10/7/14 - 10/14/14 Weekly Arts and Urbanism Roundup

Pittsburgh 

Greensburg's Westmoreland Museum of Art receives Nieland Sculpture Collection 
(Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

Five artist, live/work spaces planned in Braddock (Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

How Kickstarter's most funded restaurant is transforming a town (Braddock) (AOL)

From Pittsburgh Winery to Brillo Box: Your guide to Pittsburgh's smaller music venues (Next Pittsburgh)

CMU professor, Mary Shaw earns highest honor in the nation for technological progress (Next Pittsburgh)

Pittsburgh's first urban gardening shop opens in Lawrenceville (Pop City)

At 10 years, City of Asylum Pittsburgh honors five exiled writers  (Pop City)


Cleveland

Brian Hoyer and the Cleveland Browns humiliate The Pittsburgh Steelers (WKYC)

Look who's living car lite in Cleveland (Green City Blue Lake)

A Weekend in Cleveland   (Essential Pittsburgh)

Waterloo Arts District celebrates new streetcape with gallery openings, concerts, new pubs (Cleveland.com)

ARTneo celebrates 30th anniversary at 78th Street Studios next Friday (Cleveland Scene(

Nine Inch Nails, Green Day, Joan Jett, Stevie Ray Vaughan, NWA top nominees for Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015  (Cleveland.com)

Cleveland State University buys naming rights to new RTA bus-rapid line (Cleveland.com)

Cleaning of Allen Art Museum's ceiling at Oberlin reveals gold leaf, paintings and poetry  (WCHS TV)

Akron

Trio inspires Akron middle-schoolers to follow music (Ohio.com)

Youngstown 

A look at last week's Lawn-Con comics festival  (Digging Pitt)

Columbus

Ohio Stadium to host Buckeye Country Superfest Music Festival

Stone Brewing shuns Columbus for Richmond expansion

Other Ohio Arts and Urbanism News

Ohio casino September revenues down from August (Fox 45)

Ohio prisons will use drones as a security measure (Cleveland Scene)

West Virginia and Appalachia

Musicians explore connections between Romanian and Appalachian Folk Music  (WV Public Radio)

Ginseng Reality TV: Cultivating conservation or encouraging extinction?  (WV Public Radio)

Detroit

Adroit Detroit and the re-branding of the Rust Belt (Pop City)

A peek at Beth Olem Cemetary and the Neighborhood destroyed by a GM plant (Model D)

Winners of the 2014 Knight Arts Challenge (Model D)

Other Transit and Urbanism News

Battle of the upstarts: Houston Vs. San Francisco Bay (Joel Kotkin- Daily Beast)

Playable Cities: The city that plays together, stays together. (The Guardian - Sept, 9th)

Where the transit-accessible jobs are in Atlanta (ATL Urbanist)

The driver behind public transit's transformation in Atlanta (Government Technology)

Despite complaints, Houston is the best Texas city for transit access (Houston Chronicle)

Chamber report highlights challenges to Nashville's future growth (Nashville Biz Blog)

Madison poised for next steps to bus rapid transit system (Wisconsin State Journal)

Quote of the week: The neglected American Bus (Human Transit)

Transit-oriented development dominating in major metros (Transit Talk)

Tactical urbanism gaining momentum in San-Diego (KPBS)

Houston: Opportunity urbanism and walkability (Urbanophile)

Why big tech can't save the city (Corner Side Yard)

Diverging fortunes in Portland (New Geography)

Homebuilders offer freebies as booming U.S. markets cool (Ooops!) (Bloomberg News)

Mercedes is making a self-driving semi to change the future of shipping (Wired)

Indianapolis Airport debuts customer service robot

Stats show Indianapolis's violent trend likely to continue (WISHTV)

Ebola epidemic spreads- in pictures (The Guardian) (-warning: upsetting)

Aggressive police seize hundreds of millions of dollars from people not charged with crimes (Washington Post)

