Remaking the Built Environment by Reimagining Waste

Visitors to the pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown Ithaca, New York, may find themselves passing a large poster with directions to the Waste(d) Imagination Tour. Following a QR code leads the curious to the PocketSights smartphone app which showcases a wide variety of user-built self-guided walking tours. In this particular case, rather than digging into local literary history or neighborhood highlights, users are invited to contemplate greater sustainability in the built environment by visiting 21 (so far) key site examples spread across town. 

"As Gretchen Worth (M.A. HPP '20) from the Susan Christopherson Center for Community Planning and CR0WD often points out, many people know that plastic bags are bad and that we should compost food, but for some reason, few people realize the massive issues with demolition or the alternatives to demolition that they can advocate for in their community," Minner explains, pointing specifically to the burden construction and demolition debris places on landfills. The Waste(d) Imagination experience presents an opportunity to lead people through the opportunities and challenges of creating a more circular construction economy in Ithaca.

The tour, which takes about five hours and thirteen miles of walking or cycling to complete in full, introduces participants to stunning examples of preserved landmark buildings the adaptive reuse of existing facilities into residential, educational, and retail spaces; the exciting potential of deconstruction and resale of building materials; and the true cost-benefit of outright demolition. Users are welcome to skip around and delve into each site as deeply as their interests carry them. A brief summary is provided for each with additional resources including videos offering additional background.

"It continually shocks me to think about how far we (as a founding partner in CR0WD) have come in organizing around alternatives to demolition in Ithaca, but we still have a long way to go policy-wise. The tour is just one outcome of a series of collaborative projects in which I have discovered just how important collective action is for rethinking the way we plan, design, preserve, repair, and construct cities. I am still so hopeful that we will begin to craft real change together."

The concept for how to best present these ideas to the public went through many iterations during its two-year development. Wyeth Augustine-Marceil (M.R.P. '23) took the lead in determining the PocketSights format, then collaborated with Ketaki Ghodke (M.R.P. '24), Jeff Iovannone (M.A. HPP '23), and Charles Zhang (M.R.P. '24) to create the initial content. Susan Holland and Christine O’Malley of Historic Ithaca provided additional materials and Medha Kulkarni and Chloe Long (both M.R.P. '25) further expanded it under Minner's guidance. Some entries were written by students in Minner's course Land Use and Spatial Planning Methods.

Minner has also incorporated the tour into her classes. Undergraduate students enrolled in Promise and Pitfalls of Contemporary Planning tested out a part of the tour with Minner and O'Malley this fall. Students heard firsthand about the founding of CR0WD as well as the Catherine Street Commons Deconstruction project, a massive demonstration of deconstruction and community salvage. They later visited Southworks and heard about the potential for preservation and adaptive reuse writ large on the 95-acre former industrial facility.

As a small college town, Ithaca struggles with the same housing and affordability issues that other communities are facing, and recent proposed and executed demolitions highlight both the loss of history and the community's willingness to protest, protect, and find other solutions. In many ways, Minner finds that Ithaca "really punches above its weight" in this way, so she remains optimistic that movement toward even greater support of preservation and reuse will continue. "For people interested in advocating for change in other cities, we hope that the tour offers an example that might be replicated in other communities. I think there is a lot of power in bringing together faculty, students, and community leaders to share the topography of circularity."