In today’s New York Times there is an article on the remodel of a community playground, but most important point is that Mayor Bill de Blasio is channelling $130 million into low-income community parks and an additional $36 million will pay for new infrastructure to prevent storm water runoff.

This park will rearrange the organization of amenities to better accommodate the health and happiness of the community; they will move the basketball courts to the center of the park where there will be less residual noise to affect apartment building tenants and move the playground away from the highway, which will hopefully decrease children’s exposure to fuel emissions–asthma is an issue in this area in the area. And lastly, the play structure and its foundation will be shades of blues and greens to evoke nature.

However, none of these plans will happen soon because the plans have not yet been submitted to the city’s public design commission and then to the parks department, but completion expected by 2017! See proposed plan in article photos.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/nyregion/adding-spaces-for-fun-and-fitness-to-a-neglected-park-in-the-south-bronx.html

After our class discussion about green cities today, I was eager to do some further research on the topic. Estimates show that about 70% of the planet is likely to be an urban center by 2050. Cities already account for 55% of the world population, 80% of all energy use, and the most emissions of greenhouse gases. This begs the question of how cities might be able to balance the needs to be both economically dynamic and environmentally responsible. It appears that many cities are better at one aspect than another, such as US cities being economically dynamic and not very environmentally conscious.

I found an index of sustainable cities by Arcadis, a Dutch design group. It is based on data sets under people, planet, and profit categories. This index ranks Frankfurt, London, and Copenhagen as the top three cities, and the US cities do not appear until the fifteenth slot with Boston. I found the infographic below quite interesting after today’s class period.

http://www.sustainablecitiesindex.com/

arcadis-sustainable-cities-infographic

When we spoke about Central Park in class today, a thought kept nagging at me pertaining to an article I stumbled upon months ago. According to this article, and to articles I located today on the same issue, a portion of Central Park exists on the land formerly known as Seneca Village. Seneca Village was a largely forgotten community comprised of 2/3 African American and 1/3 Irish inhabitants. It was one of the first communities in the United States that housed a majority of African American homeowners. When the park was built, these people were forced from their homes, and by all accounts never re-established the style of lives they had in the Village once they were displaced.

I think it was critical for Central Park to exist, and I think it is integral in the well-being of New York City residents, but when the documentary today began to explore the trends of elitism that pervaded its early populations, I was again left questioning the racial implications of the project and how grand the impact of its construction may have been in the perpetuation of institutional racism and deprivation of resources to African American families.

This article is quick but it kind of lays out some of the frame for why this matters. I think Environmental Justice is really interesting and I think it is something we could explore more in class because so far I would say the majority of our literature has focused on a very white, often male, perspective of the adaptations of land and culture that surround our thoughts on nature and I would be curious to see if we could integrate some other-cultural perspectives in our dealings with what best upholds the marriage between man and land.

http://cute-n-tiny.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/3364851456_4a149b2952-400×265.jpg