Category: Writing

Image Credit: Adi Talwar Caption: A 2017 Sunnyside Yards feasibility study proposed scenarios that included up to 24,000 units of housing—including up to 7,200 affordable units—in residential buildings as high as 69 stories, surrounded by as much as 52 acres of open space. Over the last year, the quasi-private, city-affiliated…

“Change” has come to define Long Island City, and increasingly Western Queens, as new buildings – and land values – go up, and working-class tenants, small manufacturing and businesses, and independents artists are pushed out. The City and its agencies often describe these changes in relation to trends, as though…

Image Credits: Alexas_Fotos via pixabay.com  When proceeding with a digital project, it seems that a lot of emphasis is generally placed on learning the ins and outs of using the tool or method. Certainly, this is important. However, this is but one planning consideration among many. Additionally, there is much…

Image Credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office Caption: Mayor Bill de Blasio announces the city’s plan to renovate NYCHA apartments and preserve public housing in New York City at the NYCHA Hope Gardens Community Center in Brooklyn on Wednesday, December 12, 2018. In December 2018, the second and seemingly final installment…

This ended up being more experiment than concrete project as the longer-term vision of the project remains aspirational. But the project is evidence of some of what comrade scholarship can look like, and the project at this stage does reveal interesting and useful findings. Overview Recalibrating Queens is a digital…

Introduction This is Part 2 of a two-part blog post series exploring the efforts of 3 urban-based community wireless networks (CWNs) – NYC Mesh, Equitable Internet Initiative (Detroit), and PeoplesOpen.net (Oakland). The aims of these grassroots efforts are provide neighbors with internet access. Part 1 explored the expanded notions of…

Introduction to 2 Part Series: As of June 2017, about one quarter of the US population did not have access to broadband internet. This includes 16 million or 28% of rural residents, and 62 million or 23% of urban residents (1). Rates of connection vary widely by city; for example,…

Image Credit: Tree City Architecture. Illustration by Fritz Ahlefeldt via flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 In the last year, displacement has become a hot topic for policy analysis and intervention in New York City and across the country. For example, in 2017 the Regional Plan Association released its fourth plan for…

As a research associate with the Housing and Environments Research Group (HERG), our team studied residents' experiences of living in a community land trust in Minneapolis. We extend our sincerest thanks to the staff and community at CLCLT; without their generosity, this project would not have been possible. We are…

Between 2000 and 2015, Long Island City experienced a 56% increase in housing units. This is faster than the average rate of growth across the city (7%) and the average for Queens County (3.3%). According to a recent study RENTCafé found that since 2010, Long Island City has seen the…