violent nature of this city as we get to know Arthur Fleck as a helpless victim before he transforms into the Joker. It is this attack that sets in motion the series of events that send Arthur spiraling out of control.

Arthur Fleck lying in the alley after he was attacked

Copyright Warner Bros.

Priority Sign Repair

On September 17th, the New York Post ran a story about an overhead bus lane sign that was covered in chewing gum. The sign had gradually been accumulating gum for years, but the media attention soon brought this to an end (at least for the moment).

Mayor Bill de Blasio was asked about the sign two days later. Then, sometime before the morning of September 23rd, a new sign was already installed.

Depending on whether DOT started processing a work order for the sign on the day of the initial news story, or the day the when the Mayor was asked about it, the replacement took a total of only 3-5 calendar days. With the weekend, that was a 1-3 business day response.

That is faster than stop signs are replaced in my neighborhood when somebody reports that a car knocked them down.

Please replace stop sign @NYC_DOT. Already > than 3 business days allowed by law. Thanks.
C1-1-1312649621
Cc @AndrewCohenNYC @MMViverito pic.twitter.com/1nTCHLEkSg

— Urban Residue (@urbanresidue) October 6, 2016

Programmed Out

Not long ago, I was at an event where a wealthy developer spoke for a few minutes to a group responsible for making public improvements in a local community. He proudly described how he had worked to "program every linear foot to make sure there was no space available for street vendors." This was expressed as though it was a self-evident truth that vendors along the curb would be a blight on the neighborhood.

I was horrified. The prospect of such complete design that it admitted no emergent activities sounded rigid and dull. Worse, it expressed a disdain toward the lower-income entrepreneurs whose daily labor anchors a vibrant street life in busy neighborhoods. While it is true that poorly regulated street vendors do sometimes contribute to sidewalk congestion in the densest areas, they also meet needs for cost and convenience that will surely be lacking in this man's new development.

I had little doubt that the intent of the design is to keep out both the working class businesses and the customers who would be attracted by their cost and convenience. This developer also mentioned racing his sail boat, and he was clearly building a neighborhood for the sort of people who can afford a yacht to go out sailing like him.

It is a vision of luxury that relies on exclusion for its sense of validation. It is a vision we should reject for New York City.

Chronicles of Stolen Space - Pedestrianized Pine Street

This is a designated pedestrian street in Lower Manhattan

The quality of our public spaces in New York City is so much worse than they should be. By all appearances, this is due to a negligent municipal government that has failed to shoulder its responsibilities to safeguard these spaces for public use.

Take for example the case of a pedestrianized block of Pine Street between South and Front Streets. This street was pedestrianized in 1978, yet in recent memory, it has increasingly been used for car parking. It seems that the permission for "service vehicles," clearly intended originally to allow for garbage pickup, provided a foothold for parcel services to use the street for their parking needs. Gradually, others followed suit until the whole space has now become filled with cars.

Two Sides of the Same Woods

On one side of the road, you have tourists reading plaques about trees. On the other, gay men circle the woods looking for potential hookups. The Bronx River Forest is one of the few remaining sections of the great woodland that once covered the New York region. While we tend to consider the plants and animals that populate wooded areas like this as "wild," this landscape is highly shaped by the physical interventions and social activities of humans. It is easy to overlook how much human action can shape the "natural" environment, but the differences created by separate jurisdictional control over trails winding through the woods along the Bronx River on each side of Allerton Avenue create a stark contrast.

People duck under a fallen tree (covered in poison ivy) on the Blue Trail north of 204th Street in the Bronx Forest managed by the Department of Parks and Recreation

Tourists stop along the trail in the Thain Family Forest in the New York Botanical Garden to read facts about the trees 

South of Allerton Avenue, the Bronx River flows through the New York Botanical Garden. Since the 1890s, this land has been City parkland, part of Bronx Park, which is administered by a private institution specifically charged with the development and maintenance of a great living museum. To the north, the parkland is under conventional control of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

There are some physical differences in terrain between the two sections. To the north, the river passes through a floodplain. After flowing into the garden, it quickly drops into a ravine with some moderately steep slopes down to the river. Nonetheless, the main distinctions between these two sections is how the land is managed and access is controlled.

The Performance on a Dirty Corner

There was no lack of spectators for the performance down on the corner. Many even returned to watch the show on its second and third days. "I've lived here for 30 years," or "I've lived here for 40 years," several of them stopped to say, "and I'm so glad you're doing this."

