www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ZeXnmDZMQ

Brooklyn 1766

From where I live, I can hear cruise ships sound warnings in the night. I can see sea gulls pausing in church towers. Sometimes, I think I can even smell the sea, or at least feel its misty kiss.

But from where I live, in my apartment or on terra firma (the sidewalk outside) I cannot see from where these signs come. I cannot see the sea.

For perspective, I live a block away from the second highest point in Brooklyn and about 1.5 miles from the Bay as the crow flies. If I got on my roof, I’d view slivers of the East River, bits of New York Harbor, a slice of the Verrazano Narrows. But I don’t have access.

The view from my window.

Over the last two centuries, Brooklyn boomed. Lots of fairly flat farmland and easy access to the surrounding waterways made it appealing to the 17th century Dutch settlers (and of course the Native Indian people before them) and then the British shortly after. What was farmland and before that field and forest is now hardscape. Concrete, brick, mortar, asphalt, glass, steel. Not much permeability, and very little visibility.

New York City is surrounded by water, but you’d be hard-pressed to see it unless you crossed a bridge, made your way to the outermost edges of each borough, took a ride on the Staten Island Ferry or a water taxi. It’s easy to forget that water is all around us.

Harbor views are saved for those with roof decks and those who work or live in high-rise buildings. So, how can the rest of us enjoy the sparkly flow of the East River, the majesty of New York Harbor? A couple of ideas:

Periscopes

If there were a periscope on every block, we’d all get to enjoy a lovely liberty sunset. Check out this nice periscope from an old issue of Popular Mechanics.

Observation towers

This tower has multiple vantage points, so we could all get a piece of the view.
[Killesberg Observation Tower, Schlaich, Bergermann and Partners]

How about this dual-purpose wind turbine tower?

Look, there’s already one in Fort Greene Park. Now how do I get up there?

If we all had a view of the water around us, maybe we’d be more careful about how we treat it. Maybe we’d preserve it, and not pollute it. Maybe we’d think about what we let go down the drain, and prevent trash and chemical run-off from entering storm drains. Maybe.

Can you see the sea, a lake, or stream from where you live? Does it inspire you?

Health is one of the most wished for gifts during the holiday season, both for ourselves and others. It’s often accompanied by the wishes for prosperity and happiness, but health, it’s the one thing that in many ways influences the realization of those other two wishes. Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula that if we all just applied would ensure optimal health for everyone. There’s just too many variables; genetic differences, behavioral variations (such as physical activity and dietary habits), physical handicaps, emotional dispositions, economic irregularities, cultural tendencies, and environmental conditions.

On the other hand, our efforts to grant that wish of optimal human health to everyone is happening on some level in each of these areas. It’s happening through research at the smallest coded level of our DNA, through the expanding fields of human behavioral science, through technological inventiveness that compensates for failed or damaged human parts and processes, through political and social reforms policies, and through environmental remediation and protection efforts. But, what about our cities, our buildings, the places we live, work, play, and rest? Sure, we’ve seen advances in sustainable materials and construction processes, and there’s little criticism found in using these when it comes to creating healthier indoor air quality and reducing the amount of raw material and energy necessary for their production. Advances such as these only have a passive impact on our health though.

Not everyone though thinks this is an acceptable limitation of our built environment. Architects Arakawa and Madeline Gins have been preaching, and practicing, a radical and controversial theory that our buildings and cities should not only optimize human health, but they should also strive to make dying a thing of the past! That’s right, if Arakawa and Gins had their way with architecture – and ultimately its influence on mankind – you and I wouldn’t have to die.

Interior, Bioscleave House, Arakawa & Gins

Arakawa and Gins have built a body of work – books, buildings, paintings, and poetry – on the conviction that it is “illogical (and arguably unethical) for an ethical system that values life not to see mortality as fundamentally unethical.” Building on this, Arakawa and Gins propose that our buildings should be of an architecture of “precision and unending invention” that “function as well-tooled works of equipment that help the body organize its thoughts and actions to a greater degree than had previously been thought possible.”  For more in-depth reading on their thoughts about architecture and the human condition, go here (it’s far too much to include in this post).

