New York City Big Apps

http://www.nycbigapps.com/application-gallery

in our own backyard

what $5000, paint, flora+fauna, and planning can do for a corner. now, let's see if DOT realizes that maybe they could activate the center with furniture [besides 2 benches] + bike parking!! this is right outside the A/C/G Hoyt-Schermerhorn station.

It’s plaza sweet on Schermerhorn Street
By Ben Muessig

Downtown is turning into a real walker’s wonderland.

The city has almost finished creating a pedestrian plaza at the corner of Hoyt and Schermerhorn streets, offering bipeds a bit of space in the bustling neighborhood.

The $5,000 project brings a 17-foot by 70-foot walking and sitting area to the front of the main entrance to the Hoyt–Schermerhorn train station — protected from traffic and newly painted cycling routes by a row of potted plants.

“It’s some much-needed room to breath on a very crowded sidewalk in Downtown Brooklyn,” said Wiley Norvell, a spokesman for Transportation Alternatives, the pedestrian and bike advocacy group. “Previously, this is space that was sitting under parked cars the entire day while pedestrians squeezed onto a few feet of sidewalk. Now that’s really turned on its head.”

The project — which reclaimed a chunk of sidewalk space often covered by parked police cars — started ahead of the expected November launch date and will be completed in the coming weeks when workers install two benches in the piazza, according to the Department of Transportation.


©2009 The Brooklyn Paper

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/32/44/32_44_bm_schermerhorn_plaza.html

more links

http://www.designspotter.com/product/2009/07/Solar-Powered-Nightgarden.html

some light stuff

http://ffffound.com/image/1a69b14aeafdb6b3a4efbe763102ee24bb86e335

icons- graphics

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/04/new_york_city_administrative_code_book_as_infographics.html

users of the city and graphics

one more thing

Not really on point with what we're going after, but in the same vein, I think...

TA put on a design competition recently (who knew?) that asked entrants to design infrastructural modifications to NYC to increase the ease and facility of cycling here.


Worth checking out. find it here (via streets blog)