Jane’s Walk Weekend is this May 4th and 5th!

The fact that Jane Jacobs’ name is so often attached to the idea of gentrification today seems a cruel irony. Jane’s writing was focused on how to create strong neighborhoods that fostered robust social networks; she was far from a “NIMBY”, and her interest in preservation was more about economics than aesthetics. Unfortunately, the complexity of her ideas is often vastly oversimplified or taken out of context today by people looking to generate a bit of controversy. Reports that ‘Jane was wrong’ are greatly exaggerated, often by people who wind up making many of the same arguments that Jane, herself, made.

So it is always wonderful to see people gathering in communities across the country for Jane’s Walk Weekend. Over the next two days (May 4th & 5th), thousands will meet their neighbors to explore, observe, and appreciate what makes their neighborhoods great. In honor of one of our very favorite Placemakers, we’ve rounded up several walks scheduled to take place this year that focus on the theme of resilience, a concern at the core of much of Jane’s work. She was a champion of complexity and flexibility in urban form because these qualities allow communities—and the people that inhabit them—to address challenges more nimbly and effectively. Or, in her own eloquent words:

“Vital cities have marvelous innate abilities for understanding, communicating, contriving, and inventing what is required to combat their difficulties … Lively, diverse, intense cities contain the seeds of their own regeneration, with energy enough to carry over for problems and needs outside themselves.”

And now, without further ado:

1.) Levee Disaster Bike Tour, New Orleans: The Crescent City’s comeback post-Katina, while far from frictionless, has been nothing short of miraculous. This bike tour will visit the sites of several levee breaches around the city, giving participants an opportunity to discuss what happened to their city, and how far they’ve come since.

2.) Not Your Typical Regent Park Walk, Toronto: This walk, in the city where Jane moved after her time in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, will “[shine] a light on the capacity of local residents and [reframe] Toronto’s negative ‘public housing’ narrative,” focusing on the importance of generating new economic opportunities from within local communities rather than attracting them from somewhere else.

3.) The Roots of Mack Avenue, Detroit: This tour will focus on an historic neighborhood commercial corridor in the Motor City, which recently played host to the Placemaking Leadership Council’s inaugural meeting. The tour will explore Mack Avenue’s economic decline, and look forward to the bright future outlined through the “Green Thoroughfare” revitalization plan.

4.) Hometown Security, The Bronx, NYC: Led by South Bronx-based advocate Majora Carter, this tour will examine the impact of the Spofford juvenile detention facility on the neighborhood. The tour will end with a performance by a group of people whose lives were affected by Spofford, and who have worked with the Theater of the Oppressed to tell their stories. Observations from the performances will inform how the 5-acre Spofford site will be re-developed in the future.

5.) Recycle Kingdom Walk, Calcutta: This year Jane’s Walk is making its way to several cities in India. This unique walk will meander through the East Calcutta Wetlands, providing an intimate look at the vital role that the site plays in the city’s ecological resilience. The wetlands “take in all the solid and liquid waste of the city and generates fish, rice and vegetables and sends it back.”

One last thing: if you’re in New York, the Municipal Art Society will be offering a host of free tours of neighborhoods affected by Hurricane Sandy last fall. You can check out the full list of related events by clicking right here.

A glove washed up on Natalia’s doorstep in Gowanus after Hurricane Sandy flooded the neighborhood / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

Yet, unlike many others, I have been able to return home. In other parts of New York City, such as The Rockaways, Staten Island, Coney Island and Red Hook, some homes are still without power and basic services, with emergency relief needs and the demand for medical and legal services escalating. The crisis has also been met by rapid community mobilization, from Occupy emerging as a leading support, to myriad fundraising activities across the city, and even internationally.

As our daily lives are becoming increasingly destabilized by financial recession, climate change and perhaps political marginalization, self-organizing communities are also becoming a steady presence, from co-ops and community gardens to large-scale political movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring. Our streets and public spaces have become sites that weather (literally, in the case of Sandy) these various challenges, but they are also the sites of protest, green markets, and social interaction. In this way, these spaces are revealing how we might re-imagine the way we live in our cities for a more just and equitable future.

