Planning the Future of NYC

I immigrated to Brooklyn from St. Petersburg with my parents, aunt and grandfather in the March of 1993. We arrived in the middle of a snowstorm and one of my first memories on American soil is of my father going out to buy groceries with canvas produce bags in his pocket. We certainly were not the front runners of the green movement. We were complete newcomers to the system, unaware of some of the smallest details of everyday life in New York. We were also only one family out of the immigration wave of thousands who arrived in NYC in an attempt to make it in the new world. 

I attended the lecture on the rights of immigrants and development of facilities available to immigrants because I was curious to see what had changed and what hadn’t in the past decade. The lecture was about the new ways that immigrants would be taken care of in hospitals and emergency clinics, as well as in other municipal facilities. The two female lecturers spoke about housing, financial help, medical care, education, language development and assimilation. A large portion of time was devoted to speaking about enhancing the service that non-English speaking residents were facing in hospitals. Many issues were discussed but one in particular caused me to react strongly. The speaker had mentioned that because the list of services and application forms were translated in as many as 10 different languages, immigrants had the right to demand the forms in their native language and even to demand a translator who would sit with them. Having acknowledged that many elderly people bring their younger relatives to the hospital as translators, the speaker took time to explain that this specific practice was discouraged. Instead, the speaker proposed that an elderly immigrant experiencing pain and thrown into the confusing heap of medical history applications in unfamiliar environment was going to benefit more from having to demand that he be given medical care in the attendance of a translator who would take pains to to describe clearly what the doctor was doing. It seems to be that this idea is arrogant and insensitive to the the actual needs of immigrant patients. Imagine an old sick woman, struggling to formulate even a simple sentence in English. From who will she make demands? Of what demands that she can make does she know? It would all erupt in a painful spectacle. 

It seems like increasing the availability of  English courses would alleviate the problem. Unfortunately, a little bit later in the lecture I learned that the first programs that suffer because of financial woes are those that provide English lessons to seniors of the immigrant community.

NYPL Digital Gallery archives interesting photos of NYC - an especially good place to look for historical photographs of the city.

Hi everyone - Post your comments on the common events by going to the “Discussion Posts” tab (top of screen), selecting the appropriate common event from the dropdown menu. Then click”edit this entry” at the bottom of the page.

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Alternatively, go into the dashboard and click on “pages”, “edit”, and select the common events page you would like to add to……

I attended the seminar about food sustainability and distribution to lower-income city residents on February 26. At the end of the lectures, which were given by two different women, I understood that healthy food is difficult for lower-income residents to come by. This is, of course, comes as no surprise. Especially in a city like New York where everything costs an inordinate amount of money, finding a decent, healthy meal is something that poses worry even to those who don’t live paycheck to paycheck.

My mother and I really like the farmer’s markets that come to my neighborhood on Sundays because they usually sell the most delicious fruits and bread. The main problem, however, is that everything is pretty pricey. Despite the price, my mother continues to buy apples and various vegetables from the markets. She has the option to do that, but lower income families cannot, especially when cheap, heavily processed foods are not only cheaper, but more filling. In the lecture, we were told about how food stamps are being used at these farmer’s markets so that those who need assistance have more of an option to purchase fresh, organic produce.

However, the amount of money that stamps or other kinds of assistance provide are so low as to be mostly insignificant. Lower-income families would certainly need to subsidize their spending habits at farmer’s markets with their own money, which often isn’t possible. It’s an admirable idea to make farmer’s products more available to those who can’t afford it, especially because times are also difficult for the farmers themselves. However, it’s also unrealistic, and I believe that the effort is a bit wasted.

I have always been interested in solar power. That’s why I chose to attend Solar One and Pratt Institute seminar. I expected the second speaker to offer information complementing our class material. In Solar One I expected a more general oration on the current methods and common knowledge about photovoltaic plates. I was pleasantly surprised when Chris Neidl presented the Empire State Social Initiative (ESSI). This plan reminded me of the great visions by urban planners such as Frank Lloyd Wright because of the magnitude of the plan. The basic goal is to create a 100-fold increase of PVs in ten years by going through Albany, a feat in today’s economy. Neidl also described five reasons for utilizing solar power, one of which I ddn’t even know, which is that solar power can benefit the eletricity grid. That presentation informed me that there is a concrete plan to turn New York into the solar capital of the country. Ron Shiffman delved into the concrete topics we discussed in class. As I expected, much of what he said went along with our class discussion. Overall I agreed with what he said, the main idea of which was to not neglect those who are not as privelaged as others.

For your final project, you may need to embed a map - I suggest learning how to build and save your own google map. When finished, maps can be embedded into many domains including blogs, wikis, and powerpoint.

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Especially for the groups working on Coney Island and Columbia/Manhattanville, you may want to look at data and information available at:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/html/nyc_feedback/nyc_feedback.shtml

There are neighborhood score cards, rating systems, summaries of what people think about quality of life in the neighborhood and so on…