Tagged: NYC
INFRASTRUCTURES OF THE URBAN
Discussion _ reception — The idea that the world is created by people in history, both consciously and through cumulative unintended effects, represents the bulwark of the modern secular social sciences. From this foundation, scholars have argued that fundamental features of our world that we often take to be natural, from race and gender to politics and the economy, are actually products of human making. This is the basis for the twined concepts of social construction and human agency.
Thursday, December 12, 2013
6:00 PM – 08:30 PM
20 Cooper Square, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA
Safer Streets NYC
Are we really stronger than the storm? A year later, what have we changed?
After Sandy: Surviving and Thriving in Red Hook NYC
A year after the flood, this first-person account by NYC’s top urban designer shows the scale of the storm and the challenges of its aftermath.
Save Tin Pan Alley!
From Irving Berlin to Scott Joplin, Fats Waller to Cole Porter, the composers and lyricists of New York’s “Tin Pan Alley” wrote the songs that defined American popular culture from the late-1880s to the mid-1950s. A number of the structures where classic songs were written and published still remain in a stretch of buildings along 28th Street west of Broadway. Yet despite their undeniable significance, these properties sit unprotected and vulnerable, with no legal protection. Some of the most significant buildings are currently on the market as a “huge development site” of prime Manhattan real estate.
This is no way to treat America’s irreplaceable cultural history. The preservation of these row houses is long overdue and now it’s time for the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to preserve these important structures for generations to come.
Please cilck the link and sign the petition, and encourage the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission to save Tin Pan Alley.
A Fresh Set of Grades Measures Energy Use in Residential Buildings
A Fresh Set of Grades Measures Energy Use in Residential Buildings
In its waning days, Mayor Bloomberg’s administration is issuing grades to rate the energy use of the city’s largest residential buildings. Officials have released energy consumption data for large multifamily buildings, allowing residents to find out how their co-ops, condos and rental buildings compare with similar structures.
It was the first time any city in the country publicized such data, environmental groups said, and will be one of the most prominent legacies of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s environmental agenda. The city has been tracking energy use among its largest buildings under a 2009 law intended to help reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions, an issue that acquired added urgency after Hurricane Sandy.
The heating and cooling of buildings produces three-fourths of the city’s emissions contributing to global warming and sea level rise, city officials said; the 2009 law applies to the biggest energy consumers, buildings of more than 50,000 square feet and multiple-building properties with a total of more than 100,000 square feet.
Annual results for the city’s large office and government buildings have been released since 2011, using the scores under the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program. Residential buildings are not yet rated under that program, so city officials are using letter grades, just as they do with restaurants, to encourage improvements and to guide consumer decisions.
“The benefit is a more informed marketplace,” said Cliff Majersik, executive director of the Institute for Market Transformation, a nonprofit group in Washington that promotes building energy efficiency and advises the city on its rating efforts.
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HowCitiesWork 