Author Archives: Litz Jean

Pre visit – Farragut

This will be our third visit to the Farragut houses. Our first visit allowed for a general overview of the buildings and its surrounding area. The second visit allowed for greater detail by visiting specific streets. This visit should provide more details for our respective topics. I’m hoping to get as much beneficial information as I can.

BPL Pre-Visit

I enjoyed the visit to the NYPL, and I would imagine that this experience will be about the same. I look forward to an in depth look into my topic and am sure that this library will have some beneficial information. Hopefully, being located in Brooklyn gives it a slight edge on other libraries on information about the borough.

Pre-visit Library

Based on some of the other posts I read i’m not the only one that hasn’t been to the library in a while, and not just to use the bathroom but to actually research something. I think this should be a good visit, although we’ve visited the site and collected data on it, one of the best ways to find out the “why” of something is to look at its history. If we can see the conditions of the land or what was there before, we may be able to draw conclusions on the thought processes of those who decided to be rid of a “slum” to make way for this construction. I think this information should be beneficial to all groups

Urban design Reflection

This visit was well worth the short trip to the Voorhees building. Our class did plenty of research on the Farragut houses and it’s surrounding areas, documenting our finding on its safety, crime, demographics and so on. It was interesting to see another class who did similar research and used said research to devise a way to better the community. All three groups that presented their findings and solutions to use recognized the desolate nature of the area and realized that focusing on correcting that was key. Some ideas were to try to up the safety factor of the area with wider streets and shorter blocks and to add more commerce buildings, and some wanted to diversify the area into multiple forms of Commerce and residential buildings to try and create an atmosphere of camaraderie amongst community members. I thought all the presentations were well thought out and interesting

Primary Sources

1.Police Department City of New York Compstat
This link shows crime statistics for the 84th Precinct.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-084pct.pdf

2.Police Department City of New York Moving Violations
This link shows the traffic reports for the 84th Precinct.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/traffic_data/mv-en-us-084sum.pdf

3.”Mayor de Blasio, Comptroller Stringer, NYCHA Chair Olatoye Announce Beginning of Security Camera Installation at Boulevard Houses and Five More Housing Developments Around the City”
The official website of the City of New York;Pressoffice;June 11 2014

Proposition for providing NYCHA buildings with new cameras.
http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/282-14/mayor-de-blasio-comptroller-stringer-nycha-chair-olatoye-beginning-security-camera#/0

4.”14 Charged in Drug Trafficking at Brooklyn’s Farragut Houses: Over
100 sales of narcotics, 3 firearms seized”
Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York;PDF

Information about a drug bust in the Farragut Houses, showing unsafe practices around the area
http://www.nyc.gov/html/snp/downloads/pdf/Farragut.pdf

5.”Newly Refurbished Gymnasium at Farragut Houses in Brooklyn:
Funding through Seized Narcotics Proceeds”
Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York;PDF; July 15, 2015

This shows the proceeds of the narcotics bust going to good use in a gym for the Farragut houses, showing that some good can come out of some bad.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/snp/downloads/pdf/farragut_houses_071515.pdf

Wiki’s Future

I do think that even with wikipedia’s “chaotic model” it can still be sustainable in the future. I think the fact that wikipedia even has chaos voids order but at the very least proves interest. There is still work being done on the site, pages being made, information being corrected even without a perfect structure. However, due to this being a community driven effort all the information posted depends solely on the passion of its writer(s). There are going to seemingly important pages or topics with little to no information and seemingly unimportant pages with a plethora of information. Though there are upgrades that need to be made, namely mobile support, as long as there is a desire to receive and disseminate information wikipedia will stand strong.