Welcome to New York City!
It’s been many months of planning for us to get here, but after numerous information sessions, prep classes, an application process, and many hours spent looking for housing/internships, we all finally made it to New York City for Orientation on September 2nd to kick off the second-ever urban planning batch of AAP NYC.
A program that was started by Cornell’s planning department last year, the 2014 fall semester of AAP NYC has brought together a unique mix of 16 Master of Regional Planning and Master of Landscape Architecture students for the first time. Led by AAP NYC Executive Director Bob Balder, we will be spending four months here working on a range of client projects, expanding our professional networks, learning the ins and outs of project management, honing our urban design skills, and expanding our knowledge of the planning, design, and development scene here in the city.
Week At-a-Glance
Our schedule is pretty packed, with two days a week reserved for internships, three for classes, and weekends for neighborhood tours and site visits. Although the architecture students have a separate schedule, the graduate planning and landscape architecture cohort takes four core courses:
- CRP 5072: Land Use Workshop: 5 groups, each doing its own a professional report for an actual client. This year’s projects include an arts district for northern Staten Island, a revitalization plan for Staten Island’s South Shore historic town centers, reactivating Long Island City’s waterfront, a user assessment of the Q70 MTA bus line to LaGuardia Airport, and a neighborhood impact study for the Brooklyn Public Library.
- CRP 5850: Urban Design Studio: Researching and designing affordable infill housing solutions for Baruch Houses, a NYCHA public housing project on Manhattan’s Lower East Side
- CRP 5850: Green Infrastructure: An elective course examining New York City’s urban infrastructure, covering topics such as energy, transportation, and stormwater management. Concludes in a final project to design an innovative infrastructure system for an island.
- CRP 5850: Professional Planning Colloquium: A series of guest speakers who graduated from the City and Regional Planning program at Cornell and are now working in New York City. Includes the preparation of professional development materials, as well as attendance at local conferences, such as the 2014 Municipal Arts Society Summit.
In addition to coursework, many of us are working at part-time internships on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. My primary interest in planning is on the physical side, especially the intersection of land use, urban design, alternative transportation and public health. Hence, I am excited to work for a leading national transportation engineering and planning firm this semester! I work in the Garment and Floral District near Mid-town Manhattan, so it’s fun to walk through and experience all of the street activity coming to and from my office. Weekends and evenings are also pretty packed, as we try to fill the little time we have not spent in studio with tours to prominent planning and development sites around the city – be on the lookout for my posts about those!
If you’re ever in the City, come visit us! Our studio is currently at 50 W. 17th Street in Chelsea/Union Square, but the program will be moving next semester to the Financial District. Check out the planned new studio here, set to open in February 2015 for the next cohort of AAP NYC’ers.