Creating a mural is a public performance. Of course, the finished artwork is a permanent installation, but the process of transforming a space in the middle of daily street life becomes performance art in its own right.

Watching @BigeyesWorld work on the Norwood mural, you realize this type of project is largely performance art. The community is spectators enjoying the show as the piece progresses. pic.twitter.com/MNa82Ao7li

— Urban Residue (@urbanresidue) September 2, 2018

East 207th Street and Bainbridge Avenue has always been an unremarkable and rather dirty corner.  The side of the bodega is a blank wall that consistently attracted juvenile tagging, which local anti-graffiti group Norwood Against Graffiti (NAG) routinely rolled over with fresh paint, seemingly refreshing the canvas for the next set of tags. Meanwhile, the sidewalk and tree pits had long accumulated trash. A couple local characters spend their afternoons sitting on the corner with a drink in hand. It was the leftover backside of a small commercial building, a little place that had mostly been abandoned for decades. It was a place that people shuffled through, dulled by the mundane ugliness.



While most people were resigned to walking by the griminess on this corner as an immutable fact of life, something they had effectively tuned out, Elisabeth von Uhl saw the possibility of creating a place that had more to contribute to the community. It took a few years of effort and a couple false starts, but with some perseverance and persuasion, she eventually partnered with ArtBridge and secured funding from Councilmember Andrew Cohen. ArtBridge brought in artist Laura Alvarez who designed and painted the mural.

The Mountaindale General Store

Mountaindale isn't really a place. At least, it's not anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time.



When I was a child, there was a little store with a gas pump at the intersection of a couple quiet country roads. For me, it was a sort of landmark; we turned at the store, went past the old, red, one-room schoolhouse, and then we were at Grandma's house. A few times my grandmother took me on a quick errand to get milk or butter at the Mountaindale General Store, although we usually went into the small nearby town of North Plains or further to Cornelius or Hillsboro for any more significant shopping. My memory of the Mountaindale General Store is not very clear, but in my imagination it was a creaky old wooden affair with a few creaky old locals hanging out inside.

Appropriately, during the store's waning years, it served as a shooting location for an episode of some forgotten TV show titled Nowhere Man. I never watched it, but the reviews on IMDb are quite positive. Mountaindale played the role of a Southern town with a population of 37.  "Is this the whole town?" the protagonist asks after getting off the bus. The store was the last remnant of Mountaindale to close.

Work in Progress

Sometimes it is difficult to understand why renderings for new buildings create concerns that could be easily avoided. Sometimes it's hard not to jump to conclusions, but those often don't stand up under scrutiny. The use of these images is relatively new, so hopefully they are a work in progress.

Take this example for a new building in The Bronx:

This rendering may actually be more accurate than most. The weedy overgrowth in the tree pits and below the retaining wall, as well as some tagging on the wall have all been retained.  But there are a number of inaccuracies. 

Rainy Spaces

The city is different on rainy days, sometimes in surprising ways we don't always notice. Light and shadows change their shape. Subway stairs become even more congested than usual as passengers break stride to fight with their umbrellas. Outdoor seating empties out and the doorways in public buildings bustle a bit more.

On first glance, the empty seats in public plazas make these public spaces appear lifeless. It may seem their functions have all been suspended, awaiting the return of better weather. Plazas probably look like fairweather places.

But if you stop for a moment, as you stand in the rain you will see many plazas still serve some use. More often than not, the spaces they form cut corners off the street grid. For everyone rushing to get out of the rain, the plaza is the direct route. Steady streams of fast moving pedestrians course through the plazas.

Of course, as they grip their umbrellas, trying to keep the wind from tearing them inside out, most people hardly notice the shortcut afforded by these little public spaces. They may also be unaware of the effect of the paved surfaces underfoot. Whether they notice or not, the higher quality pavers or flagstones in the plazas provide relief from the drabness of the gray concrete sidewalks, grown darker from soaking in the rain.

On rainy days, plazas do not serve their usual purpose as places to rest or spend time with others. Their aspect changes, but they remain important spaces serving the needs of the public.

Dreams for Abandoned Bathrooms

New York City has a general lack of public restrooms. Our public space was not always so harsh; parks were once much more generously equipped with comfort stations. Many of them became unfortunate casualties of hard times and crime decades ago, and their public service has been slow to return as the City's fortunes have improved. While many of them should be returned to public use, or replaced with modern facilities, to meet public needs, some of them were poorly planned and located in areas with little activity.

