Results tagged “janejacobs”

After years of spot erosion accumulating on Field 5 of Robert Moses State Park, the beach's deterioration has been so severe this spring that half of the popular Babylon site and its parking area are going to be closed down for the summer. Off-shore storms and possibly the ghost of Jane Jacobs have left the beach in a state where at high tide, the surf goes right up to the dunes, which have now been replaced by an eight-foot cliff. A state parks director told Newsday, "The surf cut into the dunes and at high tide there is no beach for people to put their blankets on. This is the worst erosion at that section of Robert Moses that we have seen since at least two decades." Field 5 can usually play host to up to 10,000 sunbathers and its parking lot holds 1,200 spaces. In order to accommodate, Field 4 has begun taking on some of its lifeguards and will now be open on Thursdays and Fridays starting in July. Just last summer the Suffolk park celebrated its 100th anniversary.

The engines fueling Jane Jacobs' legacy are at full throttle, with the Municipal Art Society's new exhibition, titled "Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York." The show, opening this week at the Urban Center Galleries, delves into how today's (and tomorrow's) city fits into Jacobs' ideas and also examines how the public can draw on her values, given the major developments and rezoning now in progress.

When Omar Freilla founded Green Worker Cooperatives, an incubator for eco-friendly worker coops, he set the initial goal of $700,000. “We weren’t even sure how we were going to raise that much,” he said in a recent telephone call. Almost four years later, the organization has raised well beyond their initial goal, thanks to RSF Social Finance and numerous local churches.

The Rockefeller Foundation, which played a role in funding Jane Jacobs's pioneering research and writing 50 years ago, will now support her legacy by issuing two annual award grants in her honor. According to the NY Sun, one recipient will have made a lifetime contribution to urban design or theory, specifically in New York City, and the other will be on the cusp of a promising career. Each award is worth $200,000.

Development along the Hudson isn't letting up anytime soon. Now that Hudson River Park construction is well underway (and completed in some parts), proposals are being floated for refurbishing the hulking 14-acre Pier 40 terminal.

Galas make us kind of nervous, but we attended this week's Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation dinner at Balthazar honoring the work and life of Jane Jacobs to hear what more could be said about the revered author and activist.

-- And Asssscat is celebrating their 10th Anniversary at Irving Plaza tonight. If you go, let us know how it was.

Plans are in the works to name all or part of Bleecker Playground after the steely activist and mother of three who helped lay the groundwork for New Urbanism. Earlier this week, Community Board 2 discussed the tribute to Jane Jacobs, who died last April at 89. It's unclear whether the naming will cover the playground, the sitting area and the pathway from Hudson to Bleecker, or just the sitting area and pathway. Some residents don't want the actual playground renamed. They say it could endanger funds for a restoration project and kids will be confused if it suddenly were known by a different name.

Today's NY Times article about the current shaping of Hudson River Park and how it was inspired by the failed Westway project. Westway would have meant a landfill extension into the Hudson along the West Side Highway much like Battery Park City (and with its mix of residential and commercial space) - and the highway would have been built underground, as the highway was crumbling. New York Voices has a good site explaining it, and opposition grew because some people thought it might be the Lower Manhattan Expressway - the battle between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs - on the West Side. An Talk of the Town piece from 2004 revisited the project:

[Craig] Whitaker [a Westway planner] talked about some of the places where the city has had the wisdom to run highways under riverfront esplanades—the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, Carl Schurz Park. “We thought New Yorkers would never accept sixty-five thousand cars passing daily between them and the waterfront,” he said. He nodded toward the six lanes of hurtling cars and trucks just outside the Pier 40 lobby. “But that’s what we’ve got out here. It was a tragedy for the city."

Houstonist reports on cross-dressing thieves and undressing educators this week. A Peeping Tom defends himself with a papaya and an outraged onlooker asks Ken Lay, "TATER TOTS OR FRIES?" Also, FEMA wants it's money back.

Jane Jacobs' death will be talked about for a while, because issues she questioned continue to be relevant today, and we expect many articles about her and influence to come. But, for now, here are a couple links on Jane Jacobs - and let us know about more:

Jane Jacobs, the urban activist whose influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities reshaped thinking about urban communities, died overnight in Toronto. Jacobs, who lived in Canada since 1968, faced down NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, arguably the most powerful man in the city at the time, in the 1960s, most famously stopping an expressway from being constructed downtown.

Jonny Diamond, The L Magazine