iQuilt: Dotting i’s
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rendering courtesy of iQuilt
As barrels of trash heaved into the pond in Bushnell Park remain there for nearly a week and as the water feature in the playground nearby continues to be broken for years on end, residents and stakeholders were presented with the iQuilt’s dream plan of bring flowing water through the park.
Using identity strategy and enculturation to rally support, those leading this project dismissed skeptics as lacking vision. As much was said twice yesterday at a mini-presentation during a Rising Star Breakfast and in the evening before the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting. The presentation included codewords, as several supporters described selves as “believers” and even went so far as to say that bring flowing water back into the park would be good for our “souls.”
The presentation included visual appeals to nostalgia and romance. The lovely, verdant design renderings seduced the participant into imagining a pristine urban paradise in which those seeking recreation can choose to wade across a 50-100 foot wide brook, meander through pop up studios and greenhouses, or linger on any of the nine bridges that would be added to Bushnell Park.
Urban design presentations, as a whole, dazzle those from whom they want support, but fail to provide real answers that concerned residents have about what is slated to happen in our backyards.
Prior to the presentation, Real Hartford readers submitted questions they had about this project, which are marked in bold and are direct quotes, unless noted otherwise.
Who is doing the planning?
The iQuilt, in the works for several years now, is described as a “culture based urban design plan for Downtown Hartford.”
The iQuilt is a private/public partnership which receives support from various institutions including the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts, Bushnell Park Foundation, CIGNA, City of Hartford, State of Connecticut, MDC, Riverfront Recapture, Connecticut Light & Power, Northeast Utilities, Travelers, and United Illuminating. Suisman Urban Design has been leading the iQuilt design team. A 501(c)3 was formed recently. Continue reading 'iQuilt: Dotting i’s'»
Death and taxes.
On a recent Saturday groups of residents volunteered to clean scattered areas around the city. These annual (or semi-annual in some spots) events, besides achieving what they are supposed to, provide an interesting anthropology exercise. In the area near between Flatbush Avenue and Brookfield Street, the most prevalent types of trash were fast food and snack wrappers/utensils, tires, various other car parts, and alcohol bottles. For this most recent clean up, the streets, park, and school lawns that the group I joined up with scoured showed a disturbing trend. Besides the standard fastfood and snack debris, we also dealt with an inordinate amount of broken glass, cigarette butts, cigar wrap wrappers (particularly vanilla), and literally hundreds of (mostly) used glassine bags. One person found a baggie that was actually still filled with heroin. There was one syringe found in the area of a park and an elementary school; another capped syringe was found near the fence bordering a different elementary school, where a vial was discovered as well. None of these finds — except for the one bag that still contained heroin — were particularly surprising, but when hours are spent picking up one baggie after another, the enormity of the drug problem becomes clear.
