Urban Planning — Clara Honu

Data Analysis with R

I used R and Illustrator to visualize data about NYC’s transit system.

The ridership data is from the US National Transit Database.

Memorialization in Public Space

This map looks at the memorialization of women and indigenous people in downtown Lowell, Massachusetts. It was part of a larger project I did about public space in Lowell.

Chloropleth Map

This map was made with R to visualize where limited English proficient households are located in Suffolk County, MA (the city of Boston, as well as neighboring Chelsea, Winthrop, and Revere). The data is from 2017 ACS 5-year estimates.

Photoshop

These collages are from a research project I did about the future of public housing in Boston.

Boston’s oldest public housing development (Mary Ellen McCormack in South Boston) is being redeveloped and converted into a mixed-income property that will have more density but the same number of affordable units. I researched whether a future redevelopment of West Broadway, the other public housing site in the neighborhood, could instead increase the number of affordable units through the creation of a mixed-use and mixed-income limited equity cooperative.

Illustrator

Public housing in South Boston.

SketchUp

Partial model of the West Broadway site today.

Location Analysis

This map was created using the Location Analysis tool in ArcMap. It identifies areas where NYC could target bodegas for outreach about their FRESH program, or other initiatives that incentivize grocery stores to offer healthy food options.

Hotspot Analysis

This map uses the Hotspot Analysis tool in ArcMap to look at where tenant-initiated litigation against landlords is concentrated in NYC - focusing on where general tenant-initiated and harassment-related lawsuits originate. The data is from 2004 to September 2019, and is from HPD / NYC’s Open Data Portal.

public art - Hablando con Oney y George

Hablando con Oney y George is a proposed temporary installation around the statue of George Washington in Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, NY. For a week in the spring, the public would be invited to sit around a table and converse with the statue of Washington. At night, the ghostly presence of Oney Judge - one of the more than 300 people enslaved by Washington - joins him and any passersby at an empty seat at the table.

I developed in this project in a studio class with Krzysztof Wodiczko, as a response to the rise of white nationalism and the myth that the United States is at its heart a white country. Rather than thinking of Washington as frozen in time in order to promote a reactionary and historically inaccurate view of America, the project urges participants and spectators to imagine how Washington and Judge would grow and evolve to engage with America of today.

“A possible future needs a possible past to match” - Ton Otto

“Rising to the rank of colonel, he resigned his post, married Martha Dandridge (1731-1802), and returned as a gentleman farmer to the family plantation at Mount Vernon, Virginia, where he resided with his wife, Martha.” - Biography of Washington accompanying his statue in Flushing Meadows Park on the NYC Parks Department website

During the day, participants are invited up on a platform to sit at a table with George Washington and speak (drink, joke, etc.) with him. The Otomí tablecloth, made by a group indigenous to Mexico, is meant to invite and welcome Mexican passersby in particular.

At night, George is joined by a projection of Oney Judge. Personal slave to George's wife Martha, Judge was one of the hundreds of people enslaved by the Washington family. She escaped in her early 20s and lived the rest of her life as a fugitive in New Hampshire. The proposed project would take place in May, in the week leading up to the anniversary of Judge's self-liberation on May 21, 1796.

During the day, the public is asked to teach George about the contemporary United States and imagine how he would respond. At night, the project offers a space in which people can anonymously share how their dream of the United States differs from its reality through recording their voices and sending texts.

A fugitive slave ad Washington put out for Oney Judge following her escape from his household in 1796.

This is a sketch from the development for the project. I chose the project site first - I wanted to do a project in Flushing Meadows Park in my home of NYC.

In this initial sketch I’m imagining how a wall of light could be a counter monument to the the border wall on the U.S. - México border, a place of beauty and safety through which everyone can pass freely.