The title of this post comes from a specific email request. Yes, I take requests!
All right, here’s some non-suicide-inducing news: Mayor Bloomberg in NYC is handing over a big swath of (run down, condemned) city-owned land to a development firm that’s going to create a model green low-income community. (The firm won a design contest.) The details are heavenly:
The proposed project, selected from among five finalists by a jury that included not only architects but a professor of environmental psychology and anthropology, would include an outdoor amphitheater, apartments designed for breezes, a fitness center, wiring for Internet access, “live-work units” for people who work at home, stoops with photovoltaic canopies, even a Christmas tree farm.
“We started out on this process to try to raise the level of design and the level of sustainability for housing not just on this site but with the hope that this could be really a model,” said Shaun Donovan, commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. “Given the responses we got, I think there’s a real opportunity for this to be a project that changes the future of housing in this country.”
Read the whole thing. Savor the feeling. I’ll be back to depress you again later.
