joe singer's blog

I’ve to decide to critique the website Eco Tourism Blog for today’s entry. I’m an Environment Policy major and love to travel, so I thought it was a very nice blend of the two.

Front page

Strengths

• Excellent well-written posts
• Colorful and attractive visual aids
• Easy to find and use tagging widget
• Comments show up when you select the article, makes the main page look cleaner
• You don’t need an account to comment; you can log in with facebook
• Because there’s so many articles, there’s something for everybody
• gray background theme makes photos jump out
• many posts on the home page encourage you to read more
• includes an archives for the last three years
• site is moderately fast
• has an amazing coverage, several different counties all over the world

Weakness

• Childish advertisements make the site look less legitimate
• Ads are very cluttered and distracting
• Logo looks outdated and blends in with ads
• The top article on the page is from 2008

Opportunities

• Have links to other, more specific sites if the reading wishes to get more information about a place
• Have ads from relevant businesses like National Geographic or AAA
• Tell the audience upfront what experience and training the staff has

Threats

• Because the tags (more or less categories) are halfway down the website, people not give the site because the information they’re looking for isn’t immediately visible.
• has many links to youtube videos embedded on it, which for some reason never seem to work
• hasn’t been updated with a new post in two years
• little reason to go to the site over and over again

The original piece “Developing Brooklyn”, which was shown on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer in 2005, can be found here.

Controversy

A developer by the name of Bruce Ratner laid out a massive proposal of redeveloping Brooklyn which was backed by some very influential people including the mayor, the governor, and a fair housing organization. At first, it seemed like a great plan. He was going to tear out an old train yard, build some affordable houses for 65,000 people, and just for the fun of it, a new arena for the New Jersey Nets. The fishy part of plan is that he was going to tear down hundreds of  existing homes (some worth over a million dollars) and then let the original people move back into brand new homes under the exact same rate they were paying before. Why? Is he just that nice of a guy? I can see the point in redoing an abandoned train yard to create new housing. However, I don’t see the point in tearing down existing housing, building new housing, then charging them the same rate.

Not surprisingly, the citizens were outraged. Many had lived and worked there their whole lives and did not want to see their community changed. So why bother? The reason given to them was that Brooklyn could no longer compete with the outside world if it remained the way it was. The low-rise community was seen by the developer as old fashioned. That seems odd to me because old fashioned, low-rise Washington D.C. seems perfectly able to compete in the world and still provide housing to people at all levels. Maybe, just maybe if the developer had tried to tie in the new housing to compliment historic building, the citizens would welcome it and appreciate the harmony. Instead, they came up with this:

Really?...

Financing It

The developer seems to be approaching this project as a public/private partnership. Candace Carpenter of the group Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn said that they’re “asking for $2 billion in subsidies, which are taxpayers’ money, that will be utilized to line Ratner’s pockets.” Atlantic Yards Report, a watchdog group, wrote that citizens who did not immediately move out were offered $850 a square foot for their home, which was apparently paid for with public funds (source). A large some of private money would come in from the basketball arena; tentatively called Barclays Arena. Atlantic Yards Report also wrote that naming rights for the arena would be $200 million for 20 years.

One Last Thought

I noticed one very interesting thing in this video: almost all of the people who were for developing Brooklyn, indeed did not live there. This includes Mayor Bloomberg of  Manhattan, Governor Pataki of Peekskill, New York, the ACORN spokeswomen from Chicago, and the developer Bruce Ratner of Cleveland. Because of this, I feel a sense of empathy for the citizens who actaully live there. A bunch of outsiders came to there town, told them they can’t compete in the world, then forcefully changed there homes in an attempt to “help” them. As one woman said “As one woman said “we don’t want to Manhattanize Brooklyn.” Maybe the video just didn’t show them, but it appears to me that there was not a grassroots movement in Brooklyn or a cry for help to the outside. They seemed to be very hardworking people and proud of city just the way it is.

A program statement is important to a project because it keeps everybody on the same page about the goals and outcomes of the project will be, and why it is needed in the first place. They seem to me to be more useful then a artists rendering to give out to the public. This is because with a rendering, people will use there imaginations to fill in anything that the rendering doesn’t cover. Therefore, when they see the completely project, it is easy to be disappointed. With a program statement, people will be excited when they see how the designers were able to pull off the goals they had in mind.

1.Exterior cleaning-The outside of the Epper Complex looks fairly nice and fits in well the rest of the buildings near it. It is in need of a major cleaning and power-washing with a some minor repair work like filling in cracks on bricks and around windows.

2. New desks- The current desks are falling apart in many cases. While this isn’t an exciting part of the renovation, they are very much needed. The students will appreciate a quality surface that is large enough for them. A percentage of them should also be left-handed.

3. New lights in the gyms- They lights are quite dim and have an unwelcoming yellow glow to them.

4. Better HVAC- The current system is either too hot or too cold, and rooms become stuffy with a room full of students. A new system that is energy conscious will be cheaper in the long run.

5. New carpet- Carpet is torn and stained in the most of the classrooms. Heavy-duty mats at all of the exterior doors should trap a lot of the salt that gets tracked through the building in the winter.

6. Install smartboards- These are fairly inexpensive, user friendly, and will professors teach with the technology already provided in the room.

7. Replace floor in the basketball court- The floor is perhaps original to the building and is in bad condition. It is possibly a safety hazard from loose boards or nails.

8. Rename class rooms- The North, Center, South idea confuses students new to the building. They should be numbered with a standard linear format from one end of the building to the other

9. Install signage throughout the buildings with maps- The building is full of hallways that lead to nowhere, oddly placed and ill-marked bathrooms, and scattered offices. Maps should be in every wing along with signs that read in which direction are blocks of numbered classrooms

10. Dedicate the north gym to fencing, make the adjacent gym dedicated to dance and cheerleading- Because of the new Wolfe Center, the activities in the large gym will probably be moved to a better room there. Therefore, we can remove the large curtain and lights and have a room with a permanent padded floor for the cheerleaders. The gym to the furthest north can then be used for fencing with electric strips and mirrors on the walls.