"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"


Margaret Mead, Anthropologist
(used with permission)



"If you don't like the news .... go out and make some of your own !!"

Wes "Scoop" Nisker, Newscaster



INTRODUCTION

Government is a slow and tedious process. While it often includes citizen and neighborhood involvement, non-governmental, private organizations have created movements and interesting groups which can create positive change in our cities and towns.

I am fascinated by the way groups are created and how they influence public decision making. This blog merely recognizes them and forwards the description of these groups from their own websites.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Urban Omnibus

Location: New York, NY

Website: www.urbanomnibus.org.

Urban Omnibus is an online publication dedicated to defining and enriching the culture of citymaking. We explore projects and perspectives in architecture, art, policy, and activism – tried and tested in New York City – that offer new ways of understanding, representing, and improving urban life and landscape worldwide.

The publication consists of three principal streams of online content. Each of our weekly features showcases and contextualizes original and exemplary ideas for interpreting or intervening in the built environment of New York. Regular posts to our forum offer recaps and reviews of lectures, exhibitions, and symposia as well as a weekly roundup of news, updates on feature topics, and suggestions of upcoming events of interest to our readers. Quarterly special projects include longer-term multimedia productions, often in collaboration with other organizations or in coordination with Architectural League programs, exhibitions, or design studies.

In broader terms, we provide a platform for the presentation of innovative projects and the insights of individual thinkers and practitioners, among them journalists, architects, planners, designers, artists, activists, scholars, and citizens. Regular visitors can expect to find the presentation of contemporary visual art alongside urban policy polemics, ecological initiatives, interviews with urbanists or architectural proposals. Crucial to our work is the steadfast belief that each of these types of work is an equally valid way of advancing public understanding of cities, promoting a more sustainable and equitable built environment, and fostering a more stimulating and participatory urban culture. Please help us to realize this vision by supporting Urban Omnibus or becoming a member of the Architectural League.

Urban Omnibus launched in January of 2009, a time of economic uncertainty, political opportunity, and profound optimism about the sheer range of projects that sought to make the built environment of New York City a little bit smarter, fairer, or greener. The quantity, diversity, and inter-disciplinarity of these projects, however, hadn’t managed to bubble up into a citywide conversation. So, we sought to create a space for that conversation by encouraging greater intimacy with the intentional choices that shape the city’s physical form and social experience. To learn more, read “Why Urban Omnibus?“, a forum post by Rosalie Genevro, the League’s executive director, published when the site first launched.

We post a new feature each Wednesday, with posts to our forum throughout the week. So please check back often. You can also subscribe to our RSS feed, or follow us on Facebook and Twitter. For anything else, you can reach us via email at info (at) urbanomnibus (dot) net.

Unless otherwise specified, all material on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.

RECURRING SERIES

Act Local spotlights innovative projects and organizations whose field of action is a particular patch of New York. The series collects perspectives on how locally-based initiatives affect design and building at the urban scale.

Make it Visible showcases innovative strategies in communicating and explicating complex or hidden urban conditions and processes.

Sites + Projects profiles exemplary and interdisciplinary architectural interventions in the city’s fabric.

Unseen Machine exposes the technologies that keep the city running day-to-day and introduces the characters and designs involved in maintaining, managing, and re-imagining the systems that make New York work.

Vanguard visualizes groundbreaking new technologies and ideas and examines their impact and the design process behind their development.

Walks and Talks introduces figures involved in the design, building and ‘thinking’ of the city — informally and in their own words — ranging from city commissioners to architects to community activists to artists. The series will profile both well-known and unrecognized voices in private practice, scholarship, public service, and local leadership.

Writing the City envisions New York City through written reflection and opinion.

At the League alerts you to Omnibus-relevant events, public programs, podcasts, and other goings-on at our parent organization, the Architectural League of New York, one of America’s premier forums for the presentation and discussion of creative and intellectual work in architecture and urbanism.

Live Events fills you in on upcoming field trips and recaps of past happenings presented by Urban Omnibus.

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