Nyu Urban Design Program

After Hurricane Sandy, New York Rebuilds for the Future. Mr. Ovink described the effort to rethink New York as the love child of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses, meaning that it merges the granular approach of Ms. Jacobs, an advocate of small, vibrant neighborhoods, and the sweeping vision of Mr. Nyu Urban Design Program' title='Nyu Urban Design Program' />Want to get a Masters in Environmental Policy and Sustainability The New Schools Milano School prepares professionals in sustainable design and policy. Moses, an urban planner of Pharaonic scale and scope. Photo. Volunteers planting sea grass on a dune built to protect Breezy Point, Queens, on the first anniversary of Hurricane Sandy. Credit. Adrees LatifReuters It is, if nothing else, enormous, comprising the construction of sea walls and bulkheads, beach replenishment, the creation of parks as buffer zones, the retrofitting of apartment buildings, commercial structures and single family homes, and the redesign of power stations, subway tunnels, sewage treatment plants, hospitals, utility poles and even ordinary streets. In terms of size, said Daniel Zarrilli, the director of the 8 month old Mayors Office of Recovery and Resiliency, youd have to look back to the rebuilding after the San Francisco earthquake for any real comparison, referring to the 1. New York has been here before. In the 1. 96. 0s, after Hurricanes Carol and Donna, the Army Corps of Engineers proposed building barriers at Throgs Neck in the Bronx and at the Narrows. In later years, there were plans for a giant swinging gate at the mouth of Jamaica Bay and a 1. Coney Island. None of these projects was ever undertaken, because of environmental concerns and a lack of financing. But this time, some of the money has already been set aside, suggesting that things might finally be different. While the state and federal governments have their own plans, the citys blueprint, the Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency report, released last year by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, set forth 2. In April, the new administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio updated the so called SIRR report, announcing that while most of the projects were in progress, the city had in the intervening months completed efforts like reinforcing beaches in the Rockaways and had reached an agreement with Consolidated Edison under which the utility would flood proof its equipment without increasing rates. The abiding question, of course, is whether the city will really be prepared next time. The short answer is, were getting there in an impressive fashion, said Richard T. Anderson, president of the New York Building Congress, a construction trade group, which, like many private organizations, issued its own plan on how to make the city more resilient. Agencies at the federal, state and city levels are all responding, but the deeper issue is how much further we still have to go. The Big USeven months after Hurricane Sandy, Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, asked Mr. Ovink to oversee an international design competition meant to elicit innovative plans to protect New York against the next big hurricane. The Jonathan Larson Grant is an unconditional annual investment in individual talent. The grant is awarded to four musical theatre composers, lyricists, and. The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of highrise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of. University of California, Los Angeles Columbia University New York University Brooklyn College Warren Wilson College Yale University Rhode Island School of Design. What resulted was Rebuild by Design, which this spring awarded money to government officials to implement six plans from architects and engineers chosen from a pool of 1. Among their proposals a network of levees, a waterfront greenway and a new power plant to protect the Hunts Point food market in the Bronx, and the planting of oyster beds and reefs off Staten Islands shore to mitigate the destructive force of oncoming waves. Photo. Part of a proposed eight mile series of coastline defenses, called the Big U, that would wrap the bottom of Manhattan with 1. Credit. Rebuild by Design But the most ambitious of the plans is the one put forth by Mr. Bergmanns firm, which proposed constructing an eight mile series of linked defenses wrapped like a chin strap around the coastline of Manhattan from West 5. Street south to the Battery and up the East Side to 4. Street. Called the Big U, the project relies mainly on 1. The idea was to create a public amenity that also had a protective element, Mr. Bergmann said. We could have built walls, but walls are only used. We wanted something that was aesthetically pleasing, well designed and was useful all the time. In Battery Park, for instance, the plan calls for a series of upland knolls where people could sunbathe, garden or even farm most of the time. During a storm, the built up landscape would fend off the sea. Could it actually be builtThe Big Us first so called compartment, running along the East River from 2. Street to Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side, is expected to break ground in 2. The federal government has given the city 3. BIG U that will serve as a test case for the still unfunded portions of the project on the West Side and in Lower Manhattan. Buildings at Risk. From seaside bungalows in Staten Island to Wall Street offices with harbor views, nearly 7. New York sit within the 1. According to the city, that total could increase in the next 1. To protect this population, the city late last year introduced 2. Local Law 9. 9, for instance, makes it easier to elevate fuel storage tanks and telecommunications systems. Then this month, the City Planning Department published a 5. Retrofitting Buildings for Flood Risk, with instructional case studies on various building types bungalows, attached two family homes with garages, mixed use mid rise walk ups. Photo. Flood waters at West and Cortlandt Streets in Lower Manhattan in September 1. Credit. Allyn BaumThe New York Times The mayor and the City Council have been very serious about protecting New Yorks building stock, said Russell Unger, executive director of the Urban Green Council, an advocacy group for sustainable building, which last year helped convene the 2. Building Resiliency Task Force. Youd be hard pressed find any other city responding so quickly to a disaster like this. In June 2. Mr. Ungers task force issued a report with 3. Hurricane Sandy, including a plan to redesign tall, exposed structures to better handle wind, and proposed legislation to require sinks and toilets in commercial and residential buildings to work without power. Of the 3. 3 suggestions, the city has carried out half. Its an extraordinary record, Mr. Unger said. In September, Mayor de Blasio announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had given the city 1. Coney Island Houses, a five building public housing project that was inundated during the storm, leaving its 1,4. Disney Princess Solstice Manual. The work in Coney Island is meant to serve as the model for a continuing collaboration between FEMA and the New York City Housing Authority to reinforce 1. Plugging the Holes. After Hurricane Sandy dumped untold tons of water into the Montague Tunnel, a subway tube connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan, engineers at New York City Transit faced a daunting problem how to redesign a subterranean system in a coastal city and keep the water out. The answer, said John OGrady, vice president for infrastructure and facilities at the transportation agency, was to plug the systems holes vent bays, manholes, station entrances, access hatches and emergency exits. At South Ferry alone, Mr. OGrady said, the agency was forced to design and will eventually install coverings for more than 5. All told, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the parent agency, plans to spend nearly 1 billion on resiliency improvements, a rough equivalent of what Con Edison has earmarked to fortify its own equipment over the next four years. Photo. An Army Corps of Engineers proposal in 1.