This perspective formed the basis of a recent conference, Urban Uprising: Re-Imagining the City, jointly organized by The Center for Place, Culture and Politics, CUNY, The Right to the City Alliance, The New School Design and Urban Ecologies Program, and Growing Roots on November 30 – December 1, 2012. The first day featured perspectives from scholars and community organizers, speaking on the theme: ‘In History, In Process, In the Future’. Surveying the legacy of social movements in Detroit, the first panel was an apt reminder that our histories are conduits for learning about our present and future. As noted by Francis Fox Piven (Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology, CUNY), “These movements are still with us, they are a part of our genetic heritage.”

Speaking from her own deep wisdom as a long-time civil rights activist, Marian Kramer, (Founder and President, National Welfare Rights Union), added that although “It’s good to always know history… [it’s important] to always understand what you’re up against right now because the strategies and tactics are different from the 1960s. And then you’re gonna get a damn good revolutionary.”

Marian Kramer (third from left): “It’s good to always know history…” / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

The next panel’s international perspective brought the universality of many urban issues to light, from the way that urban design can deepen existing inequities through spatial segregation in Lebanon and Egypt, to homelessness and migration flow progressively marginalizing displaced populations in Hungary and South Africa.

Hiba Bou Akar, (Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Urban Planning, School of Social Inquiry, Hampshire College), speaking about the ‘War Yet to Come’ in Lebanon / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

As discussion after the presentations turned towards the nuances of culture and context, it became apparent that, although a broad comparison allows us to see problems as global and relating to common human rights, to work equitably we must also think carefully about specific urban characteristics; as Eva-Tessza Udvarhelyi, (Co-founder, The City is for All; Doctoral candidate CUNY Graduate Center) pointedly asked, “How do we define the city, and integrate different kinds of urbanization?”

Tessza Udvarhelyi asks: “How do we define the city, and integrate different kinds of urbanization?” / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

The day closed with an open plenary, ‘How to Organize a Whole City,’ in which a range of community organizers spoke about the inspiration and hard work of movement mobilization.

Rob Robinson, Special Advisor, Human Right to Housing Program, National Economic and Social Rights Initiative; Co-founder, Take Back the Land Movement (click for link) / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

The poetic words of Kazembe Balagun, (Outreach Coordinator, Brecht Forum), perhaps best illustrate that a course of activism and community-organizing requires the sharing of common passions, if to mobilize to any success: “In order to achieve our country, we need to come together as lovers.”

Kazembe Balagun: “In order to achieve our country, we need to come together as lovers.” / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

The second day, entitled ‘Transforming Demands, Demanding Creativity,’ sought to move the conference’s focus from discussion to action, specifically aiming to create a transformative vision for organizing in New York City, and to commence movement-building by connecting issues to organizations. The day’s aims were simply-stated, but nonetheless ambitious:

“With participation from community organizations across the city, we aim to:

1. Explore a holistic vision for the city we wish to live in,
2. Assess community work currently being done
3. Begin a conversation on the role of transformative demands and alternative institutions in realizing our vision.”

Accomplished organizers and commentators kicked off the day in an open plenary about a grassroots re-imagination of the city. Peter Marcuse (Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning, Columbia University), offered a range of friendly provocations about ‘reorganizing, rather than redesigning’ the city, suggesting that a volunteer economy should replace market relations, and that we could re-imagine our cities as places to live, rather than places to work. Matthew Birkhold (Co-founder, Growing Roots) spoke about communities in Detroit having successfully re-imagined the use of vacant lots to combat police brutality. By activating the lots as public spaces for in-community conflict resolution, they became valued as important community assets, and have now also been transformed into markets, urban gardens and community hubs.

