The Joys and Miseries of Walking and Public Transit in New York City explores various transportation modes (walking, the NYC Ferry, the Roosevelt Island Tramway, the NYC Bus, and the NYC subway). Various transportation modes are not merely means to get from one place to another including some major points of interests while traversing parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, but an experience of place.

Participants can experience the uplifts (joys), daily hassles (miseries) and unpredictability (TBD) of everyday life in New York City. Various transportation modes allow to experience the city via diverse sensory experiences and different perspectives: from the water, from above, from the streets, from underground. This allows for a comparison of different transportation modes within New York City and between other cities. It further allows for explorations of concepts such as environmental competence and how moving-through an environment may relate to health and well-being, environmental justice, and sustainability.

The distance and time of this walking tour is 1.45 miles and 90 minutes total (includes time to stop and discuss each stop). This tour is designed to examine green infrastructure in the Gowanus neighborhood through the lens of environmental justice and the implications of environmental gentrification. We begin the walk at Wyckoff Gardens, one of the three public housing campuses in the neighborhood. There, we will explore community gardens planted by residents and youth. We will then look at 2 bioswales (rain gardens) and make observations about them, and the role of environmental policy tied to stormwater mitigation in Black and Brown low-income neighborhoods. Our next stop brings us to Gowanus Houses, the largest public housing campus in the neighborhood eponymously named. This gives participants a chance to see residential action for green spaces, highlighting the importance of advocacy and resources to make a space thrive. From there, we will trek through the noise pollution provided by the construction of the new publicly accessible waterfront esplanade and explore the oldest section of the revitalized waterfront. This allows walkers to learn about the city’s sewage system and the Superfund project. This location also boasts one of the largest bioswales in the area, Sponge Park, where we will also look at some installed mussel habitats by local high school students and the Gowanus Dredgers, and discuss the importance of outdoor recreation on the human psyche. We will then cross the 3rd Street Bridge and enter the Whole Foods parking lot to examine how a grocery store can provide green spaces, green and grey infrastructure, and a public space for shoppers and pedestrians to gather along the waterfront. Finally, we will stop at the 6th Street Green Corridor, a location of 11 bioswales, and discuss what green infrastructure can provide for our city both environmentally and for human health.

The largest building boom in New York City is occurring in one of the most notoriously polluted neighborhoods, Gowanus, Brooklyn. Gowanus is hot; by some accounts there are over 140 development projects in the works. Here, along the banks of a contaminated canal, a new city is rising, as luxury apartment buildings sporting amenities like rooftop pools replace the old industrial fabric of the formerly heavy manufacturing district.

For close to 150 years there was no regulation of what was dumped into the water, on the land or released in the air, yet from as early as the turn of the 20th century, scientists began to study the public health concerns related to the toxic pollution in and around the Gowanus Canal. The pollution in the water was visible, giving the waterway the nickname Lavender Lake for its murky, milky purple hue. Writing about the smell of the waterway in 1906, a researcher called the canal “an open sewer, a menace to health, a public nuisance and a disgrace to the city.”

Well into the early 21st century this slow violence was allowed to continue, but in 2010 decades of local activism finally spurred government action to clean it up. This walking tour takes us to several sites in the neighborhood that illuminate how residents and workers, witnessing the sights, smells, and sounds of the environment, used embodied wisdom to guide action. The environment shaped their activism, which in turn shaped Gowanus. The tour includes historic and contemporary sites that demonstrate visionary activism as well as ongoing pollution that continues to despoil the environment, even as 1000s of new residents move in.

Dredgers launch (touching water)

Green Building (seeing history / heritage)

Bayside Fuel (seeing pollution)

Pump Building (smelling waterway)

CSOs & storage facility (seeing & smelling)

ASPCA (seeing/ medallion with horse + water trough)

New York City is home to an extensive open-air gallery of murals, street art, and graffiti, but no other neighborhood protects its public art like the community of East Harlem. From political art to celebrations of local heroes, murals that call for cultural solidarity, and memorial murals that honor deceased loved ones, the street art scene in East Harlem reflects the rich history and diverse cultural backgrounds of its residents.

For this walking tour, we will visit 10 distinct street art sites that reflect important historical moments, make visible contested geographies and calls for unity, and express a range of styles, ideas, and aesthetics. We will see well-funded, state-sponsored beautification projects alongside grassroots community-engaged initiatives and experience the different textures and depths of diverse mediums such as photography, mosaic, yarn, and aerosol. Join us for this journey through time and across cultures as we learn more about the lived experiences of East Harlem’s residence through art.