Essays
Joan Didion, “Goodbye To All That” (1967)
Zadie Smith, “Find Your Beach,” New York Review of Books (October 23, 2014)
E.B. White, “This Is New York,” (1949)
Continue reading “ITF Post: The Rise and Fall of New York City?”
Spring 2018: Shaping the Future of New York City
a macaulay honors college seminar taught by prof. gaston alonso
Joan Didion, “Goodbye To All That” (1967)
Zadie Smith, “Find Your Beach,” New York Review of Books (October 23, 2014)
E.B. White, “This Is New York,” (1949)
Continue reading “ITF Post: The Rise and Fall of New York City?”
Our vision is to create and sustain thriving parks and public spaces for New Yorkers.
Our mission is to plan resilient and sustainable parks, public spaces, and recreational amenities, build a park system for present and future generations, and care for parks and public spaces.1
In the nineteen-seventies [the factory] had moved from Carroll Gardens to Dikeman Street, in Red Hook. [Owner Arthur Mondella] set about expanding that location into two adjacent buildings, and eventually the factory occupied a total floor space of thirty-eight thousand square feet. He scaled up what had been essentially a mom-and-pop operation; his mother and his sister, Joanne, worked there, too, but he ran the show, increasing production capacity and acquiring large-volume food-service clients. In 2014, he made a seven-million-dollar investment in automation so that one day the place would “run itself,” as he told his daughters.
Despite automating, he wanted to keep his human workforce intact. By all accounts, he cared about his employees. Lots of ex-offenders had jobs at Dell’s. The Red Hook Houses, a nearby low-income housing project, supplied him with workers who needed the paycheck. Mondella was known for giving salary advances, and loans whose repayment was not vigorously pursued. He hired a homeless man, provided him an advance for a deposit, and let him use a company truck to move into a new apartment. Gang tattoos could be seen on the muscular, maraschino-red-stained arms of guys on the factory floor.
Read the rest of the article here (or check the class GDrive folder for a hard copy).
Beginning on Sunday (shortly after reading Nixon’s opinion), I asked 1,016 New Yorkers: Where does “Upstate New York” begin?
When you ask 1,000-odd people the answer to a question, you get a lot of variation. Some is subtle, such as “Albany” vs. “near Albany.” Some is dismissive: Got a “do not care,” 40 “don’t know” replies and one “no.” Others made jokes: “my house,” “upstate someplace,” “Peoria,” “San Francisco.” Others identified very specific locations in and around New York City: 14th Street, the George Washington Bridge. Six people said that upstate started at 125th Street, meaning that the Bronx is in Upstate New York.
I love “no” because that’s my initial reaction, too, and “San Francisco” is a pretty good nod to the NYC-SF shared connections.
Read the rest of Bump’s article here.
Continue reading “New York’s economic future in retail and light industry: Readings for 4/19/2018”
First: Why not argue for the superiority of Liza Minnelli’s “New York, New York” compared to Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York”? (ITF Note: I am dead serious about this! Liza 4Ever!)
WNYC, “History of Zoning” with Brian Lehrer: “The first zoning laws were created in New York City 101 years ago. Mike Wallace, distinguished professor of history at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, director of the Gotham Center for New York City History and author of Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919 (The History of NYC Series), and Jenny Schuetz, Brookings Institution fellow, talk about how zoning changed the shape and power structure of the city.”
Click for more links including a movie about why LA wants to be NYC (duh) and info about the documentary “If These Knishes Could Talk”!
Continue reading “ITF Post: Troubleshooting Embedding a Social Explorer Map”
Yet its worth pointing out the the image of a hipster as a young-ish, DIY-type person living in “gritty” (pre-gentrified) neighborhoods in legacy cities arose in the public imagination during the Great Recession. Why? Well, according to a quote attributed by Coco Chanel, “Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.” The Great Recession, then, becomes the backdrop for activities and lifestyle of the hipster: DIY, handmade, artisanal, ironic (“ironic”) clothing that may or may not be flannel.
Continue reading “ITF Post: Hipsters, Urban Space, and Authenticity in 2018”
Why is this important? 1. Published posts instantly appear more streamlined; 2. As a result, the reader focuses on your ideas and you’re still properly citing your sources. 3. Learning how to adapt academic writing conventions to digital formats develops your ability to write for different platforms and audiences.1
Read on for very easy instructions + screen recording that I made to show you how to do it!
Continue reading “ITF Post: How to add footnotes to your posts”
And yet residents don’t seem so pleased at least in this video provided by NY1 of residents at on such community board meeting – click through to see the video and a very provocative comparison!
Continue reading “Can Bill de Blasio turn the public tide against homelessness?”