October 2021 Newsletter
Apprenticeships: Not Just for the Trades Anymore Exploring lessons learned from Hostos Community College’s Community Health Worker apprenticeship program Apprenticeships have historically been confined to the trades, providing on-the-job training opportunities and...
Why you should be paying attention to urban placemaking
What is Urban Placemaking? Urban Placemaking is not necessarily a new practice, but it is gaining prominence among planners throughout the United States. Contemporary placemaking emerged in the 1960s through the works of Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte, who based...
Twenty Years Later: Reflecting on how the response to 9/11 changed community engagement and planning in NYC
In the wake of 9/11 New Yorkers and community members across the region responded in droves, hoping to find some way to help and heal from the attack. This coming together helped to usher in a new standard for community engagement and planning in New York City, the...
We Have Options: Building Awareness Around NYC’s Mental Health Helpline, NYC Well
From the coverage of Simone Biles’ mental health struggles at the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympics, to concern about the devastating collective toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on all of us, there is a growing public focus on developing appropriate responses to mental health...
Composing a Rendering: 5 Tips from an Insider
Urban planners, landscape architects, architects, and designers of all kinds use renderings as a way to show clients conceptual ideas for a given space. This allows the audience to visualize a range of elements from aesthetics to function. While every firm and...
Why aren’t more NYC transit riders using OMNY?
In July, the MTA announced that one in six transit rides fares were paid using the OMNY system. OMNY (One Metro New York) is the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) new contactless payment option, which is set to fully replace MetroCards in 2023. There are a...
Ready to dive into the deep end? NY has a plan so everyone can, safely
Summertime is here in NYC, which means lots of overheated New Yorkers are looking for fun ways to cool off. While the past year has brought about many new opportunities to use public spaces, such as the NYC Department of Transportation’s (DOT) Open Streets and Open...
Five Tips for Nonprofit Budget Analysis
The pandemic continues to impact nonprofits, both increasing the demand for their services and decreasing the availability of funding for them. In a survey of 66 nonprofits conducted by Nonprofit New York, 64% of New York nonprofits experienced a disruption of...
Urban planners: what do they do?
There is a common saying that “all cities are similar, but no two cities are the same.” If you stop to think about it, cities have unique qualities which have been strategically planned based on their respective histories and cultural influences, shaping them into...
Electric vehicles are coming. Is New York ready?
Electric transportation is getting a lot of attention these days, and with good reason. Transportation was the largest contributor of greenhouse gases in 2019 in the United States, producing 29% of total emissions according to the EPA. Fortunately, electric vehicle...