Jeff Byles

Here Comes Everybody

"For everybody, being in New York's streets can be a way of being at home. Can we count on our city planners to be there?" So asks Marshall Berman in The New York 2030 Notebook, a new collection of rants, raves, reflections, and ruminations on New York's future from a rousing confederation of urbanists, thinkers, and critics. Edited by Jeff Byles and Olympia Kazi and published by the Institute for Urban Design, the notebook takes up the gauntlet thrown down by New York's forward-focused PlaNYC 2030. Will the Gotham of tomorrow spring from "voodoo demographics" and a misguided agenda of growth? Will it offer environmental and economic equity? Will it have bike racks, for god's sake? Check out constructively zinger-filled essays from Richard Sennett, Winka Dubbeldam, James Wines, Miquela Craytor, Klaus Jacob, Michael Sorkin, and many more. As the crypto-urbanologist Damon Rich aptly writes, the last great master plan of New York (circa 1969) reads "like a science fiction novel about earth written by aliens." Beam us up, Mayor Bloomberg. But first, boldly go buy this book!

Red Hook Reloaded

When the Swedish furniture company Ikea took over the 22-acre Todd Shipyard property along Brooklyn’s Erie Basin, it inherited piles of ropes, winches, a forgotten shipyard log, and a hefty chunk of Red Hook history. Six years later, that swath of salutary grit has been reborn as Erie Basin Park, a nearly mile-long stretch of newly accessible public waterfront. Built and paid for by Ikea, the park is both a tribute and a tombstone to the industrial past—and a surprisingly optimistic statement about Brooklyn’s future.

Image credit: Colin Cooke