Pier 1 is the first of Brooklyn Bridge Park’s six pier-to-park segments to open.  This segment really emphasizes the park’s views of Lower Manhattan as a primary asset: key features include a series of newly constructed rolling hills, a massive staircase (made of of granite reclaimed from the demolition of the Roosevelt Island Bridge), several lawns, a 1,300-foot waterfront promenade and a small playground. 

Engineers at Solar Roadways, a renewable energy start-up based in Idaho, have completed a prototype for a multi-layered, energy-generating road surface.  The company says that when installed, Solar Roadway would generate and store energy through photovoltaic (PV) cells, each cell capable of managing it’s own electricity generation, storage and distribution.

Urban Biofilter, a project of environmental advocacy non-profit Earth Island Institute, aims to plant bamboo forests on brownfield sites along industrial and transportation routes.  The planted zones are intended to remediate the wastewater they are fed, reduce stormwater runoff and filter gases, contaminants and metal pollutants out of the local airshed. 

It might come as some surprise to learn that Texas, that oil industry stronghold, is the leader in wind power generation in the US. Existing facilities there are capable of generating over 9,410MW of energy from the wind, almost two and a half times that of the state with the next highest capacity, Iowa (3,870 MW).

UK website Next Generation Food has produced a clear information graphic about food waste that puts forth some staggering statistics:

• A report in Plos One at the end of 2009 found that per capita food waste in the US is 50 percent greater than in 1974, now equivalent to 1400 calories per person per day. 

Now that the City of New York has decided to make the pedestrian plazas in Times Square permanent, the New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), in partnership with the Times Square Alliance, has issued a Request for Proposals for conceptual designs of short-term “refreshes” of the plazas. 

Renewable energy forecasting firm 3TIER provides among its services “prospecting tools” for renewable energy, indicating where the placement of wind and solar energy production sites make the most sense based on available resources of wind and sunlight.

There are, of course, a number of other factors that affect ultimate decisions about siting: while renewable energy is generally perceived positively, the logistics and costs of operating facilities have remained daunting even for big energy providers like National Grid. 

The National Park Service has launched the Designing the Parks Annual Awards Program, aimed at honoring “the role and significance of public parks in community life and the importance of innovative, responsive, high quality planning and design.”  Awards appear to be purely honorary but intended to boost awareness of and support for the NPS’s key principles of park design:

• Reverence for place
• Engagement of all people
• Expansion beyond traditional boundaries
• Advancement of sustainability
• Informed decision making
• An integrated research, planning, design, and review process

The call for submissions is open to built and publicly open parks throughout the world, administered by all levels of government. 

Information and reflection on plastic marine pollution continues to increase: as if the Great Pacific Garbage Patch weren’t cause for enough distress,the Sea Education Association (SEA) recently completed a two-decade study on the Atlantic Ocean and  reports that a large volume of discarded plastic also floats in the North Atlantic Gyre, trapped together by ocean currents and causing harm to fish and bird species inhabiting the area.

Artist Luke Jerram is preparing an outdoor ‘acoustic pavilion’ called Aeolus, which will be built of hundreds of metal tubes acting as Aeolian harps.  Each tube will contain strings which will strike chords inside the structure as the wind passes over them, making the whole structure sing. 

The University of British Columbia is currently in construction of what it claims will be the “greenest building in North America”: its new $37 million Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability.  Making use of fuel cells, solar panels, solar hot water heaters, ground source heat pumps and biomass co-generation, the building will be a net energy producer and serve as a living laboratory for all of these technologies. 

The EPA has named Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal a federal Superfund site, thus identifying it as one of “the most complex, uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous waste sites in the country” and making it a target for a comprehensive clean-up process.  The agency estimates that clean-up will last 10 to 12 years and cost between $300 million and $500 million, with funding to draw from parties responsible for the canal’s contamination (so far, the City of New York, the US Navy and seven private companies including Consolidated Edison and National Grid have been identified as potentially responsible). 

Mayor Thomas W. Danehy Park in Cambridge, Massachusetts is a 50-acre site with a similar history to the Freshkills Park site: clay deposits onsite attracted brick manufacturing uses in the 19th century; wet, low ground led to landfilling operations in the mid-20th century; local activism and political pressure led to late 20-th century landfill closure and, ultimately, to park construction.

Fresh Kills Landfill Percent for Art artist Mierle Ukeles will be moderating a panel discussion on “engaging the environment” through artistic practice, with Winter Workspace Artists Susan Benarcik, Eve Mosher and Anne Katrin Spiess, Sunday at Wave Hill in the Bronx. 

The New York Public Library (NYPL) has unveiled a beta version of their map rectifier tool, a feature that allows users to digitally align or “rectify” historical maps from the NYPL collection with today’s maps and aerial photos.  You can browse previously rectified maps or sign up for an account to align your own and add it to the browse-able archive. 

Quinnipiac University in Connecticut is completing installation of a 32,000 kWh wind farm on their York Hill campus.  The project is considered to be a first on an American college campus, and the energy generated by these 25 vertical-axis micro-turbines, which vary in height from 35 to 45 feet, will power half of the external lights on the 250-acre campus. 

Bay Area environmental artist Mark Brest Van Kempen makes work that reflects on the relationship between human and natural systems.  Since the 1980s, Brest van Kempen has combined architecture, infrastructure and ecology in a series of projects at varying scales.  At the gallery scale, his installation Cleaning System (2000) monitored the passage of laundry wastewater through a filtration pond with plants, tadpoles and fish before it was channeled outdoors to water plants. 

Currently on view at the Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor in Staten Island is Hope-A-Holic, a group exhibition of 21 artists exploring Utopian ideas in contemporary work. The show features installation, drawing, painting, video, performance and interactive works.

CUNY’s Institute for Sustainable Cities is hosting a four-part series of free public seminars starting this Wednesday, February 24th.  Turning the Tide: New York’s Waterfront in Transition aims to address topics and issues related to the City’s relationship with its coastline and to review its history and future of waterfront development. 

The Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation has released plans for Pier 4, one of six piers along Brooklyn’s northern waterfront that will be incorporated into the in-development Brooklyn Bridge Park.  The Pier 4 site, like the rest of the 85-acre park, has been designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, Inc.