On Mosholu Parkway, below the side of Jerome Avenue, in the shadow of the elevated 4 train, there stands an abandoned comfort station that has poor prospects as public restrooms due to a site that has low foot traffic and limited visibility. The roof and odd yard beside it are frequent victims of dumping. Much of the building is sealed, but one of the restrooms is enclosed with an open-air gate. The space appears to be secured for use as storage, although there is no evidence anything has been stored here for quite some time.

A photo posted by Urban Residue (@urban_residue) on Dec 17, 2016 at 10:10pm PST

Into the Dead End

There is a path to nowhere along the Bronx River. It is a place I investigate from time to time, keenly aware that I tread there only due to my male privilege.

A wide, well constructed walkway passes under an arch of the Gun Hill Road bridge. After passing through the arch, it becomes narrower. It is somewhat overgrown, but well worn. It runs along the base of the retaining wall supporting the street above, which follows the bend in the river. When it reaches Bronx Boulevard, the retaining wall for the street above creates a dead end. I have never understood the purpose of this engineered walkway.

Accidental Playspace between the Benches

When kids run and play, they like to experience different types of spaces. One particular place where I see kids playing year after year forms a type of space I rarely see in playground design. There is a gap between the backs of the benches facing in different direction, which looks at first like wasted, dead space. The kids really enjoy running through the series of long, narrow channels formed by these benches.

When the Wealthy Steal Public Space

When the City allows a developer to construct a larger building in exchange for public space, you expect there to be a real benefit to the public. At the very least, you would expect the space to be minimally usable by the public. Nevertheless, at the Millenium Hilton Hotel, a "privately owned public space" is nothing more than a parking lot outside the hotel's garage, and it uses the public sidewalk as its driveway. As we will see, this is just a small part of a larger pattern of wealthy business owners padding their profits by stealing from the masses in New York City.

Of course, the privately owned public space at the Millenium Hilton is nothing short of a swindle. No space has been provided to ease pedestrian circulation. Instead, pedestrians remain confined to the original sidewalk, where they now have to contend with cars driving back and forth. Meanwhile, the private interests are able to eek out even more profit through the illicit revenue-generating use of this space.

There are unintended consequences, and there is negligence. It is not clear if this case quite crosses the line, but the City could clearly do much more to protect the public's interest in this property.

Under the Bridge: Skate Park

Over the weekend, I passed by the skate park under the Alexander Hamilton Bridge again. It is a great space in an otherwise derelict part of Highbridge Park.

There is nothing novel, of course, about using residual space below a bridge as a skate park. I have memories from my youth decades ago of the skate park under the Burnside Bridge. Nearer by, the Brooklyn Banks famously occupied an area below the Brooklyn Bridge before New York City closed it for a bridge rehabilitation project.

A solution doesn't have to be original to be effective. Areas below bridges generally remain difficult spaces: generally unattractive for most uses by accessible enough to draw undesirable activities. Meanwhile, cities typically lack enough places for their youths to skate. This area in Highbridge Park had been somewhat desolate and trash-filled before the New York State Department of Transportation disrupted it to rebuild ramps for the Alexander Hamilton Bridge. In the process, they created New York City's largest skate park. It has been refreshing to see the improvement to this part of the park and the opportunities it provides to the skaters who drop in here.

Lunchtime Around a Construction Site

Construction in an area often illustrates opportunities and shortcomings of a place. Just keep an eye on how the workers use the area during their breaks.

Since they're less worried about getting their work clothes dirty, they're not bashful about finding comfortable places to sit when there aren't proper benches around. Their seating choices largely illustrate locations where there could be a general interest in sitting, since the desire to watch the crowds during lunch is such a broadly shared human interest. The street furniture they use can also suggest ways these features might be designed differently to deliberately incorporate seating in ways that could be both comfortable and appropriate for long-term maintenance.

The activity these workers bring can also start to activate a street in the interim before new buildings open. Class tensions surface at times between the working-class laborers and affluent residents and workers who usually populate areas with new construction. It is probably too optimistic to hope, but there may be potential for change by exposing these tensions. If nothing else, I find it positive to see the working class claiming some public ownership, if only temporarily, in parts of the city they increasingly can't afford.

Imaginary Cities

I have seen many imaginary cities.
I live with a three-year-old.

