Museum of the City of New York
Bloomberg unveils those tiny, tiny Manhattan apartments
"Some people want big apartments, and some people just don't," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg this morning, as he announced the winner of a competition to house people for whom space is most certainly not a priority. More
(4)'The South Bronx is everywhere': Lessons from an urban apocalypse
“It was not unusual for me to get one of our kids running through a settlement house with a note saying ‘out by 3 p.m.,’ said Harry De Rienzo, of his time as a housing activist in 1970s Hunts Point. “What that meant was that the buildings were going to be torched at 3 p.m. and everybody had to get their stuff and get out.” More
(1)A crosstown East River inlet, a Hell Gate estuary and other waterfront ideas
On Tuesday evening, a rosy-cheeked 23-year-old Syracuse University grad student named Joseph Wood won first prize in a competition designed to spark conversation about how to transform the derelict stretch of East Side esplanade running from 60th Street to 125th Street into something more. More
(1)Transportation wonks call for an extension of Sadik-Khanism after Bloomberg, still want congestion pricing
“We can’t lose this momentum in two years when there’s a new mayor,” Schwartz said. “We’ve got to keep it going, so it’s important for all of you to know that lesson.”
(1)Divided and conquered: Museum of the City of New York reveals how lines on paper created the Manhattan we inhabit
At the exhibit’s center is one of the three original copies of the nearly nine-foot-long map of the Commissioners’ Plan, its size and detail a measure of the ambition it represented. Generations of canny politicians, imperious real-estate developers, and visionary architects have tried to implement changes or carve out exceptions to its rule, yet the Manhattan this map depicts is recognizable to us today: a somewhat claustrophobic, undifferentiated mass of right angles that cedes almost nothing to topography or the human need for variety.
Is the revenue-generating park a good thing? Commissioner Benepe says it 'depends on who's in charge'
“The risk ... is if you become dependent on that revenue, then you start to exploit the parks as much as you can for that revenue, because that’s your basement … I think the risk is that if a lot of our budget is dependent on how much revenue we bring in, that will start to turn the parks into a cash cow. We have a little bit of that now. We have some parks where revenue stays in the parks. As a long-term model it’s hard to say." More
Monk and Oda smash cultures together, play samurai jazz
“Without listening to Do Enka,” said Japanese ambassador and consul general Shinichi Nishimiya, “I don’t think I understood what it was going to be like.”
The performance didn't initially do much to dispel the confusion. The lights dimmed, and speakers on the stage played the first strains of a traditional Japanese melody, similar to “Itsuki’s Lullaby." Over the calm and quiet music, to the palpable surprise of many patrons, came a crashing and growling introduction by a voice ripped from the soundtrack of a blaxploitation film. More
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