Second Newark Site Visit
31 March, 2018
On a sunny Saturday morning, the students met at Broad Street station in Newark to start the second site visit. This time, the students plan to focus specifically on the Lower Broadway Neighborhood; looking at the Commercial Corridor, Residential/Institutional Open Space, Gateway, and Streetscape.
The Commercial Corridor analysis consists of examining the existing businesses, the businesses' interactions with people, vacant land, and streetscape ideas. Their findings consisted of: finding a large flea market at the North End of the corridor, a central hub that can be formed into a meeting place residents and visitors, and lots of vacant land, some of which are already in development for residential housing or parking.
The Residential/Institutional Open Space group looked at existing open space and the differences between how residents and institutions use these spaces. They explored existing community gardens as well as possible sites for opportunities. Their findings consisted of: many spaces were dilapidated or difficult to activate due to their current ownership.
The Gateway group focused on access to the site, specifically near Broad Street station and the parcel of land across from it. Their findings show that their is a lack of signage recognizing Lower Broadway to the rest of Newark, physically walking into the site is difficult and dangerous due to a large underpass, and their is a lot of potential for programming use on both sides of the 280 underpass.
The final group, the Streetscape group, focused on developing a historical/health focused walk throughout the site that can better educate the residents and visitors of Lower Broadway. This walk will help create a trail that runs through the site that connects to the gateway, along with all of the sections we delineated.
To recap our walk, the groups came together back at Broad Street Station and talked about next steps. The consensus of all the groups was that Lower Broadway is a bustling center of life and culture within Newark, and has lots of potential to be a place people want to visit, and more importantly, want to live.
Design Charette
22 March, 2018
The students of the studio spent the day splitting into three groups and performing a design charette for the Lower Broadway study site. A charette, according to Google, is “a meeting in which all stakeholders in a project attempt to resolve conflicts and map solutions.” In terms of the studio, the students split into three groups, looking at Ecological Systems, Urban Identity, and Transportation respectively. These topics guided the students to resolve conflicts for the Study Site, and recognize areas of potential for interventions.
The Ecological Systems team had three goals for a concept: to create green connections to Branch Brook Park, to reduce storm water runoff by reducing impervious surface, and identify lots to be converted to public green spaces. The Urban Identity team found high density commercial spaces and plans to convert them into gathering spaces, dining spaces, passive spaces, etc. They also looked at residential spaces, specifically underutilized or vacant lots, and plan to convert these lots into spaces for residents, programming by local institutions, and so on. Finally, the Transportation team developed a network between commercial, transit and open space by highlighting the main flow of pedestrian traffic.
Presentation Recap
20 March, 2018
Today the class had an informal presentation to the departmental staff here in the Landscape Architecture program. The purpose of this pin-up was to display current work and discuss the next steps and focuses of the design for the Lower Broadway area.
The pin-up started with a video of our previous site visits, produced by Alex C. and Tina. This video displayed the various districts of Newark. This video (displayed in the post) shows the separation of cultural and structural districts within Newark.
Following the video our group discussed the studios objectives and reading material. This includes introduction work such as literature provided by the Lower Broadway Association, by Jason. The history group, Meng and Alexis, presented a map of Newark's boundaries over time, from the 1800's to current era; as well as a visual representation of Newark's history over time.
Following the history and literature reviews was Emily's graph of social networks. This showed the community organization and funding networks.Afterwards, the class displayed mapping work. This was presented by Devin, Wes, Jin Jang, Alex and Michael. The maps consisted of site analysis, psychogeographic (mood) maps, and inventory of the Lower Broadway area.
From this presentation, the studio realized how many challenges upcoming design work will face. Issues such as zoning laws, gentrification, public reception, and redevelopment and how this effects quality of life within the area.
Class Viewing of Citizen Jane | The Battle for the City
22 Feb, 2018
Last Thursday, we viewed the movie Battle for the City, which looked back to the era of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, recalling how the their two opposing views played out.Robert Moses was a strong advocate for new development. His solutions were in response to legitimate issues, like famine, poverty, and inadequate housing through out New York City.
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| (Photo of Jane Jacobs, Source: Frank Lennon/Getty Images) |
During his reign, from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, he built bridges and new apartment complexes in and around New York City., first as parks commissioner, then as the director of construction. Unfortunately, all his work, following the nationwide implementation of urban renewal, was making cities less livable by razing neighborhoods or cutting through them with new roads and highways.
This is where Jane Jacobs came in; her and many others understood how bad the decisions Moses and his people were making, but Jacobs was the first with enough guts to challenge the development crew.
This ties into what the studio is doing in Newark. While Jacobs pointed out the
destructive tendencies of intense development efforts, she wasn’t necessarily
providing an urban design path of action beyond suggestions for more human engagement, which was still, a significant effort. In the years after her successes, many
people have worked on ways to reverse the damage of urban renewal.
The process of inventory, analysis and research into Newark so far plays a big
part in the planning and design of a successful and healthy city.
Researching, Sketching, & Gathering Our Thoughts
16 Feb, 2018
After filtering through all of the collected data and information of Newark, the studio is ready to begin to continue developing graphics and visuals that can be easily interrupted for future community and organization outreach meetings.
Historic Timeline of Newark!
A group of students have taken charge in organizing a timeline for the history of Newark categorizing into four groups: Industry, People and Places, Politics, Landuse, Infrustructure
A quick time-lapse of developing the timeline
Sketching Newark's StreetScapes
Students sketched up Newark from memory of the site visit depicting the different streetscapes throughout the city. Then the studio compared the memory sketches to sketches drawn from the pictures taken during the site visits. The streetscape consists of the street, store-fronts, sidewalks, street trees, cars, pedestrians and many other elements that can be found on a street.
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| A Developing Psychogeographic Map of Newark |
Studio Meeting
Students gather to describe the opportunities and constraints for the city of Newark. They think of questions to ask members of Rutgers Water Resources and Ecological Professors.
What to do with all of this data?!01 Feb, 2018
Upon returning to the studio, one of the first things to be done was organize the mass amounts of photographs and notes taken during the trip. How could we condense a 24-hour cycle of the city into fewer than 100 pages? 50 pages? 20 pages? Keeping in mind we had to leave some room on the studio walls for comments, maps, brochures, we decided to try and get it down to 5 pages of photographs per zone. It was a challenge in itself trying to categorize it all by districts, streets, objects, let alone deciding what was information important and what could be left off of the walls. Eventually we narrowed it down to a collage of images that best expressed the districts and neighborhoods in which they were taken, accompanied by any additional comments and descriptions.
First impressions from a student
01 Feb, 2018
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| Image of Market St. by Alexis Lo |
"After visiting the city, we saw so much that I would never expect to see especially with the cultural diversity. It appears to be a miniature version of New York City broken up into cultural sectors based on ethnicity, religion, and race. The city is filled with life in the downtown area and historical preserved in the northern section of the North Ward.
My thoughts of Newark changed as we progressed throughout the excursion. There was never a boring moment whether I felt out of my comfort zone or when I felt this form of blissfulness walking through the snow-covered Branch Brook Park. Newark gave me the “roller-coaster effect” of thrills and excitement. Overall, I enjoyed my time visiting Newark from the tourist’s perspective. I could only imagine the difference of when living in the city due to the diversity of people and places.
Moving forward, our studio collected data by documenting the excursion so now it is time to filter through and try to find patterns or significant differences that we may not have noticed at the moment. I am excited and still somewhat cautious to proceed in working with the Newark Community to hopefully gain their trust to progress with a final design and understanding of what is wanted/needed."
Alex Ciorlian 3rd Year Landscape Architect / Environmental Design Undergrad
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