If you’re venturing out to Governors Island in the next few weeks, you should check out my Pedestrian Timeline! It’s part of the Figment public art event on Governors Island June 27-29. To bring the rich and unique history of Governors Island to life, I created a stenciled timeline along the ground. Made with temporary spray-chalk, landmark events in the island’s past are stenciled directly onto the ground on Hay Street. As visitors walk along the path, they can enjoy a chronological journey through the history of Governors Island. Interesting facts are presented in an engaging way, and visitors gain valuable knowledge while enjoying a leisurely stroll! The 20 stencils should last about 3 or 4 weeks (or shorter if there’s lots of rain). See more images and info here!

Not knowing what this says will always be better. Advertisement poster in Osaka, Japan.

Spoken with the correct intonation, “Ma ma ma ma” = “Did mother scold the horse?” and is why Chinese will never be as popular as its people… “Ma” spoken in different ways can mean five different things: horse, mother, numb, scold, and question mark. Makes you realize language can be complex in so many ways. Most of the written characters also riff off each other, and in some twisted joke, the character for “mother” is made up of “female” + “horse.” Ouch.

Handwriting by Dad Chang.

All Post-it notes on final day.

Post-it notes whittled down to ones with responses (half of total).

I took down my Post-it note installation I’ve Lived in Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn. I didn’t know what to expect from it all so it was a pleasant surprise that 1) nearly all the Post-it notes stayed in tact after multiple rain storms and a week’s worth of time, and 2) people responded! After one week, 151 notes were filled out. What a fun and easy way to collect neighborhood info… The results are tallied below:

Nearly half of responses came from people living in their apartment for 2 years or less - a reflection of the temporary-ness of many New Yorkers/renters? The winner of Cheapest Apartment goes to someone living in a studio in Carroll Gardens for 43 years that costs $146. (!) And the Most Expensive goes to someone in a 4-br in Cobble Hill for 4 years that costs $3,720. Some other interesting responses:

3 br in Red Hook for 13 yrs - $200
1-br in Brooklyn Heights for 1 yr - $3315
1-br in Jersey City for 3 yrs - $1000 (”w/ a backyard bitches!”)
3-br loft in Chelsea for 30 yrs - $1095
1-br in Cobble Hill for 11 yrs - $893.45
1-br in Carroll Gardens for 21 yrs - $350
2-br in Clinton Hill for 14 yrs - $700
2-br in Williamsburg for 10 yrs - $800
2-br in Carroll Gardens for 55 yrs - $350
2-br in Bethlehem, PA (the only non-NYC response) for 1 wk - $730

52 responses came from people living in 1-br apartments in Carroll Gardens. Below are the range of costs for…
1 yr - $1200-1850
2 yrs - $1400-2700
3 yrs - $1200-2100
4 yrs - $1200 -1800
5 yrs - $1400-1600
6 yrs - $970-1900
7 yrs - $1100
11 yrs - $1000-1500
20 yrs - $1120
21 yrs - $350

A few lifers are getting some good deals, but it seems like some costs have caught up with time. I printed “cost(s)” on the notes to invite input from both renters and owners, but the responses were mostly from renters. Now I see that I still botched the wording - most Brooklynites buy complete brownstones/houses rather than apartments. The only owners who entered info were people who I met while tending to the project - one guy has lived in a 2-apartment house in Carroll Gardens for 30 years and it cost him a mere $125,000 (it’s worth $3 million now). He also happened to know my old landlords around the corner and said their family was “trouble” (agreed, ha). And a woman named Deborah bought 3 homes in Bed Stuy from 1988-2003 and never paid more than $250,000. They put her two sons through college and will allow her to retire early. “Like they say,” she said, “they’re not making any more of it. Get yourself some real estate!”

Art Trucks, Yonkers, NY. City garbage trucks covered with different artist-designed wraps.

All Together Now by Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, Denver, CO. Big lego-like bench wall in formerly drab area.

For the Capitol by Jenny Holzer, Washington DC. Text from bipartisan politicians projected over the Potomac River.

I went to the Americans for the Arts Convention in Philadelphia to meet public artist Jack Mackie. He introduced me to a ton of cool people and we watched a presentation of selected best works from last year (the three above were my favorites). I also got to see him present some of his first small-scale projects before becoming a big hot shot in public transportation projects:

He and Buster Simpson initiated some inspiring projects in their own under-served neighborhood in Seattle. Given the opportunity to plant some trees, they staggered them on the sidewalk so that they became more spatial and doubled as the community’s only park. They also selected bright-colored trees to mark the bus stop and serve as a cheerful canopy at the end of winter. Existing building remnants were hauled out and arranged into much-needed outdoor benches. And to counteract the prevalence of public urination, they dug a hole into the sidewalk and set up a portable restroom. Once the ground reached critical mass (hee), they planted a tree and moved on to another space. Creative ways that resourceful thinking and small interventions can make a positive impact on the community!