Interior, Bioscleave House, Arakawa & Gins

Rather than dismiss Arakawa and Gins on what may be considered a hyperbolic proposal, it seems more valuable to challenge our established assumptions in light of their provocative call to arms against death through the use of architecture. In doing so, the way that we imagine, design, build, and use buildings could shift the relationship with our built environment from one that simply facilitates and shelters our activities toward one that actively works with us to improve and extend, but perhaps not indefinitely (who knows, though), our health and well being.

The provocation put forth by Arakawa and Gins isn’t without its share of supporting science, although be it indirectly. For example, scientists are studying how social activities in animals and insects influence brain structure. Discovering which social and environmental factors favor development in certain regions of our own brains could have radical implications for how we then spatially structure and design our environment. Research into people suffering from Alzheimer’s consistently points to increased physical activity in delaying and preventing cognitive degeneration. One study involving lab rodents demonstrated that Environmental Enrichment (EE) promotes structural and functional changes in the brain, including enhanced learning and memory performance. Another study using adult primates living in standard laboratory housing experienced structural and biochemical changes in brain regions important for cognition.

An environmental enriched room for marmoset monkeys, source.

Can we begin to examine the relationship between our own physiology and built environment through the findings in such studies? Might we begin to imagine our buildings, even our cities, as opportunities for environmental enrichment, and therefor as instruments for structuring human physiology? What we design and build does influence our very being. Architecture could then assume an integral role in improving and extending our health and well-being be?

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Download Build2Sustain’s White Paper “It’s Time To Jump Into Sustainability”.

by Andre Blackman

It is fairly understood that staying active goes a long way in reducing obesity and related diseases (diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol, etc.) as well as the emotional benefits of staying physically fit. As much as public health studies have shown the impact of simple movement, such as walking, to greatly improve health – sometimes there are other barriers to getting this done than just “get up and move”. The environment in which people live is constantly linked to important statistics such as life expectancy

Earlier this month, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to discuss health journalism and the impact of new media on the field. While getting insight and thoughts from a great group of health/medical bloggers, a story came up that highlighted the difference a group of people can make in their community. An inspirational story that once again shows the need for individual and group effectiveness in changing public health landscapes.

Three years ago, a group of moms who decided to begin walking in their community, were met with several barriers to a safe and enjoyable atmosphere. This included aggressive pets and physically unsafe walking conditions. This is not uncommon in areas that are close to or inside of cities. An individual might have just given up and decided not to walk in that area – but the collective thoughts of these determined mothers gave way to action.

Through unified efforts to bring other community members, police, parks & recreation officials and other urban planning entities into their frustration (and more importantly solutions) – the Greenfield Walking Group were catalysts to change in their environment. This course of action has led to “walkability” improvement measures in other communities.

From the article:

In Stiern Park, the broken lights have been replaced, graffiti and dogs removed. Police surveillance and maintenance efforts have increased. And now the members of the walking group have learned the numbers to call and people to talk to if further problems arise.

To me, this story of change makes it even clearer that in order for positive public health changes to happen in communities, there needs to be a sense of urgency and benefit instilled in the minds of the people.

Local. Impact.

From Time | The ‘Vacancy’ Blight: Finding New Uses for Empty Stores

Last spring, Manon Slome was walking down a street in New York City when she noticed something odd: “Store after store was closed. When stores are empty it’s like, ‘What’s going on?’ It was a feeling of siege.”

Plenty of people in America could make the same observation. Nationwide, 10% of shopping center stores sit empty, according to the real-estate analytics firm Reis. That’s the highest percentage of vacancies since 1992 — what you get when you mix a bad recession with a commercial real estate bust (thanks to years of overzealous building).

Slome is now among the people doing something about it. After her springtime walk, the museum curator started contacting building owners, suggesting they let her use their empty space for art exhibitions. She landed her first storefront in June: a former tackle shop was soon home to photographs, paintings and videos on the bad economy and — in homage to the space’s former use — fishing. Says Slome: “It’s art coming in to fill the vacuum.”

The repurposing doesn’t stop there. Around the country, property owners and managers are trying out new uses for empty stores. Spaces that used to house Radio Shacks and Linens ‘N Things now serve as libraries, auction houses, TV studios, even block-long billboards to advertise other stores and brands.

