We expect that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Gowanus Canal Superfund designation will create the comprehensive clean up plan this polluted waterway so desperately needs. We believe the Gowanus area has great potential as a thriving manufacturing and arts district.

The city has pledged to support the EPA’s clean up efforts. MAS looks forward to working with the city on developing a plan for the Gowanus area that nurtures and safeguards existing businesses and creates space for new industries and sorely needed job growth.

Dr. Dickson Despommier, panelist at the upcoming 2nd Annual Jane Jacobs Forum Re-Imagining New York: Designing Urban Farms to Feed our City, recently spoke to Tamara Coombs of MAS about why he sees urban “vertical farms” as key to the future, not just of cities, but of the planet.

Ten years ago, Columbia University microbiology professor Despommier began investigating different approaches to agriculture that would feed the additional 3 billion people that are estimated to be born in the next 50 years. This research project, which he conducted with the help of his students, has grown into a popular website The Vertical Farm Project, an op-ed in The New York Times and a new book coming out next year, and garnered attention from municipalities (Newark, NJ), architecture and engineering companies, and the Obama administration along the way. Continue Reading>>

Ahead of the upcoming 2nd Annual Jane Jacobs Forum — which encourages New Yorkers to re-imagine their city with urban farms, MAS’ Tamara Coombs and forum panelist and greenhouse director at Gotham Greens Jennifer Nelkin, discussed the prospects of developing commercial-scale agriculture in New York City and how to grow fresh produce at the South Pole.

Join us at the Jane Jacobs Forum on November 3 to delve into the economic development and urban design implications of the fundamental question: Can New York, a city with a growing population and shrinking acreage, eventually grow enough food within its boundaries to become self-sufficient?

Moderator Neal Peirce of the Washington Post, will be joined by Ms. Nelkin and other expert panelists including, microbiology Professor Dickson Despommier of Columbia University, landscape designer Dan Albert of Weber Thompson architects in Seattle, Colin Cathcart of Kiss + Cathcart architects in Brooklyn, environmental studies Professor Nevin Cohen of The New School, and Ian Marvy executive director of Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

The Jane Jacobs Forum is sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Related to the forum is the exhibition Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil — currently on display at MAS through Friday, December 4. Visit MAS.org/exhibitions for more details.

Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil an exhibition co-sponsored by PennDesign opens at The Municipal Art Society of New York with a reception on Thursday, October 1, at 6:30 p.m. It stretches thinking about both sustainability and livability even further by boldly considering strategies from around the world. We New Yorkers can be provincial at times — this exhibition gives us an opportunity to glimpse what the rest of the world is doing in response to climate change and the complex movement toward increased urbanization.

Join us for the opening reception, including a glass of local wine and sampling of canapés made from local foods. Limited space is now open to non-MAS members. Entry is free, but reservations are required. RSVP online or call Katie Skelly on 212-935-2075. MAP.

The exhibition will be on display at MAS from Friday, October 2, through Friday, December 4. Click here for more information about MAS exhibits, including gallery hours.

This was a question tour leader Matt Postal asked about half-way through last Saturday’s Sustainable Design in Midtown walking tour. We were standing at the S.E. corner of 42nd St. and Sixth Ave., looking at skyscrapers in three directions, but the green roof was behind us — Bryant Park. In the early 1990s, 86 miles of underground book stacks were constructed behind the New York Public Library and underneath the park which was itself being redesigned and reconstructed.

The rest of the stops on the tour were more expected. We began at The New York Times Building, which has a number of sustainable features, but didn’t try for LEED certification. (LEED is a green building certification process, which is time-consuming and can be costly.) The owners of The Times contend that they didn’t want to pay $100,000 for the honor. For other buildings, LEED status can be advantageous as proof of their commitment to sustainability. Continue Reading>>

Elizabeth Yeampierre (bottom row, at left) receiving the Yolanda Garcia Community Planner award in 2007.
Sideya Sherman of MAS talks with former Yolanda Garcia Community Planner (YGCP) award recipient Elizabeth Yeampierre about her organization UPROSE, how and why she became involved in community activism and environmental justice, and why global climate change is a major issue in this field.

To highlight community-based planning in New York ahead of this year’s YCGP award, this podcast is the second in a series of three interviews with previous award recipients. If you would like to nominate someone for this year’s award, visit www.mas.org/awards.

In honor of Earth Day, MAS has released a study that details a suggested framework for analyzing climate change, and enables New York State to evaluate and address the potential climate change impact of different actions in land-use, energy and industrial transportation, and other issues. In order to fight climate change, it is critical that we reduce green house gases (GHG). Just last week, the Environmental Protection Agency formally declared six green house gasses to be pollutants that endanger public health and welfare. 

The MAS study concludes that the state has the ability to require far-reaching environmental review that can substantially advance efforts to reduce GHG. Meaningful environmental review can greatly assist governmental agencies and the public in understanding the climate change consequences of an action, while helping to address the resulting impacts. 

“Climate change is a global challenge and New Yorkers have the responsibility to aggressively reduce GHG emissions and prepare for the changes in air temperature, sea level, and precipitation, and the massive implications of those changes, to human and natural environments,” said Vin Cipolla, President of the Municipal Art Society. “New York is making great strides to reduce the state’s GHG emissions, but more solutions can and should be pursued to drastically reduce its contribution to global climate change.”  Continue Reading>>

As long as the 1.5 mile long Gowanus Canal in Southwest Brooklyn has been polluted, people and government agencies have sought solutions to the vexing problems posed by this artificially created waterway; and, through the decades community organizations have organized to clean up the canal’s water and adjacent land and to prevent further contamination. 

Most recently plans to reinvent and redevelop the Gowanus Canal area have collided over the potential registration of the Gowanus as a national Superfund site by the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This potential designation, sought at the behest of New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation, recognizes the complexity of cleaning up the area due to the widespread presence of highly noxious toxins found both in the Canal’s water and abutting land. Continue Reading>>

Ahead of the panel discussion City of Art: New York’s Hidden Treasures Revealed which MAS is hosting on Thursday, April 16, at 6:30 pm., leading environmental artist George Trakas talked to Elizabeth Werbe of MAS about his recent public art work in New York City.

Widely acclaimed for numerous projects in North America and Western Europe over the past thirty years, Trakas has recently completed a major piece of work for the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn. Commissioned by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art program, his creation makes approximately 1,000 feet of shoreline accessible to the public. Continue Reading>>

A group of more than 50 New Yorkers gathered last night in Herald Square for an after-dark walking tour. They came to hear about the difference between high pressure sodium (HPS) and metal halide (MH) lighting from Howard Brandston, one of this country’s leading lighting designers — and to see the difference for themselves. The City is in favor of HPS lights to save energy, money, and lessen light pollution of the night sky. The streetscape committee at MAS favors MH.

Under HPS lights on Eighth Avenue, fair-skinned people looked yellow, evergreens appeared brown and dying, and primary colors (held aloft on colored foam core boards) turned muddy and difficult to distinguish. Howard Brandston described HPS lighting as appropriate for roadways and highways, but not for a city which (as Lewis Mumford wrote) “…exists not for the passage of motor cars, but for the care and culture of man.” Continue Reading>>