For this seminar’s Macaulay Event of “Community Voices,” I attended the fourth lecture about Transportation and Energy Conservation. I was very impressed by both lectures as both speakers were very engaging and gave very clear and interesting presentations. Both were concerned with improving New York City: The primary goals were to make it a happier environment for its residents and visitors, to make it a greener city with more concern for the impact on the natural environment, and to transform New York into one of the leading cities in efficiency and environmental awareness.

Wiley Norvell, a representative of the company called “Transportation Alternatives”, gave the first lecture. This company is dedicated to reducing automobile transport and increasing transportation via more public buses, more biking routes, and more walking pathways. This goal hopes to reduce the pollution and energy waste given off from excessive car use, to reduce traffic and travel times within the city, and to encourage healthier and more enjoyable routes for pedestrians and bikers.  Wiley explained that New York is designed around car transportation, and that in order to make the city safer for its pedestrians many of its streets must be redesigned around pedestrian satisfaction. The primary goal being pursued by this company at the moment is to increase the bike lanes in the city. This would cause many more residents to travel to work and school via bikes as they will no longer have to bike among the dangerous heavy traffic of cars. This is also very economical as it will decrease peoples expenses on gas, the city’s expenses on accidents, and on the long run will lessen the pollution of the environment and all the consequences that come with it. Another goal that Wiley spoke about was increasing the amount of pedestrian space, which is seen so often in European cities and yet rarely in New York. More areas will be blocked off from traffic and instead transformed into pedestrian walkways such as the new pedestrian street in Times Square. The third and last plan spoken about in the presentation is creating separate bus and bike lanes on Third Avenue, which is supposed to take effect by October 2010. This will reduce the car lanes but will significantly decrease travel times via the m15 busses, which are the only route of public transportation available along the Eastern avenues.

The second presentation was given by a representative of the Solar One Company and focused on the Renewable Energy Payment Project. This company is concerned with reducing the use of highly polluting energy sources and replacing them with more efficient, cheaper, and more renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power.  The representative spoke about New York’s high wind capacity and that this should be the primary renewable energy source NYC should focus on using. A main problem, however, in using this type of energy source, is that it is very expensive to begin installing. Despite these preliminary costs, however, on the long run using this energy source will be cheaper both for residents and for the health of the environment. In order to begin this change, SolarOne has created a plan to create financial incentives for people to invest in these projects called Renwable Energy Payments. This plan is based on a system where NYC residents will invest in this new technology, and will be paid back with interest after a few years of the installation. Renewable Energy Payments have proven to be very successful and economical in other areas around the world and the United States where they have been implemented.

Both representatives who presented at the event often referred to New York, and other cities in the United States, as falling behind in the race towards greener energy use and urban planning. They thus both stressed the importance of their initiatives to keep up with the rest of the leading cities in technological and energy use advances, as well as investing in environmentally friendly urban planning. I was glad to see that there is so much effort going on in our city concerned with the long-term health of our environment and in working to improve the future of our cities and benefits of its residents.

This week’s readings by the authors Jacobs, Duany and Zyrberk, Beatley, and Wheeler, all focus on ways to improve urban areas. This is very relevant to our current final projects, as we are working towards improving neighborhoods by attempting to solve essential problems found in them and make more efficient use of the land and resources they offer. These four articles consider a very wide range of issues of urban planning and living, including community safety and satisfaction, transportation and accessibility, efficient and economic land use, and the sustainability of the natural world and ecosystems. To do this they often compare American living environments and their problems to more efficient European cities and their planning practices as proof of the potential to improve the quality of life and future of American cities. All the authors were firm believers in the superiority of dense cities over spread out suburbs (Lakshman, I thought you would enjoy this) and were very optimistic about the possibility of improving them. What I found most interesting was that the authors addressed how largely culture comes into the way a city is planned and its patterns of development. When looking to improve these living areas it is therefore crucial to define and emphasize social values of the community and to plan towards a sustainable future that will satisfy both the population who lives there and the well being of the environment.