Clearly, re-imagining the city is about systemic change. Nancy Romer (General Co-ordinator, Brooklyn Food Coalition), described how America had become “starved and stuffed” by unjust agreements between the food industry and government. Asking “how do we create a democracy, keep control in the hands of the people, and out of the hands of corporations?” she emphasized that any movement, be it urban gardening, green markets, or co-ops, must consider itself a whole justice movement to have broader political, economic, environmental and cultural impact.

Matthew Birkhold: “Demands aren’t enough.” / Photo: Natalia Radywyl

The working groups that formed for the remainder of the day dedicated themselves to exploring discrete areas of system intervention: food, jobs and economics, transportation, public space, health care, education, criminal justice, just communities, housing, art, media and communications, environment, and democracy/governance. For this diverse but passionate body of change-makers, finding a common language was often a challenge, although a common vision far less so. Undoubtedly, the coming days, months and years will reveal how this discussion and the early seeds of community mobilization sown over the two days of the conference may grow into a thriving community of practice. And there is cause for optimism. As Marcuse noted, “The experience of Occupy Sandy shows what people will do, voluntarily, [and] what the best in people is [all about].”

I know that, for me, experiences of volunteering in the Rockaways absolutely revealed this fact. Practices of mutual aid feed the common cohesion and transformation that our neighborhoods desperately need, especially in the aftermath of crises. Following Sandy, there is already talk of not ‘if’ but ‘when’ the next climate disaster will hit New York. Social disparities reign, and are being reinforced by consistently volatile economic markets. While these problems are with us every day, so are their solutions, if to follow Birkhold’s galvanizing words: “Demands aren’t enough. We’ve got to begin rebuilding the world we want to replace the current one with.”

Volunteers use bikes to transport donated goods to hard-hit areas like Red Hook and the Rockaways after Superstorm Sandy / Photo: Brennan Cavanaugh via Flickr

On Thursday following Superstorm Sandy, when much of New York City was still without power, the number of bike riders on the East River bridges rose more than 130 percent. The substantial increase in ridership, according to a study by NYU’s Rudin Center, showed that walking and biking commuters were, on average, the least frustrated commuters compared to those who drove, or used the bus or subway. While non-bikers experienced double or triple their pre-Sandy commute time depending on where they lived, walkers and bikers added only nine minutes to their commute time on average!

The volume of biking commuters was observed and counted by volunteers from Transportation Alternatives. They stationed themselves in four locations around the city to record the swelling number of cyclists and by their estimates, there were approximately 100,000 people commuting to work by bike between Wednesday, November 7^th, Friday, November 9^th, and the following Monday and Tuesday. Observers covered a lot of ground during morning, afternoon, and evening shifts from 2^nd Avenue, to Times Square, and up on 138^th Street in the Bronx.

Although strained (perhaps beyond capacity) by Sandy, New York’s bike infrastructure provided a much-needed transportation alternative when subways were down and the automobile network was stymied by traffic light shutdown. Even with approximately 300 miles of protected bicycle paths, exclusive bicycle lanes, and shared bicycle lanes available in all five boroughs, riders still experienced frustrations when traveling during the storm’s long aftermath. Brooklyn resident David Pimentelli, told The New York Times, “I’m scared to be going back to Brooklyn right now,” traveling the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. “People are running red lights, very agitated, they don’t care.”

Many PPSers are cyclists who bike to and from our HQ in Manhattan’s East Village. In the office, I’ve heard several colleagues comment on how difficult it was to pass slower moving cyclists, with traffic slowing and compressing at points. “I couldn’t believe the congestion,” said Transportation Associate David Nelson. “It was a Level-of-Service D equivalent. If [the East River Crossings] had been a highway, engineers would argue you’d have to add more capacity.”

