Crosstown 116: Bringing Habitat II Home

Crosstown 116: Bringing Habitat II Home from Istanbul to Harlem, is a partnership of the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter, the City College of New York School of Architecture and Environmental Studies, and community groups in Upper Manhattan. It is one of the four United States initiatives following up on the Habitat II Agenda of the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Istanbul, 1996.

The Crosstown 116 initiative has four components:

- Briefing Book: information collected and disseminated to local residents and organizations, schools and libraries, agencies, and participants

- Seminar Series: weekly discussions involving community members, students and faculty, planners and architects, on critical issues in community-building

- Design Studios: student work in architecture and urban landscape at City College and urban design at Columbia University, based on the Briefing Book and Seminar Series, all focused on Crosstown 116

- Design Dialogue: a Community Dialogue and a day-long Design Charrette, bringing together all the components of a Civic Triumvirate, working collaboratively in teams.

The goal of Crosstown 116 was to foster participatory planning, sustainability, gender equity, increased awareness, and housing alternatives.

Crosstown 116 generated a wide range of activities including: housing responsive to the initiative, community based design studio projects, application in teacher training programs and high school programs, additional university-community urban design and architectural collaborations, the rebroadcast of public access television's documentation of our process, and IRADAC web site broadcasting