Tibbets Brook meanders its way south through Westchester County, and then into Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, where it ducks between highways, and eventually forms Van Cortlandt Lake before suddenly disappearing. Well, not disappearing exactly, the water does go somewhere, but where?
This June, CALL kick-started our Chinatown projects, collaborating with artists, architects, herbalists, engineers, community leaders and community members to come up with creative solutions to environmental problems unique to Chinatown and engage in sustainable practices together.
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Artists are underutilized assets for cities and the environment: People often perceive climate change and other environmental risks as future events, happening to people in places far away, outside their own experience. Art has the power to involve people through visceral and place-based experiences, direct personal connection, and emotional engagement to evoke reaction and inspire action. City as Living Laboratory (CALL) proposes that sustainability can be made tangible and accessible to communities through the arts.
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My colleagues and I have been studying Tibbetts Brook as part of our investigations into the historical ecology of New York City, which started out with the Mannahatta Project, about Manhattan, and have now expanded to cover all five boroughs of New York city. Historical ecology is important for urban sustainability because it places our current perspective on the city into a natural history context; it tells us how nature makes places; it helps expand our imagination; and finally, it helps us set metrics for sustainability success.
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In the heavily reshaped environ of Walker's Square, "Hidden Water Stories" explored the disjuncture between the historic natural water pathways and the legacy of industry and infrastructure on our current perceptions. Beginning with buried water in the small community park, following storm drainage to a man-made canal sculpted from a land-filled Menomonee Valley, we circled the massive I-94 interchange considering both environmental and social impacts on the neighborhood.
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On Saturday September 16th, WE ACT hosted a charrette in the Manhattanville Houses to invite input from residents on the preliminary for +SPACE/EPIC (Emergency Preparedness Information Kiosk). The residents reflected on what they consider EMERGENCIES, location and siting for the kiosk as well as possible programming ideas. Over 40 residents were in attendance!
Read MoreCALL's Inagural Fellows Forum was held last week, March 21st 2017 at the Adobe NYC headquarters. Our intimate group engaged in a conversation about the merits and means of recreating Tibbetts Brook. This noble and ecologically important stream is currently ignominiously diverted into a sewer under Broadway, where it is combined with sewage and pumped to the Wards Island sewage treatment plant.
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