Pressure is mounting to halt the national tide of foreclosures. New York’s housing advocates are working at the frontlines to keep people in their homes and to ensure that solutions currently being generated at the city and state level respond to New York’s unique housing and neighborhood needs.

A MAS Planning Center panel discussion moderated by Eva Hanhardt of the Pratt Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment late last year, tapped the insights of Audrey Waysee, Center for New York City Neighborhoods; Josh Zinner, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project; Mark Winston-Griffith, Drum Major Institute; Patricia Kerr, Neighborhood Housing Services, Jamaica;and Ingrid Gould Ellen, Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, to confront the question: how do we stabilize neighborhoods experiencing high rates of foreclosure? Continue Reading>>

Click on the play icon in the window above to watch the slideshow of the Flatbush Frolic 2008 – a neighborhood street festival organized annually by the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC). MAS kicked-off its Imagine Flatbush 2030 (IF2030) initiative at last year’s frolic, and this year we distributed information about this year-long community visioning project to plan for a more sustainable Flatbush to festival-goers.

On Sunday, September 14th, MAS will join local vendors and community groups at the Flatbush Frolic — a neighborhood street festival organized annually by the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC). As part of the Imagine Flatbush 2030 (IF2030) initiative, MAS will come full circle, distributing information on the year-long process that kicked off last September.

MAS launched IF2030 at last year’s Frolic by soliciting video responses from local residents about what mattered to them in their neighborhood. The enthusiastic response propelled MAS’ partnership with FDC, and we continued the dialogue over the course of the year with a series of community workshops hosted at Brooklyn College. Continue Reading>>

While the federal government has sat on the sidelines, local government has provided true leadership in response to global climate change in the United States. Last year, New York City joined a small but growing list of American municipalities such as Boston, Los Angeles, and Seattle in aligning planning and development goals with ambitions to reduce carbon emissions.

Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC2030 was designed to lay the groundwork for achieving and maintaining affordable housing, open space, comprehensive public transportation, and reliable energy, as well as clean air, water, and land. A year has passed and PlaNYC has seen both successes and failures. MAS set about this past year to address what we perceived to be a critical issue that is nonetheless often overlooked: sustainability planning is too important to be left solely to the experts. Continue Reading>>

Imagine Flatbush 2030
Click on the play icon at right to begin watching the movie.

Click here to learn more about the Imagine Flatbush 2030 initiative.

Thursday, January 24, 6:00 p.m., at the Brooklyn College Student Center

Participants will work to finalize the goals and priorities discussed at the last workshop. Refreshments and home work room for school-aged children will be available. If you live in Flatbush, join us! E-mail or call Sideya Sherman on 212-935-3960 to RSVP. More details.

Watch the New Movie

Click on the play icon below to watch a new MAS short movie describing the goals of Imagine Flatbush 2030 and featuring footage of the first of the project’s workshops.

Imagine Flatbush 2030 from MAS on Vimeo.

Come and participate in a special dialogue about the future of Flatbush. The Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC) and the Municipal Art Society (MAS) are inviting you to take part in Imagine Flatbush 2030 — a community visioning and dialogue process—designed to get you together with other Flatbush community members to collectively create a more sustainable neighborhood. If you care about the environment, community health, protecting diversity, ensuring affordable housing and a whole host of other community issues, this is the meeting for you! Continue Reading>>

The Mayor’s PlaNYC2030 is a citywide sustainability agenda that lays the groundwork for achieving and maintaining affordable housing, open space, good transportation, clean air, water, and land and reliable energy. It affords an enormous opportunity to rethink the development of the city.

As part of Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York, MAS will work with the residents, business owners, and civic leaders of Flatbush, Brooklyn, with the partnership of the Flatbush Development Corporation, to assist in creating neighborhood sustainability goals and tools to measure progress toward consensus-based goals. Continue Reading>>

Imagine Flatbush 2030 kicked off at Temple Beth Emeth in Flatbush, Brooklyn, on November 19, with a preliminary stakeholders’ meeting of 50 groups.

Following a discussion of the meaning of neighborhood sustainability, the Mayor’s PlaNYC 2030, and why neighborhoods need to create their own agendas to work in tandem with this plan, workshop attendees formed groups to talk with their neighbors about both things they cherished about Flatbush and things they perceived as challenges. A second workshop on December 12 focused on collectively identifying sustainability goals for the neighborhood. Continue Reading>>