Mermaid Parade Coney Island

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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!

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Candy Chang is a designer, artist and urban planner in Helsinki, Finland. She likes to make city information more accessible and engaging through research, design, and the creative use of public space. She is also a 2009 TED Global Fellow. Read her blog, view her projects, and enjoy! Check out a longer bio here.
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