Jeff Byles

Gravel Pits and Green Growth

The Hudson River Valley is a landscape locked in existential crisis—a place of vaunted natural beauty, but one whose postindustrial downslide has pushed scores of small and midsize cities to the brink of an economic abyss. Now, New York architect Meta Brunzema has advanced an outsize idea to turn this land of old traprock quarries and Superfund sites into prime territory for the reinvention of the region's future.

Pictured: Poughkeepsie's Clinton Point Quarry. Image credit: Courtesy CLUI Photo Archive

Miller Time at Riverside South?

The noxious Miller Highway has long blemished a stretch of Riverside Park on New York's Upper West Side, spewing grime and casting shadow onto Thomas Balsley's resplendent new landscape below. But unbeknownst to passing rollerbladers, Extell Development has been quietly completing a $60 million tunnel shell to bury the blighted highway and craft a monumental 3/4-mile-long public space.

Image credit: Courtesy Thomas Balsley Associates

Here Is New York

Taking a snapshot of New York is no easy feat, as the Architectural League learned after setting out to capture sundry megaprojects, condominiums, newly-seeded parks, and a real estate landscape reeling from the recession.

Image credit: Jason Tax

Rebooting the Burbs

The suburban stronghold of Long Island might seem an unlikely place for the inklings of a smart-growth insurrection, but from Hempstead to Patchogue, auto-centric hamlets are rediscovering density with new mixed-use, transit-oriented, and more all-round sustainable developments on the boards. Can Levittown be reborn as the New Suburbia?

Image credit: Courtesy Lighthouse Development Group

Adventure Central

Being a kid—or at least a playground designer—was a lot more fun in the 1970s, before the advent of telephone-book-thick ASTM standards, not to mention things like critical fall heights, head-entrapment guidelines, and the virtual outlawing of sand. But vestiges of that freewheeling age can be found in Central Park, where the spirit of adventure thrives thanks to restorations this summer of two pioneering playgrounds.

Image credit: Courtesy Central Park Conservancy

In the Swim

Thanks to New York City's deadening zoning rules, public waterfronts have often been dullsville: unbending bulkheads, forbidding railings, and nary a spot to quaff a beer. A new proposal now under review by city officials would, for the first time in 15 years, revamp the way developer-built public waterfront spaces are designed, owned, and managed. The Williamsburg, Brooklyn waterfront (above) has been something of a test case for the city's new rules, and while the result has been generally deemed a great leap forward, the zoning could still take a few tweaks to get us beyond high-and-dry.

Image credit: Courtesy FXFowle

Built for the People of the United States

Some of my colleagues at The Architect's Newspaper have written a lovely ode to the old New Deal, one sadly not destined to be reprised in the Obama administration's first round of stimulus spending. Use it or lose it, indeed.

Image credit: Jet Lowe/Courtesy Library of Congress

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

Taking Back the Streets

New York's streets are as gritty as the city's reputation, traffic-clogged canyons of concrete where jaded foot-travelers and cyclists jostle and growl, exulting all the while. (Stared down a Hummer lately?) Yet street reformers from around the globe are increasingly turning to the city's 5,800 miles of streets, sidewalks, and highways, dreaming up ideas -- be they modest or unbound -- to radically transform the urban experience. Here are ten mutinous proposals.