PPS Associate Casey Wang, a resident of Brooklyn, did not travel into Manhattan during the week after the storm, but as a regular bike commuter, she knows and understands the world of cycling in NYC. Her experience that week was one of relief in owning a bicycle. Had she not, she says she would have felt “trapped.” Although cycling didn’t mean commuting during that week, she was thankful to be able to carry out her day-to-day activities in Brooklyn even though her trusted trains were down, including the L, which only resumed service the week of the 12^th.

Commuting aside, the bicycle’s role during Hurricane Sandy proved to be truly life saving. Many residents in the Rockaways and Red Hook suffered the loss of their homes, and had to rely on crowded, inadequate shelters and the generosity of friends and family—many without electricity or heat, themselves—and attending to basic needs quickly became an issue. Volunteers at Bicycle Habitat in Park Slope and Affinity Cycles in Williamsburg loaded their bicycles with panniers full of donations, including flashlights, diapers, blankets, and coats, and headed for the Rockaways. Using bicycle power allowed volunteers to bypass gridlocked traffic, nimbly move around donation centers and churches to make their drop-offs, and survey damage.

Occupy Sandy organizers demonstrated democracy in action by making use of bicycles as well. Rev. Michael Sniffen of St. Luke and St. Matthew on Clinton Avenue, an experienced Occupy Wall Street advocate, opened the church to Occupy Sandy, allowingmore than 2,500 volunteers to participate in relief efforts, including moving donated goods via bike and car. Rev. Sniffen told The Local: Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, “We’re neighbors helping neighbors, on a fleet of bicycles. It’s an image of community at its best.”

The number of NYC residents who cycle has risen considerably in the past few years. According to NYC DOT, bicycle commuting doubled between 2007 and 2011 from an average of 27,000 riders to 48,300 entering and leaving the Manhattan core each day and it aims to triple that number by 2017. Sandy has highlighted the resilience of NYC’s residents, the bicycling infrastructure’s ability to support that population, and the need to expand that infrastructure to accommodate the level of ridership seen during the storm on a permanent basis. Indicators recorded from Sandy present a strong case for the DOT to meet its 2017 goal.

To see photos of residents, commuters, and volunteers weathering the storm, visit Transportation Alternative’s Flickr page here.

For a New York City Cycling Map and information about NYC DOT’s cycling plans and initiatives click here.

In Washington Square Park, light writers make the most of the dark / Photo: Alex Fortney

On the eve of Halloween, I ventured across the East River to cycle through the eerily dark and silent streets of lower Manhattan. With Sandy’s storm surge freshly receded and my sister a refugee on my futon in Bed Stuy, we hopped on bikes and rode into the Financial District to gather clothes and valuables from her apartment one block from the South Street Seaport.

This week, the internet has been abuzz with articles on the relief efforts, the role of climate and ecology in the storm’s severity, and the stark illustration of how a NYC that commutes by car is a NYC in constant gridlock.

While I’ve been very conscious of all of that, what I noticed most on the ground was how social behavior has adapted to this nearly disparate nighttime landscape of the city below 34th Street.  There are no traffic lights, no street lights; there just aren’t any lights at all. For the most part, streets signs and traffic control devices are simply meaningless or invisible. Save for the few with traffic cops, intersections play host to a bizarre dance between cross and opposing traffic. Intuition prevails: minor streets stop for major streets; cars stop for bikes; everyone is stopping for pedestrians. The natural order of transport, untamed.

With no moon and with the light pollution uptown blocked out by the midrises and highrises inbetween, electric light has become an important part of human interaction. Stirring in the shadows of one’s peripheral vision is at once routine and unsettling. We quickly fell in step with the apparent norm when approaching others: each party shines a light at the other, makes an immediate judgement that the strangers are twilight wanders like themselves, and passes by, cordially cautious. It all feels rehearsed and official, as if we all did it in elementary school libraries right after practicing stop-drop-and-roll.