In “The uses of sidewalks: Safety,” Jane Jacobs emphasizes the significance of high density and crowdedness for the safety of a community and a healthy and happy living environment. She writes that if a city looks interesting and attractive it is because its streets look interesting and attractive, and that people thus value a city based on the quality and safety of its public streets and spaces. Jacobs constantly compares urban areas to suburban ones, emphasizing the superiority of cities and the drawbacks of extended and unpopulated suburban spaces. A central point is that unlike in suburbs, in cities you are constantly surrounded by strangers and it is therefore crucial to create an environment where one feels comfortable among so many people one doesn’t know. I completely agree with this remarkable phenomenon in cities like New York, where I can walk around Manhattan, crossing hundreds of people a day, and never once feel uncomfortable among such a large group of strangers. Jacobs discusses how the more crowded the street, the safer it is and the more people are likely to come to it as people love to see people and not empty space, which I couldn’t agree more with. Yet while I personally would choose to live on a loud and crowded street over a peacefully quiet one, I am not convinced that this is necessarily more of an attractive living environment to everyone, and many people would still prefer to live in a more quiet and slow moving area.

Andres Duany & Elizabeth Plater Zyberk, in their article “The Neighborhood, the District, and the Corridor,” discuss the concept of ‘new urbanism’ to increase urban patterns of interaction and decrease the dependence on cars for mobility. Like Jacobs, these authors disapprove of suburban living practices, and emphasize that cities are no longer dangerous and polluted environments that they used to be when people first began moving out to suburbs. They focus their planning on the concepts of the neighborhood, the district, and the corridor, and for each define their ideal vision for what they see is the most satisfying and efficient living environment. A central argument of theirs is that dependence on cars in suburbs reduces the ability of children and elderly to travel within a community, decreases human interaction, and also highly pollutes the environment. They therefore strongly encourage efficient public transportation plans that will allow for everyone to be able to access and reach different places. Additionally, Duany and Zybrek highlight the importance of community interaction on the street, promoting more walking public spaces where people can meet and interact with each other much more often than they would by sitting in their cars on empty roads and high ways.

In “Green Urbanism and the Lessons of European Cities,” Timothy Beatley uses the example of several European cities and planning practices to prove the point that it is very viable and possible to work towards both a happier living community and more sustainable and ecologically friendly energy use. Like the above authors, Beatley constantly compares urban and suburban life, speaking about how European culture values the importance of cities and crowdedness over largely separate living communities like in American suburbs. An ideal element of European cities he speaks about is its efficient transportation methods. With faster trains, more bike routes, and larger walking spaces, European cities allow for more community interaction and accessibility to more places. Additionally, public transport largely reduces the pollution exerted from the excessive car use in the United States. Beatley also focuses on the green planning practices of these cities, showing that with the support of the government and public, it is indeed possible to find economic alternatives to wasteful energy use and their replacement with more friendly and renewable energy sources. A very valid point, however, is that all these great aspects of European cities including their social interaction and activeness, and their high value on urban life and dense population are all embedded in historical and cultural values of many European communities. The question is if the American population has the interest in adopting European patterns or if the car-culture and wasteful practices of the Americans is culturally embedded and will not necessarily be willfully changed.

Lastly, Wheeler writes in “Planning Sustainable and Livable Cities” about sustainable urban development and the significance of long term planning for the wellbeing of the community as well as the human and natural environment on the long run. He begins by defining the different conceptions of sustainability and the struggle to agree on what it means to plan for the wellbeing of the future. He also emphasizes the importance of ‘livability’ and again addresses the question of how to improve the quality of life for people in the present and in years to come. Wheeler, as the other authors this week, also focuses on pedestrian satisfaction as a way to improve community and decrease environment pollution and destruction. He reviews in detail the central problems that are needed to be addressed in long term future plans: While each problem should be addressed on its own, solutions must take in all of the different urban issues at the same time make sure not to worsen other important factors affecting urban life. Wheeler, too, writes about the cultural aspects that often compromise long term planning for social and environmental wellbeing such as capitalist values that tend to focus on creating short-term profits as opposed to addressing larger social issues more difficult to grasp.

Although the issues discussed in these four articles are far reaching and complex to address, I agree with these authors completely that it is crucial to be optimistic and plan towards an ideal vision of long term improvements. While not all the problems will ever be solved completely, we can hope that with time we can work towards improving urban areas and the quality of life for the people and ecosystems that inhabit them.

Hi! I’m Noa Krawczyk, I am a biology major and a history minor. My parents are Argentinean but I spent most of my life moving between Israel and New York. I study a lot but I mostly enjoy dancing and spending time with my friends. Though I love biology and would like to pursue a career in it, I am also very interested in anthropology, history, and other social sciences. I really love traveling and would like to visit as many places as I can. I especially love cities, and am a BIG fan of New York City which is why I really love Hunter College. Having gone through high school in a very small suburb, I truly believe that cities are the greatest places to see modernization, social action, diversity, and tolerance between people, and am definitely looking forward to exploring this class about the nature and structure of NYC!