The crowds were thick as jam at Coney Island’s Mermaid Parade. I couldn’t see a thing over all the heads so I looked at the ground and started thinking about trash… At what point do you stop thinking it’s ok to toss something on the ground like it’s no big deal? Cigarette butts and flyers are usually treated like forgivable littering. With a little ordered disorder, can larger objects be forgivable too? I saw a guy drop his beer can in this pile by a tree. If there was only one other can, I would have thought he was being a real slob. But with that big of a pile, I thought he was being considerate to the trash collector who would only have to stop this once and who should really tell the City to provide a trash can for these poor, drunk citizens!

Rolling toys that the kids in Johannesburg’s Diepsloot township make out of aluminum cans, plastic containers, and wire.

Anna, the head of Global Studio, wants each of us to share two links to get people thinking about our upcoming work in Johannesburg. This made me think of one of my favorite blogs… As a human behavior researcher for Nokia, Jan Chipchase travels a lot and basically takes note of the different ways people interact and live on a daily basis. His blog always stirs up my thoughts and reminds me to think with open eyes and an open mind when observing the world and different communities.

Also John Thackara’s book In the Bubble is about thinking beyond designing objects to designing the situations in which new networks of people and energy can take place. How can you connect people, resources, and places in new, empowering combinations? You can read excerpts at that link. It’s made me think of larger networks and systems, of social capital as infrastructure, and of the more abstract world of situation design. “Focus on services, not on things, and refrain from flooding the world with pointless devices.”

I’m excited to head out to Johannesburg next week to be a part of Global Studio for the third year! As a bonus, we’re getting additional help from a cool consulting company called Social Symmetry. They’re offering their project strategy and implementation skills pro bono thanks to their Adopt a Client project. I recently met with Suneet, one of the company founders, and he wanted me to write an introduction to our Global Studio project for their blog. It was a helpful exercise for me too and I’ve included it below:

While I was getting my Masters degree in urban planning at Columbia University, I had the opportunity to participate in Global Studio, a program where international interdisciplinary students, academics, and professionals come together to collaborate on community-based projects. Informed by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the program promotes forms of education and practice that will benefit under-served communities and facilitate bottom-up, collaborative partnerships. I loved the program so much that I’m now in my third year of involvement and help guide the work as a Project Associate.

While the month-long program has moved to different cities each year in the past, this year we’ll be in Johannesburg, South Africa again to continue various projects we started last year. We’ll be continuing our work in Diepsloot (“DEEP-sloot”), a northern township that is one of the fastest growing and poorest areas in the City. There are around 100,000 residents and half of people are unemployed. After talking with residents, community groups, and local government last year, we found a need for better methods of sharing information. This includes communication between residents and government, as well as communication between residents and each other.

Local government officials stressed the importance of information dissemination and acknowledged that many residents were still unaware of city services, including help in starting a business. Sam, one of the local ward officials, said that they currently go door-to-door, identify people without jobs, and then inform them of government resources. Another ward official, Mailla, said that her cell phone message box is always full from residents’ concerns and it’s a challenge to respond to everyone’s needs. With this current system, the officials are overwhelmed with work and lack the capacity to serve the community in an efficient way.

Residents talked about their desire to have a local news system. Brian, a resident, DJ, and leader of a youth organization, wants to start a local radio station to disseminate news and support local music talent. A new non-profit group called Diepsloot Community News wants to start a local newspaper and has already sponsored several community events. Informal flyers were seen scattered throughout the community and included information on events, housing issues, and local services.

Last year we conducted a community survey to learn more about how people currently get their information and how they would like to receive information. Based on 225 responses, we found that 88% of people read newspapers, 84% own radios, and that both mediums were wanted as news sources at the local scale. Since then, many ideas have been passed around, including a model of local communication in Nigeria. Community chalkboards are used to post local information and they serve as a cheaper (and more eco-friendly!) alternative to a printed newspaper.

This is where we are as we begin our program this year. Project development will really take more shape once we’re on the ground and discussing interests with community members. It will also depend on the skills and energy of the team, whose backgrounds will mostly be in architecture, urban planning, and journalism. We’re very excited to have Social Symmetry participate in this project and provide their expertise for a great cause. In the end, we hope to develop a better information-sharing system in Diepsloot to facilitate transparency between government and residents, as well as harness the great amount of local knowledge and resources within the community.

Yeliou, Taiwan, where centuries of sea erosion have left a landscape of surreal rock formations. Now with descriptive names like Queen’s Head, Candlestick, and, my favorite, Bean Curd.

During my time in Japan, I came across a lot of entertaining hand gesture signs beckoning me into some spaces and imploring me not to enter others. Are these just for tourists who can’t read the language or is there something more going on here? Many of our meals were presented with Vanna White arms, people use the peace sign like a smile, and when we drove away from hotels, personnel would give us a big cartoonish customary wave until we couldn’t see them anymore.

After some Googling, I found more interesting hand gestures and discourse on the subject. Writer and historian Kato Shuichi says, “a strong distrust develops between Japanese if they try to express everything through words.” Body language, including the ever-present bow, is considered more profound and sincere. As an added bonus, this seems to work well for cities that are increasingly international. As more and more signs and city service materials need to be translated into multiple languages, a world of universal symbols and diagrams will become increasingly important. It’s like we’re coming full circle and returning to our caveman roots… Yay for pictograms!