Your Garden Variety Bus
Phyto Kinetic by designer Marc Granen. Photo via Urban Gardens
Designer Marc Granen decided to plant a garden on the roof of a bus. Yes, a bus.
If you’re in Spain, you might be able to catch a glimpse of the Phyto Kinetic in action. Granen and his team of designers have designed a lightweight rooftop garden with a multitude of uses. Granen says that his mission “is to expand the garden area in urban environments, increase the absorption of CO2 and give public transport a new ecological and tourist attraction”.
I appreciate Granen’s clever use of a space that we may not think of as underutilized and I think it would be exciting if these buses were able to help grow and deliver food to neighborhoods that have poor access to healthy food options. Maybe they could grow gardens on school buses and that food could feed the children!
Some buses have bicycle racks but front racks add space when the bus is parked and areas that have limited space (i.e. Manhattan) cannot afford the extra room. Utilizing the top of the bus, could provide a resource and not have to take up additional space.
Just Smile
Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadah. Photo by Carla C. Waldron via tlynnfaz.com
For the last five years I’ve been a transit-dependent person. What this means is that I spend a lot of time on foot, a lot of time standing waiting for buses, waiting for trains, and it may or may not surprise you to know that I experience at least one form of street harassment nearly ever day.
There is a spectrum of severity to these experiences but their regularity does not make them easier to endure and their consistency has resulted in a vulnerability that can sometimes feel overwhelming. I’ve never gone unaffected by someone who yells to try and get my attention, intentionally standing back to look at me up and down, walking up to me and putting their faces inches from my own, or honking their horn or making suggestive faces from their car.
I often try to brush these experiences off but I know they’ve affected me. When I’m getting dressed in the morning and purposefully choose to wear clothes that hide my body, when I avoid eye contact on the sidewalk, when I rush to get home before the sun goes down, when I choose not to participate in activities that require long trips, when I hold my breath as I see someone walking towards me at night. I know it affects me.
I experienced the worst form of street harassment in my previous neighborhood. Sometimes I would walk past groups of men seated on the sidewalk who would feel the need to comment on what I was wearing, talk about my body, or inform me that I’d be prettier if I just smiled. Sometimes these men would have the audacity to become outraged when I would ignore them and they would stand up and yell profanities at me as I walked away.
It can be difficult to talk about experiences of harassment but sharing experiences is an important step in raising awareness about the issue. Not only to let those who are being harassed know that they are not alone, but to educate the public about this important issue and reiterate publicly that this is not something that we should just accept as a society.
Artist Tatana Fazlalizadeh has attempted to raise awareness about this issue in a very creative and public way by creating posters that reflect women’s stories and struggles with harassment. Ms. Fazlalizadeh says that her work “attempts to address gender based street harassment by placing drawn portraits of women, composed with captions that speak directly to offenders, outside in public spaces.”
Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. Photo via stoptellingwomentosmile.com
She goes on to say that “Street harassment is a serious issue that affects women world wide. This project attempts to take women’s voices, and faces, and put them in the street – creating a presence for women in an environment where women are a lot of times made to feel uncomfortable and unsafe.”
By bringing this work in to the public realm, Ms. Fazlalizadeh creates the opportunity to simultaneously speak to those being harassed, those doing the harassing and those who may not have the issue on their radar. She is empowering those who may feel victimized by giving them a voice and by allowing visitors on her site to obtain her posters for FREE!, she is strategically given those who want to raise awareness about this issue, the opportunity to do so in their neighborhood.
Stop Telling Women to Smile by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh. Photo via stoptellingwomentosmile.com
Unlikely Seats in Hamburg
Oliver Show’s “Street Furniture” series wraps yellow drainage pipes around public infrastructure in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Der Spiegel via Architizer
Architect Oliver Show decided to turn some of Hamburg, Germany’s least comfortable spaces into squishy seats, lounges and sofas. Mr. Show wrapped common pieces of urban infrastructure like bridge trusses, hand rails and bike racks with bright yellow plastic drainage pipes turning once angular and unlikely elements into comfortable, low-cost, weather resistant places to sit.
Providing pedestrians an opportunity to sit increases their comfort and desire to linger in a place but I wonder how comfortable these seats are for longer than a few minutes. Would these seats only serve strong and able-bodied users? Is it difficult to climb on top of them and must you balance there? Do the pipes sway back and forth? How tightly together they pipes are bound so users (especially children) don’t fall in the spaces in between?
I look forward to testing them out myself one day!
Oliver Show’s “Street Furniture” series wraps yellow drainage pipes around public infrastructure in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Der Spiegel via Architizer
Oliver Show’s “Street Furniture” series wraps yellow drainage pipes around public infrastructure in Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Der Spiegel via Architizer
The Long Wait
In the nine years since he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, filmmaker Jason DaSilva has found it increasingly difficult to traverse his beloved New York City. Using an electric scooter to get around his neighborhood, Mr. DaSilva has run in to many challenges including a lack of access ramps at the entrance of shops and restaurants and a nearby subway station with no elevator. City-provided taxi services for disabled persons have to be scheduled one day ahead of time and are often unreliable. The few public taxis that are wheelchair accessible can make traveling around the city easier, but taxi rides can be cost prohibitive.
In his short film for the New York Times titled “The Long Wait”, Mr. DaSilva demonstrates how arduous navigating the city in a wheelchair can be. As an experiment, Mr. DaSilva decides to time himself and his friend to see how long it takes them both to arrive at his favorite coffee shop (which is frustratingly only one subway stop away from his station nearest to his apartment). His friend Steve rides the train one stop and arrives at the destination in 13 minutes. After reviewing his public transportation options, Mr. DaSilva decides that the quickest route would be to take the East River Ferry from Brooklyn to Manhattan and then transfer to two different buses. He arrives at the coffee shop in one hour and 43 minutes.
After traveling to cities like London, Toronto and San Francisco who have incorporated more accessible design elements like access ramps into buildings and wheelchair accessible trains, Mr. DaSilva says he was surprised that “forward-thinking” New York City lags behind other cities in accommodating their disabled population. “It’s not M.S. that exhausts me,” he says, ” it’s the barriers that prevent me from conducting my daily activities. Public-transportation challenges have turned my playground into a sand pit.”
Mr. DaSilva is working on researching design elements that can contribute to a more accessible city and believes that creating an accessible physical environment for all users is a basic human right. Hoping to contribute awareness of this issue he’s created AXS Map which allows users to provide, rate and explore information on the most accessible places to grab a coffee, get a hair cut, eat sushi, etc in cities throughout the US. “I hope it’s a small contribution to the community I am now a part of,” he says, “and helps make New York a little bit easier for us to live in.”
A Park on the Stairs
A mini-stair park in Hong Kong, China. Photo via This Big City
While this mini-park would not be accessible to those with disabilities or strollers, it is a creative and important use of space providing seating and refuge amid the density of Hong Kong. The design of this park takes full advantage of the shape of the stairs and in doing so, appears to provide solitary or communal seating options as well as the ability to transform some of the seats in to tables which could be used during coffee and lunch breaks or to play chess with friends or games with children. One of the best elements of this mini-park is the trees which not only provides shade but also a protective canopy to its users.
Hong Kong’s stair park is similar to another imaginative project called Stair Squares. In 2007, artist Mark Reigelman created “squares” that were installed on the front steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, helping to give the staircase a myriad of additional and more comfortable uses and turning it in to a more dynamic public space.
In 2007, artist Mark Reigelman installed Stair Squares on the front steps of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. Photo by Mark Reigelman via Web Urbanist
THE ACCESSIBLE CITY 