Between bursts of "Daddy! DADDY! Look at my wall!" and "Daddy, I have surprise for you," I found time to read Darran Anderson's fascinating book Imaginary Cities.

Don't let the voluminous endnotes fool you; Imaginary Cities is not an academic book. It's more like the delirium of an academic. Just as imaginations are limitless, so is the potential material for this ambitious project. Anderson jumps from reference to reference, none ever fully described or explained. Rather than imposing a linear narrative, instead of situating works and expounding on their significance, Anderson drifts from one vision to the next. It is surprising, and somewhat daring on the part of both the author and the publisher Influx Press to print a book dedicated to material of such visual nature without a single image. The images are supplied by the reader's imagination. Reading this book can feel in turn dizzying, frustrating, exhilarating, incomplete, and ultimately inspiring.

Gotham City
The discussion of Batman's Gotham City is Imaginary Cities at its height. Consider the way Anderson introduces the story and locale that have been retold many times in the making of a modern mythology:

In a dank alleyway, far beneath the metropolitan skyscrapers, there exists a temporal loop. A rich couple, having taken an ill-advised shortcut from the theatre to reality, are shot dead over and over, each time in slightly different variations but always with the same outcome.
p. 374

Rendering by Ferris

source: http://architecturemuseum.blogspot.com

"Gotham is Ferris gone wrong,
or perhaps Ferris gone according to plan."

This is an excellent writing style. It is both clever and appealing to frame the constant retelling and adaptation of the story as a temporal loop. Yet this is a point where I wish Anderson had delved a little deeper. The variations differ because our cities have changed over time. The unchanging outcome becomes a fixed point for navigating a shifting world.

There is meaning in the dark spaces of Gotham City. Anderson recognizes they are more than mere backdrop, they are a fundamental part of the story:

"Batman is a critique of failed urban planning and empathy. Alleyways have dead-ends as traps for the unwary. Abandoned buildings are warrens for criminals. A dark sanctimonious fear of rookeries and today's housing estates, projects and slums as inhuman breeding grounds, prevails." (p. 377)

Again, following the variations through versions over time would show differences in what lurks in the dark as some of our boogiemen have come and gone.

Referring to architectural illustrator Hugh Ferris, Anderson suggests, "Gotham is Ferris gone wrong, or perhaps Ferris gone according to plan." (p. 379) Batman has traditionally been grounded in a dark Victorian esthetic overlaid precisely with a Ferris image of the metropolis. Personally, I find this darkness fascinating and appealing; that is the Gotham City I prefer. I am more drawn to scenes filmed on Lower Wacker in Chicago in "Batman Begins" (2005) than to the increasingly glass-clad Manhattan of "The Dark Knight Rises" (2012). Neither have the palpable anxiety of getting mugged on an urban street that "Batman" (1989) held in common with its audiences' own experiences during the 1980s. As street crime still continues to drop, cities increasingly gentrify with glossy new buildings, and the police militarize, Ferris may continue to fade in the image of Gotham City. This leaves the question of what fixed points remain from the Batman saga as landmarks for our collective consciousness.

Tear Down This Fence

40th Street at Bryant Park

A couple weeks ago, I noticed something while walking by Bryant Park. There were people hanging out on 40th Street. That was different. It took a moment to realize what had changed. The fence was gone.

Initially, I thought it was a deliberate decision to activate the edge of the park. The Parks Commissioner had spoken about integrating parks better with their surrounding streets:

Look at the context surrounding parks. Rethink the edge of each park. "We want to embrace the surroundings." @mitchell_silver #PrattPresents

— Pratt Institute (@PrattInstitute) November 12, 2014

@urbanresidue @PrattInstitute. I believe @bryantparknyc removed fence for repair and restoration.

— Mitchell Silver (@mitchell_silver) July 3, 2015

It turns out the fence was only temporarily removed while it is being restored:

What happened to the fence around Bryant Park? - New York Business Journal - http://t.co/gbpN6WoqYZ

— Mitchell Silver (@mitchell_silver) July 9, 2015

This seems unfortunate. Each time I walk by the park, I see people using the walls as an enjoyable space that improves the sociability of the streets. On 40th Street, which has typically looked more like a service alley than an enjoyable place, the open park makes the sidewalk a much more enjoyable place. Meanwhile, on busy 42nd Street, the walls are providing a more comfortable place for people to stop for a moment or wait while meeting their friends.