The Parks Department has been working on a number of renovation projects, as part of PlaNYC. In the South Bronx, the 205-acre Soundview Park is undergoing a large PlaNYC capital project, which includes the restoration of natural areas, playgrounds, a running track with synthetic turf field, a new comfort station, and a new performance lawn. The work is set to be completed in the Fall of 2013. This summer, Soundview Park is hosting Summer Stage music performances, as well as a summer movie series. Situated where the Bronx River opens into the East River, the park also offers great water views.

In Northern Manhattan, Highbridge Park is home to a $62 million restoration of the High Bridge, the oldest bridge in New York City. The National Landmark was completed in 1848, as part of the part of the Old Croton Aqueduct. It was transferred to the Parks Department in 1960s, after the decommissioning of the aqueduct. The bridge has been closed since the early 1970’s.  It will be restored and reopened for pedestrians and bicyclists in 2013. This summer, High Bridge Park offers great views of the Harlem River, as well as outdoor fitness and wildlife exploration tours.

In Greenpoint, McCarren Park is home to another PlaNYC rehabilitation project. The McCarren Pool was one of the many pools built around the city by Robert Moses. It was closed in 1984. The rehabilitation project includes a redesigned swimming pool, a pool “beach”, as well as a recreation center. Salvaged wood from the Coney Island Boardwalk is being used in the construction. The work on the pool is almost complete, and the pool will be open for the Summer 2012 season.

Images courtesy of http://www.nycgovparks.org/

As the Earth’s human population becomes predominantly urban, cities hold a key to the future of environmental conservation and sustainability initiatives. Policymakers, urban planners, and advocates are tackling environmental challenges, but that discussion is largely seen as outside of the public discussion of how we live in cities.

The City of New York has situated itself at the forefront of urban sustainability, starting with the release of PlaNYC in 2007, and its participation in C40 Cities collaborating on climate change and with more recent initiatives like its Green Infrastructure Plan.

What is the role of the public in this conversation? The Mary Miss/City as Living Laboratory (MM/CaLL) Framework engages the public as science learners whose behaviors, actions and decisions have direct impact on the future of the environment. During the fall of 2011, the MM/CaLL installation BROADWAY: 1000 Steps at Montefiore Park in upper Manhattan engaged visitors with urban infrastructure systems, and helped them rethink their relationship with consumption and place.

The panel will take place on Tuesday, June 5, 2012, from 6 to 8pm.

Please RSVP at – http://artandenvironment.eventbrite.com/

Location: Hunter College Student Dining Room, Hunter West Building, 3rd floor, Lexington & East 68^th St., New York, NY 10065. Enter through the West Building Lobby on the SW corner of 68th Street and Lexington Avenue. (Photo ID required).

If you have any questions about your environmental project idea, email tgif@hunter.cuny.edu. Check out the 2012-2013 grant cycle announcement here.

596 Acres has created a website and a mobile app, presenting raw city data in a comprehensive and accessible way.  By providing access to data about public vacancies, and resources to guide community groups in the negotiation process with the city, 596 Acres encourages people to organize and re-envision their neighborhoods.

The Java Street Garden Collaborative in Greenpoint is a garden project that has gotten support from 596 Acres. The lot – 59 Have Street –has been vacant for 10 years, and is owned by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. While the group was able to get approval for the garden from Community Board 1, the garden is likely to be temporary.  In the long term, the lot will become a site for an affordable housing development, once funding is secured by the developer, the North Brooklyn Development Corporation. The collaborative has decided to address the temporary nature of the garden by creating a “roving garden group”. The group will create a productive space on the empty lot for a short amount of time, and then easily move to a next lot when the time comes. The group is focusing on container gardening for the Java Street lot.

Other garden projects affiliated with 596 Acres include 462 Halsey Community Garden, A Small Green Patch, and Myrtle Village Green. Currently, 596 Acres is fundraising to expand to the other four boroughs. Check out their project on Ioby.

