Queens: we're on the cutting (jagged) edge of environmentalism

We were driving around Queens Plaza the other day, and decided to take a photo of one of our borough’s many attempts at environmental friendliness. At first glance, the median looks like a crowd of jagged tombstones, but the look kind of grows on you. These stones have prompted a great deal of debate amongst New Yorkers since they were installed last year. People have come to the borough from as far away as Manhattan to opine.

The city decided to reuse old sidewalk from the area to create this barrier, inhabitant reports, and while environmentalists applaud, some are not as welcoming. Astoria Ugly has its own particular take on the city’s manifold environmental efforts in Queens Plaza: “crushed safety glass as mulch, how bad ass is that?”  Just try putting up something this experimental in Park Slope. We dare you.

Both Astoria and Long Island City’s are hubs for the city’s environmental efforts, perhaps because so many of the city’s power plants are also located in the area. Astoria is a neighborhood that knows the pain of blackouts and is hard at work greening the area with tree planting programs. The Cool Roofs project, which paints roofs white for summer energy savings has been going strong in our borough for years, and we are also the urban epicenter of green roof studies. This roof at ConEd in Long Island City is part of a Columbia University Study:

P.S. 118 in Queens is helping to study green roofs and blue roofs (eco friendly but without plants) and there is even a tax abatement for eco roofing (who knew). Silvercup Studios has apparently been home to a green roof for years.

So why is Queens the hot bed of all this environmentalism? Simple: we have space. Our industrial past means that we have giant roofs open for farming (as the folks at Brooklyn Grange have discovered). In addition to greening roofs, Queens produces a ton of solar energy because we can, and because we don’t have annoying Park Slope types all up in everyone’s business all the time, telling us what can and can’t be done.