Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building

A few last photos from Dylan:

New York from the Empire State Building. Nothing like it!!

Seats as informal bump spaces

After great conversations with Ethan Kent (PPS) and Mike Lydon (Tactical Urbanism) I really started to notice the informal bump spaces in NY, and realised there had been many in the other cities we had visited too.


Take seats for example. Plenty of businesses provide seating of all kinds here. And not just cafes. Clothing shops, plant shops, design shops, even those catering for space cowboys! Often nestled in front of shop windows and accompanied by plantings and bowls of water for dogs, some are simply set against a wall, unchained, or designed to fit temporarily around the pavement trees. These pics are all from SoHo and they are colonised by people lunching, talking, resting and re-organising before being brought indoors at the close of business. Inviting eh?

It's got to be good for business I reckon and even cheaper and easier than reclaiming streets (esp if you don't ask permission! Can always seek forgiveness later if necessary :-)). Plus each seat provider gets to add a touch of their personality to the street (a form of street art even) and provide a small bump space for community connection too! 


For those of you who are really inspire to create your own - check out some Brooklyn chairbombing... and let us know how you adapt it in your place :-)


How cool.


Denise

Iconic and odd NY, with plenty of cool too :-)

Where to start eh? Well for Dylan it was a trek to where the Flight of the Conchords was filmed. Here (we think):

From there it was to Times Square where the heavens opened and sent us scurrying into... McDonald's :-). And then, via subway, to the American Museum of Natural History. Very cool.

Then via a L O N G  wait in the beating sun, we viewed  'the immigrants' scultpure in Battery Park, Lady Liberty, the Manhattan skyline (with 2 of the WTC towers emerging) and the WTC memorial (a NY Times photo below)...

There is this really frustrating pattern here with queuing to buy tickets at one place and then moving to another to queue to get in - sometimes blocks away. Not helped when around the WTC/memorial site is such a construction zone! In fact we gave up on actually getting in there in the end. It had been a long day...


Back in Chinatown we were greeted by wafts of ancient music coming from Columbus Park where tai chi, mahjong and martial arts were all going on at the same time as a goat wearing pearls was being taken for a walk up Mulberry Street... She wouldn't look at the camera. Yep, anything goes here!

We bought fruit from a street vendor then headed to dinner (Dylan has a thing for Italian food)...we were beginning to get a sense of the size of the city as well as some of its many faces... For example in Soho we saw street art and pocket parks as well as boutique shopping. Then in Chelsea we saw more street reclaiming, a street market that went for blocks and blocks and blocks and a cool pop-up designer market... 

Before traversing The High Line. Wow! Now that is definitely an icon! Great planting, paving, furniture, views, food, music, art...and all on a disused railway line (more on NY parks in another blog soon!)

You get the picture :-). Plenty of heart here: iconic, odd and cool all at once sometimes!!


Denise

NEW YORK!!

Wow! Well here we are in on the edge of Little Italy in Chinatown after a crazy cab ride in from the airport complete with horn honking, passing on the inside, running red lights and swearing. "Where are we?", I asked at one point. "New York," came the reply. Ahk...thanks. :-).

Everyone else has been supremely polite and helpful however, so we feel very welcome here (above are the men looking after our first NY breakfast...). They were not so conversational but most New Yorkers are very conversational. I had always presumed big cities to be less than friendly so there goes one unfounded belief! We have shared thoughts with strangers about the downpours, the heat, the smells, the noise, the prices, where to get good food, views and coffee. Asking for a flat white gets you noticed -"we have had your kind in here before", she said... then checked: "Australian? Or New Zealander? I hear you argue over who invented the flat white..." and so begins the conversation. Asking if the coffee has two shots in it gets you a variety of responses - "Of course! Do you think New York can't make good coffee?!" and "You want two shots? You sure?? Crazy." There is always a view to express :-).


And a person to express it to. Which is the great thing about cities - heaps of different people and heaps of different places to bump into them in! Especially as soon as you slow down a little... and one of the things I have really noticed here is some really intentional efforts to slow things down. Traffic, for example, has been slowed in Times Square, and around the city, by Mayor Bloomberg and Jan Gehl in really simple ways, with street furniture and plantings:

It's not flashy or expensive but it's part of a wider vision and programme and the data shows that its hugely beneficial - not surprisingly the pilots have become permanent and similar spaces are popping up all over the city:

As well as plants and furniture many such spaces are also defined by shade and art and are serviced by food providers, stall holders and performers. And that is a key part of their success - it is not just the provision of space, it is its management and 'programming'. There are certainly formal parks and public spaces in NY that are less populated, and less attractive.

Just as there are some that are full of action every moment of the day they are open (most are locked during night hours). This one below is opposite our hotel. in the week we have been here it has hosted a sports competition, a family day, lots of music, exercise, table top games and sitting:

Lots of people, places and things to do. More later :-).


Denise