Such endeavors are not going to solve the retail real estate glut. Only a realignment of supply and demand for long-term leases will do that. But in the short-term, getting creative with commercial space keeps storefronts filled, which helps keep properties secure and community spirit intact, and may even bring in a little money for would-be landlords to offset costs like utilities, taxes and maintenance.

Consider the work of Marc Feldman at Developers Diversified Realty, an Ohio-based company that owns nearly 700 retail properties across the country. He and his 15-person team are charged with finding non-traditional uses for available spaces at a time when some 9% of the firm’s units sit idle. Among the temporary uses they’ve landed on: health clinic, campaign office, auction house, county library, swap meet and soundstage for a car commercial shoot. “It doesn’t make up for the rents those retailers were paying, but it definitely provides revenue that we wouldn’t otherwise have,” says Feldman. “Even if it’s just for a day or a week, it goes to the bottom line.”

Steve Birnhak has another idea: turning empty storefronts into billboards. The company he founded, New York-based Inwindow Outdoor, connects property owners with advertisers willing to pay for window space, conveniently located right at the eyelevel of anyone walking or driving by. The ads go from floor to ceiling and are pretty hard to miss. One recent Chicago project advertised Intel over the entire facade of a now-defunct Comp USA store.

Cities are getting in on the act, too. At the end of October, San Francisco will launch Art in Storefronts, a collaboration between the Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the San Francisco Arts Commission that will fill 20 unused storefronts in four neighborhoods with the work of local artists. The goal is twofold: to spruce up areas that have seen high vacancy rates and to help support artists in a down economy.

There may eventually be another benefit, too, says Lisa Pagan, who runs San Francisco’s business improvement districts program. “The hope is that this may help people look at individual storefronts in a more positive way,” she says. Translation: get enough art lovers to traipse up and down a certain block and maybe some of them will start thinking about what a great place it would be to rent a storefront for their business.

Full | The ‘Vacancy’ Blight: Finding New Uses for Empty Stores

Cities are _____. Cities are organic. They are like plants. Cities are like ecosystem. Cities are jungles. Cities are like bacterial colonies. Cities are fortresses against the perils of nature. Cities are machines, engines of culture and progress. Cities are like libraries, or like a living museum.  Cities are amusement parks, and on and on. The ability to describe a city, or some aspect of it, really knows no boundary.

A recent comparison of the city I found is to that of a battlesuit (as if we really need any war references to frame the development of our cities). More to my liking is this study conducted by Mark Changizi, a neurobiology expert and assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer, which suggests cities are organized like human brains.

Ever since I started my formal urban planning education way back in 2004, I’ve encountered as many metaphors and similes to describe cities as there are, well, cities. This way of understanding these places of uncertainty – strange, I’m sure coming from an architect/planner – allows us to draw associations from other systems and entities to perhaps consider how our cities may be improved in ways that better suit our needs and desires.  It is the uncertainty inherent in our cities that allows for such a broad comparison of their constituent parts, as well as their totality.

The power to visualize the city as something that it is not, but exhibits some likeness to a characteristic or process of an unrelated system or entity is an essential tool in testing ideas, new or old, for how we organize, create, use, maintain, regenerate, and ultimately define our built environment. This act of defining becomes even more complex considering that cities are already the result of layers upon layers of previous experimentation, some successful and others less so.

Framing our cities in this way, how are we to proceed? Well, there are certainly as many strategies for that as there are metaphors of the city, and it’s not as simple as starting over as the modernists would have had us believe.

There’s a Johnny Cash song (written by Wayne Kemp) that offers a compelling metaphor for cities, which I’ve written about before, here. In One Piece at a Time (1976), Cash describes a Cadillac built from parts slowly acquired over many years working in the factory. As the car’s design changed over the course of those years (1949 to 1973), so too did the corresponding components that gave the car its overall form. As a result, Cash’s Cadillac was a hybrid of all those disparate components, modified and assembled into a unique identity.

Cities are bit different though, and they can never be fully described by any one metaphor or simile. Instead, we need all of them. Like Cash’s Cadillac, cities can be conceptualized by many comparisons that are modified, tested, and assembled over time. Cities like this will not look exactly like the utopian dream machines on the drawing boards, but more like the ever-adapting psychobilly assemblages they really are.

So, what different, cobbled-together ways is your city like?