Image Source: http://596acres.org/news/

There is a broad range of activities at the conference: some are focused on food justice on the regional and city level, others on nutrition and healthy cooking habits. The Conference has a networking/organizing component, with time reserved for neighborhood-based meetups.

Here are some highlights from the schedule:

Manufacturing Food in a Big City: Diverse Perspectives on NYC’s Landscape: Come learn about the unique opportunities and challenges facing NYC’s food manufacturers, and the diverse range of actors who play a role in this world. From real estate to entrepreneurship to sourcing, this panel will provide a variety of perspectives on the issue.

The Buzz About Bees: Have fun and learn about the plight of the honeybee with nycbeekeeping.org. Observe live honeybees at work in a Plexiglas-enclosed escape-proof mini-hive. Adults can meet local beekeepers, learn about the life of the bee, what the group does, and how you can participate and support urban beekeeping. Kids can try on a bee suit and veil, enjoy a treasure hunt, role-play, coloring, drawing, and writing activities.

Diversity of Indian Cuisines: Sanjay will discuss the diversity of Indian cuisines, usage of basic spices, the layering cooking technique, and how to maintain health and taste balance. He will prepare 3 potato dishes in different ways to represent 1 cuisine each from North, South, and East India.

Getting Produce to High-Needs Brooklynites—One Cart at a Time! How does healthy food move through the supply chain to Brooklyn communities where access is most needed? What are the logistics of getting fresh food to residents? NYC Green Cart vendors— entrepreneurs operating produce carts in underserved areas—are one important link and serve as a model for other strategies.

The Conference is free. However, you can pre-register here, to avoid waiting at the door–5,000 people are expected to attend.

Just this morning I saw a great tweet on the feed for Beyond Coal–the Sierra Club’s initiative to phase out coal fired power plants and stop new ones from developing–about new exercise equipment being tested for gyms. The “Green System” ellipticals and bikes will A) feed energy back to the grid and B) Show exercisers how many watts they are producing. Similar products in existence are inverters that can be attached to various stationary bikes. This set up, which includes both the bike/elliptical and the inverter, will increase system efficiency by 40%, allowing for up to 70% of the energy created by exercisers to be returned to the grid. Additionally, programs to incentivize maximum energy production are in the works. Discounts on gym memberships and other prizes will be awarded to those who perform, which is of course why we are at the gym in the first place.  The pilot is set to launch at the Hotel Grand Pacific in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada this February.  But I think this could work in our over-achieving, competitive, vanity obsessed, future thinking city as well.

There are of course micro-scale examples of translating this energy into use. Occupy Wall Street campers were using bicycle power generators–only after the NYPD confiscated their gas fueled ones. The annual Coachella music festival has the Energy FACTory DJ Mixer, which is a power-cordless stage where musicians play their sets powered by the see-saws, bikes, and a human-hamster wheel that power the equipment. (Note, the video linked there talks about a whole slew of sustainability projects that people engage with at Coachella. Watch it!) And  on a similar note, there is the green dance floor that captures the energy of the party people upon it.  NYC apparently has a few of these. I have yet to encounter one, but let us know if you have!

The initiative to accept food stamps at Grow NYC markets began in 2007 and at that time, these transactions amounted to a few thousand dollars. By 2009, it was $251,000. In 2010 we were up to $505,000. And in 2011, $620,000 worth of food stamps was spent at participating Grow NYC markets. Note, there are other markets that accept food stamps that are not affiliated with Grow NYC. A map of them can be seen here.

Nationwide, low-income Americans spent about .01 of their foodstamps in Green Markets. GOOD has a nice map showing which states have signed on to make this type of transaction more convenient for their food consumers and they kindly outline which states continuously hold out. Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.  I’d be interested in seeing  a map that highlights overlap between big agribusiness turf and the program deniers.

