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June 23, 2010
It came from the Blogosphere...
Arquine, Learning Cities: An Interview with Cassim Shepard of Urban Omnibus
Cassim Shepard’s enthusiasm for cities is inspiring and wonderfully contagious. During my interview marathon last Thursday with a few of the participants from Postopolis!DF, Cassim generously shared with me the vision for Urban Omnibus and the ways it functions as a platform for fostering and giving exposure to good, optimistic ideas for making NYC a better place.
...So, one last question with regards to this idea of engaging in other places or virtually with different communities. Urban Omnibus is a site which focuses on NYC, how do you feel the site ends up relating to or impacting what happens physically in NYC and how do you think it comes to engage in a larger conversation about cities?
We don’t do news as such, so you could say that Urban Omnibus does this kind of irregular and/or clunky mapping of physical development in New York. However, there are certain recurring issues that relate to the big urban issues in New York. Another thing that I hadn’t really mentioned before was the way in which we try to focus on things that are underexposed. For example, one of the most contentious and major developments in NYC in recent times has been the Atlantic Yards, which is a basketball stadium and a series of residential towers at the intersection of downtown Brooklyn and Prospect Heights. It is contentious for a number of issues: from public-private partnerships to the amount of tax dollars used to subsidize luxury homes etc. etc. that really racially polarized the debate in a way that was really tragic.
So I wasn’t about to do a story about Atlantic Yards in itself. One: because it’s in the News everyday and two: because we try to focus on optimistic, good ideas.
Talk of the Sound, The Great IDA Hoax: Does IDA Just Apply Lipstick To NR Council's Pig?
The time has come for the [New Rochelle] City Council to commission an independent and full investigation of the practices and procedures of the New Rochelle IDA, its general membership and particular woefully conflicted members belonging to the city manager's office and the council itself, with especial attention paid to the glaring absence of candor, accountability and transparency in the gifting of tax abatements, other economic incentives and, other non-economic incentives such as rights to exclusive dealing, Memorandums-of-Understanding etc. granted to the likes of Louis Capelli, Bruce Ratner, their respective companies, and Home Depot and others since the days of Tim Idoni's operation.
If the Democrat-laden body will not act, may we leave it to the Republican-turned-Democrat County Attorney? Or do we pray for the day when some brave new State Comptroller or authentic crime-busting Attorney General, devoted to upholding traditional notions of civic virtue and public integrity, jumps into the fray?
Posted by eric at June 23, 2010 9:01 AM