After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the incredible darkness was all consuming. Then suddenly, the awe and anxiety terminated by the tower of City Hall, lit like the surface of a star, as though we were astronauts reaching the point of orbit where the sun suddenly bursts forth from Earth’s horizon. Our ride up Broadway was quiet. It is only when we reached the rear entrance to my sister’s building that we began our interactions, talking with the staff loading a truck with the piles of garbage bags filled with 32 floors’ worth of rotting refrigerator contents, and squeezing past other tenants in the fire stairs, meagerly lit by a single glow stick. Out of necessity or fear, everyone simply deferred to trust, assuming others had legitimate reasons to be there, and that no one was up to mischief or criminality.

The NYSE building, presumably lit by generator / Photo: David Nelson

The Financial District was the darkest of all, perhaps reflecting it mostly daytime population. The reds and blues of cop cars and the Stock Exchange’s up-lit columns cut through the darkness. Those columns had attracted a few handfuls of twenty-somethings and I wondered if they had anything to do with Occupy.

Once I had my sister were safely back in Brooklyn, my girlfriend and I rode back into the city, this time to venture uptown. Chinatown, Little Italy, and NoHo were perhaps where the de facto traffic pattern was most pronounced, when crossing the big streets of Canal, Delancey, and Houston.

We were now taking the familiar route of my afternoon commute. In the hard-hit East Village, we passed by a few resilient restaurants and bars operating by candlelight. Glow sticks and LEDs were accessories with purpose here, a part of individuals’ advertised identities. My favorite example was a flamboyant individual who wore a large medallion blinking with orange, green and purple lights. On Saint Mark’s Place between 1st and Avenue A, we found ourselves in the midst of a crowd. As soon as we were about twenty feet away, someone off in the shadows pressed play. We were comically startled. A dozen people started dancing to the harmonies of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel.  There vehemence of the lyrics seemed particularly apropos, given the situation: “Ain’t no river wide enough,” the radio blared.  We headed towards the Williamsburg Bridge. It was nearly 2am; time to go home.

Reflecting on the sights and sounds of the evening on the chilly climb up the bridge, I was struck by adaptability and endurance of the urban experience. People were defining new norms for social interaction, on the fly. Behavior toward key aspects of city life–individuality, mobility–were adapting to extreme conditions. And, as it turns out, even in the dark, people are still fundamentally attracted to people.

A double rainbow shines over Lower Manhattan on the day after Hurricane Sandy / Photo: Kurt Deitrich via Instagram

Looking north from a darkened Lower Manhattan / Photo: NY Daily News

During and after a natural disaster, we truly see the value of community, up close and personal. Neighbors band together to help each other, providing shelter, supplies, and comfort to those who are less-prepared. The bravery shown by first responders drives the point home; seeing so many public servants risking their lives to help those in harm’s way is an inspiring reminder of the importance of cooperation and collaboration, as well as a reminder of how much impact each of us, as individuals, can have.

Hurricane Sandy has wreaked havoc from the Caribbean, up the Atlantic coastline of the US, and straight through heavily populated areas like the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia, and New York City, where PPS HQ is located. As those of us on the coast begin to assess the damage today, the superstorm is still dumping water on Pennsylvania and upstate New York, and is expected to barge into Canada some time tomorrow.

This morning, we received an email from Richard McCarthy, director of MarketUmbrella.org, with the title Solidarity from Sea Level. “There will be a month of very tired, mentally disoriented people,” our New Orleanian friend wrote. “Maybe longer with physical dislocation…From a public space standpoint, the markets and the parks and the pop-ups will be worth visiting to gauge mood, meaning, etc.”

The strength of our communities will be on display in the coming days and weeks. Much of this will play out in our streets, and our public spaces. As horrific as the damage is in many places, and as staggering as the news reports of damage will undoubtedly be, there will be many inspiring stories to share as people work together to rebuild the places that they love. Stories like this are already showing up, and we’ve seen many of you coordinating on Facebook and Twitter to help as your cities and towns begin their recovery efforts.

If you live or are staying in a community affected by Sandy, and you experience an example of community resilience first-hand, please share it here. These stories must not be lost in the din.