Philly Bench Brings Up Questions of Public Space
Public benches in Philadelphia (image via veyko.com)Is there such a thing as anti-public seating? We’re all used to the presence of urban furniture as an accessible public good, from benches to bike...
View ArticleThe Wildlife of Reykjavik Street Art
First spectacular bird sighting of the day. (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic)REYKJAVIK, Iceland — While in Iceland for an artist residency for the month of August, my first stop was two...
View ArticleInflatable Dictators, Cardboard Robots, and Other Interventions in the...
Grupo Grifo’s work for Hecho en Casa (all images courtesy the festival)SANTIAGO, Chile — The first thing is to situate ourselves. I search on the map of the Hecho en Casa: Urban Intervention Festival...
View ArticleLibraries Aren’t Irrelevant Yet
(image via library.und.edu)As more and more people get their information and do their research online, often from the comfort of their own couches, the future of public libraries seems very much up for...
View ArticleWhy Won’t the MTA Allow This Artist to Make Art?
Enrico Miguel Thomas in his Red Hook studio. (all photographs by the author for Hyperallergic)A few months ago, on a February evening in Grand Central, Brooklyn-based artist Enrico Miguel Thomas...
View ArticleLawsuit Accuses the City and Lincoln Center of Privatizing a Public Park
Area residents, members of environmental groups, and Damrosch family members gathered on May 21, the 44th anniversary of the Damrosch Park’s opening, to announce the filing of a lawsuit. (all photos ©...
View ArticleThis Land Is Your Land: Bringing a Windswept Space into the Public Domain
View of the “This is the Public Domain land in August 2007 (all images courtesy the artist) Since 2003, San Francisco-based artist Amy Balkin has worked to transfer ownership of a windswept parcel of...
View ArticleA Small Protest Against a Public Street Turned Private in Queens
(all images via @kaufmanastoria/Instagram) Did you know that, if you have enough money in New York City, you can buy a public street? OK, not buy, but lease one, for a really long time. That’s what...
View ArticleNotes from the Participatory Budgeting Underground
Shehab Chowdhury speaking to those gathered for the Oct 22, 2014 participatory budgeting meeting in Brooklyn, NY’s 39th District focused on Arts, Community & Culture (all photos by author for...
View ArticleCreating Community Space Inside a Dumpster
John Locke and Joaquin Reyes’s Inflato Dumpster (all images courtesy John Locke) Of all the places to set up an “inflatable classroom” and community event space, a dumpster seems among the most...
View ArticleLawsuit Decries Limited Access to New York’s Publicly Funded Mass Grave
Photograph by Jacob Riis of a trench at the Hart Island potter’s field (1860) (via Museum of the City of New York) Supported by tax payers on a city-owned island, New York City’s potter’s field is one...
View ArticleObama’s Presidential Library May Gobble Up Historic Chicago Parkland
Washington Park in Chicago (photo via Wikimedia Commons) Is it wrong to commandeer space intended for public enjoyment to bolster a political legacy? That’s a question US President Barack Obama will...
View ArticleBringing New York City’s Underpasses Out of the Shadows and into Public Space
Broadway and Flushing Avenue under the elevated JMZ subway line in Brooklyn (© Krisanne Johnson, all images courtesy Design Trust for Public Space) Over 700 miles of underdeveloped space are in the...
View ArticleMobile “Food Forest” to Float the NYC Waterways in Spring 2016
Rendering for Swale, the floating food forest designed for the New York Harbor (courtesy Mary Mattingly) New York City was once identified as much by tall ships as tall buildings — Walt Whitman...
View ArticleReclaiming Vacant Public Land through Design
A 596 Acres map on a vacant lot (photo by Eric Fischer/Flickr) At the end of 2015, 34 community gardens in New York City were protected from destruction. The gardens, some of which were on land owned...
View ArticleA Performance Satirizes the Policing of Public Space
Security guards for Catherine Ryan and Amy Spiers’s “No More Public Space, Only Public Order (Water Cannon)” (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic) HOBART, Tasmania — She glared and said, “You...
View ArticleRethinking Life Beneath Our Cities’ Concrete Overpasses
Shepherd’s Bush IV, London, UK (2014) (© Gisela Erlacher, all images courtesy Park Books) With the rapid development of transportation infrastructure in the 20th century, much of our urban land was...
View Article12 NYC Architecture and Design Organizations Demand Protection of Public Space
The November 20 Rally to Protect Progress in Diversity Plaza, Jackson Heights, Queens (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) In a letter sent to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, 12 area...
View ArticleAn Online Platform Tracks the Suppression of Civic Freedoms Worldwide
CIVICUS Monitor (screenshot by the author for Hyperallergic) Over three billion people on Earth live in countries where the civic space for free expression, peaceful assembly, or free association is...
View ArticleArtist Launches Campaign to Call Out Hostile Urban Design
Benches in Bournemouth (all images courtesy Stuart Semple) From spikes installed on window ledges to bars that divide benches into a set number of seats, examples of disciplinary architecture —...
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