Comedy club charges per laugh with facial recognition  (BBC News)

113 year old time capsule in Boston opened (Christian Science Monitor)

Other Arts and Media News

Norway's currency goes abstract (Hyperallergic)

YouTube unveils huge new NYC video production studio (New York Times)

These Indonesian cave paintings may overturn Eurocentric art history  (Hyperallergic)

Cave Art older and more widespread than thought (National Geographic)

Treasure hunter uncovers one of the most significant Viking hoards ever found in Scotland  (Ancient Origins)

How Bureaucrats tried and failed to make TV suck (Reason)

Orlando Arts Scene: It's an urban bus trip (New Geography)

What makes art racist? (Hyperallergic)

Bonhams sets eight new records for modern and contemporary Middle Eastern artists (Art Daily)

Document dump reveals new details in Knoedler Gallery forgery case (The Art Newspaper)

Antiquities collections destroyed in Gaza conflict (The Art Newspaper)

Queens Museum calls for manual labor in the name of art. (Art News)

Reviewing the New York Film Festival (People Magazine)

Must see museum exhibitions during Frieze London  (Art Net)

What are America's top private contemporary art museums? (Art Net)

French museums loan 300 masterworks to Louvre Abu Dhabi  (Art Newspaper)

Open Call New York Urban Design Competition

OK, I just came accross this and I'm actually not too sure what this exactly about.It looks too awesome to ignore and I had to post about it.

Submissions due July 14

"Urban Design Week is a new public festival created
to engage New Yorkers in the fascinating and complex issues of the public realm, and to celebrate the streetscapes, sidewalks, and public spaces at the
heart of city life. Through an open-call ideas competition and a rich roster of discussions, tours, screenings, workshops, and events across the five boroughs, UDW will highlight the fact that cities are made by collective effort, and that each of us can play a part."

Near As I can tell this is an open call to any designer, artist, architect or urbanist with an idea to respond to a particular "NY Challenge"

The challenges themselves are the product of public input--

"Wouldn't it be great if...."

Some challenges are vague-but others are specific concepts-an urbanist, or person with more specific knowledge might flesh out.

A Random Sample

#117 Wouldn’t it be great if...It was actually feasible to get through the crazy intersections in front of Lincoln Center


#585 Wouldn’t it be great if...86th street was closed off to cars and had a light rail running across town.

#473 Wouldn’t it be great if...Flatbush had a green and social center

#306 Wouldn’t it be great if...there were bike commuter depots.

#538 Wouldn’t it be great if...highway underpasses had light installations-slash-pigeon repellers

#455 Wouldn’t it be great if...all that unused (or underused) land underneath the Williamsburg Bridge (Manhattan side) could be put to some productive or recreational use??

#456 Wouldn’t it be great if...building owners had more incentive to convert their rooftops into landscaped spaces, thereby reducing heat island gain and creating more open space for their residents?

#466 Wouldn’t it be great if...people and buildings didn't have to leave all of their garbage on the street in giant piles of bags, and instead had recycling and waste receptacles at the ends of the streets like they do in Europe?

#432 Wouldn’t it be great if...we used more of the old armories around the city for arts and cultural activities, like the one on Park avenue.

By the City / For the City

Calling all Designers: New Yorkers shared hundreds of ways that they think the city’s public realm could be designed to make it smarter, more beautiful and livable, and now we’re asking architects, designers, artists, and urbanists to respond to their challenge!

Now it’s your turn: Look through 500+ ideas we received, define your site, and apply your design skills to give visual form those ideas.

Together, all of these ideas – from citizens and designers alike – will be form a collective portrait of how we imagine the future, a crowdsourced testament to the ingenuity the many people who love this city. All of the submissions will be gathered in the Atlas of Possibility for the Future of New York, an exhibition and book that we’ll launch at this September’s first-ever Urban Design Week.

Check out all the details and ideas here