We still have a long way to go in getting fresh food to all Americans. But it took many steps for the food system to change, to the point where the Crop Life Association came out against Michelle Obama for declaring the White House Garden as organic. For some seriously mind-blowing reading, take a look at the association’s call to arms for a letter writing campaign to tell the First Lady that the garden should not be organic.  For a more indepth discussion of that whole escapade, you can listen to Michael Pollan’s Illustrated Food Rules on the January 2nd, 2012 Leonard Lopate show.

Ultimately, every step taken to bring us to our current food system status-quo, every bill signed, every food pyramid created, every subsidy awarded, every cultural norm established, will need to be replaced by steps in a different direction, supported by a vision to take us there. I’d like to think that $620,000 worth of food stamps spent at  Grow NYC markets in 2011 is one of those steps.    [image via year of plenty]

While there seems to be a healthy amount of anti-fracking sentiment and concern over the long term losses in property values–the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY along with other businesses have issued a statement coming out against it–there are some loud voices in support of natural gas exploration. These residents claim that the towns are out of line and this is something the state decides.  One 3rd generation farmer who did lease her land to an oil company has already sued her town. And and it is quite certain that there will be more along those lines.

While the Institute for Sustainable Cities has no formal position on the fracking debate–as of yet,  I Carina Molnar, personally hold the view that the precautionary principle is likely the way to go here. So, interpret that as you like.  I also believe that the movement to restore local control over what actually happens locally is a shift in the right direction for all political strategy. But this particular situation proves the need for a larger authority to mediate and take into account the needs of one geographic place and all those who rely on something from there, water, in this case.  It is sort of the tragedy of the commons with a contemporary twist: If only we weren’t all potentially effected by the decision of Land Owner A, s/he could do whatever s/he wanted.The land itself is not the issue since A owns it. What is at stake is what happens to the public good based on what happens on A’s land. We can come up with ballpark figures as to how bad the worst case scenario would be. But the more important argument in my mind is, how much value is added by keeping that ecosystem in tact and healthy in the first place.

So, where are the wind energy advocates on this one? A quick google search shows some action on this in Pennsylvania. But I am actually curious as to what the alternatives are…More on this soon.

[image via Chemical Heritage Foundation]

We recycle only 15% of our waste stream, which is down from our high of 21% (still not that impressive) in 2001. And the city is researching various pay-as-you-go systems that would charge people different rates on their waste, based on volume. As is usual, the reality of our sub-par recycling performance is a mix of behavior–New Yorkers allegedly only sort about half of what could actually be diverted from the landfill, bad communication–people are seriously confused about what can and cannot be recycled, and a lack of incentives and clear benefits to making changes.Public information is not going to be enough on this one. Sound familiar!?

The discussion of composting toward the end of the article focuses specifically on businesses and their practices. But mentions nothing of the pilot projects to collect compostables at more farmers markets–which of course are wrought with problems. That stuff gets hauled pretty far to become nutrient rich “black gold.” I am personally curious as to whether that stuff has had any sort of impact on the overall waste stream. Check out where you can compost in your neighborhood by visiting the Greenmap Compost guide. And save your take out containers and compostable items for a week to see where you can do more.

[image via Ecoteurre]

My favorite response was found on Tree Hugger, who very simply said: “You Are Now One of 7 Billion People on Planet Earth.  Our recommendation: Live accordingly.” There is of course a more in-depth discussion of what this all means for limited resources paired with growing appetites for them over at Dot Earth.

I guess I would probably say the same thing to these babies as I would to any other one: You were born into exciting and amazing times, but they are also full of anxieties and concern that a lot of things need to be fixed. So you will have to work hard to contribute to the cause of betterment. Also, that is not going to get any easier for you, so you will have to be innovative, but you will have tools and talent beyond measure to make that happen. You will also have to learn about the role of lobbying in politics if you want all of your efforts to go anywhere. Live in a city. Be close to the people you care about. And yes, you will survive your teenage years.

In the time I wrote this, many more babies were born. And we now have 7,000,274,589 people on the planet. What do you you want to tell them?

[image via World Population Day]