Tag: Development
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Mr. TOD
The Tale of Mr. TOD Once upon a time, Mr. Tod arrived in New York. And the rest was not yet history. The tale is still, obviously, unfolding. Will Mr. Tod be able to create mobile, accessible, and affordable neighborhoods? Or will Mr. Tod only support luxury? Mr. Tod, of course, is Mr. Transit-Oriented Development. He’s more and more popular these…
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(In)formality (In)justice
As many New Yorkers know, the rent is too damn high. The neighborhoods of New York have always been dynamic and ever-changing, and today, this continues to be true, but perhaps, on a level unforeseen in recent memory. Many are being priced out of our neighborhoods that they’ve lived in, sometimes for generations. So I asked Jimmy…
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Historic Delhi
The following is an excerpt from H. K. Kaul’s Historic Delhi, An anthology published by Oxford University Press, 1985. http://designscene.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/old-photos-of-india/ The city is known to be more than 3,000 years old. Around 1450 B.C. a forested area on the right bank of River Yamuna was chosen as the site of Indraprastha by a Pandava king mentioned in Mahabharata. It is…
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Harvard Graduates Mapping Public Toilets in Mumbai Slums.
In a recent NY Times, article, Mapping Toilets in a Mumbai Slums Yields Unexpected Results (India Talk – July22, 2012), Samuel Lowenberg reported about a class of Harvard graduates in public health, mapping public toilets in a Mumbai slum called Cheetah camp. I suspect this isn’t exactly what our young overachievers had in mind when they selected…
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Saving Brownsville, Brooklyn
Canadian author Doug Saunders suggests in his book “Arrival City” that poor immigrant neighborhoods can thrive when certain conditions, such as access to property and education, and a minimum of social infrastructure is provided. How can these lessons be applied to one of the poorest and neediest neighborhoods of New York City, Brownsville? The past…