The Center for Architecture

Home to The American Institute of Architects New York Chapter and The Center for Architecture Foundation it is located at LaGuardia Place just north of Bleecker Street.  Their current exhibition is "New York/Amsterdam 2040 glimpses".  They have asked a number of architects to envision what these two great metropolises can do to create vibrant and sustainable urban environments.  They were required to focus on five basic necessities for living: breathing, eating, making, moving, and dwelling.  The key challenges facing these cities are demographics, climate change, energy transition, and global economic patterns.  By 2030 there is expected to be 1 million more people living in NY.  Regarding climate change the main risk is the increased coastal flood levels with increasing storms and hurricane intensity. 

I found some of the ideas brilliant, like using the cities vast underground spaces for aquaponics, which combines fish-farming tanks with greenhouse plants.  Fish waste fertilizes the plants and the plants are used to feed the fish and clean the water.  Then the fish are harvested.  Some of the other ideas I'm a little skeptical about.  Like dredging the lower Hudson River, the fourth largest estuary in the world, and using that material to build archipelagos around the city and up the Hudson.  The Hudson River needs to be dredged.  GE, between 1947 and 1977, dumped 1.3 million pounds of PCPs into the river.  So lets do the whole river before we do the lower Hudson.

"Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city.  It is a complex order.  Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use.  Bringing with it a constant succession of eyes.  The order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance ... to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole."
Jane Jacobs