From this first day of April onwards, nothing will be the same. With decades of print and a semester of audio journalism under our belt, the Yale Herald is proud to present the paper’s newest section: “Herald Olfactory”! This new desk, god willing, will offer readers a feast for the eyes, ears, and nose. Take a guided tour of Yale University’s various, distinct smells. Visit Toad’s on a Thursday morning; waft in gentle notes of Dean Holloway’s cologne; savor this slice of pizza someone left in the Herald fridge over Spring Break.

When you’re all smelled out, settle down and listen to some wonderful (real) stories, courtesy of the Herald Audio team. We’ve collected a few of our best pieces—some published earlier in the semester, others making their debut this morning—and dropped an album for your listening pleasure. In our features, Sophie Ruehr talks ROTC and Lydia Keating sails into the Long Island Sound. Between these longer stories, listen to a local personality guess where I’m from with uncanny accuracy, then follow Eve Sneider as she moves through the sounds and silences of Tokyo—her childhood home. At Herald Audio, we want to make Yale, New Haven, and the rest of the world come alive to you one story at a time. So come on. Give us a listen. Travel far.

But good old-fashioned reading hasn’t gone out of style. Click through:

Features:

Liza Rodler, CC ’17, rolls through Westville to cover the (heatedly) contested development of a new bike lane.

Finally understand complex tax structures with Wesley Kocurek, TD ’19, as he delves into the senate bills that could lead to taxation on Yale’s precious endowment.

Culture:

Move through mo(ve)ments: African Digital Subjectivities, an AFRICA SALON art show, with Tran Dang, TD ’19.

Remember and reevaluate Phife Dawg’s legacy with Elias Bartholomew, DC ’17.

Opinion:

Olivia Klevorn, SM ‘17, addresses the need for intentional theater at Yale.

Voices:

Joey Lew captures a moment of transition.

Alex Cadena BK ’17 talks to artist Maria Hupfield and scholar and activist Jaskiran Dhillon about art’s power to move and mobilize.

Reviews:

Will Nixon, PC’19, snoozes through Batman v Superman. Also: SBTRKT almost adds up, Charli XCX pushes the accelerator, and Greek Wedding can’t divorce itself from cliché.

Inserts:

Tracy Chung gets eggs-perimental.

Sophie Dillon slyly suggests a course of action for Batman Affleck.

Rachel Lackner runs the numbers on her illustrious Yale career.

Behind the glass doors of Urban Outfitters on Broadway, blue-haired employees wrap flan­nels around their waists and wear paint-speck­led shirts. Stashed between curling banisters near the middle of the store is a 30-foot high display where Dr. Dre hangs beside Abbey Road. Smooth Jazz, Classic Rock, Blues and Electronica: all genres have a place on the wall of the Urban Outfitters vinyl sec­tion. Beneath the display are even more record albums, wrapped in plastic and crammed into wooden shelves, selling for 35 dollars each. These shelves might look like a decoration that add to the store’s alternative am­biance, but it’s with displays like these that Urban Out­fitters has become the largest retail store seller of vinyl records in America.

In the fall of 2014, Urban Outfitter’s Chief Ad­ministrative Office Calvin Hollinger announced to Wall Street analysts that his company was the top seller of records in the world. In the U.S. alone, 9.2 million LP vinyl records were purchased in 2014, a 3.1 mil­lion increase from 2013 and a tenfold increase since 2005. Bloomberg discovered that technically, Amazon controls 12.3 percent of the market share and outsells Urban Outfitters, which is second with 8.1 percent. But Amazon is exclusively online, and for shoppers who want to pick up a vinyl record in person, Urban Outfit­ters has become the most popular spot.

I talked to Chris Cochrane, the manager at the New Haven branch of Urban Outfitters, about their record sales. “Corporate decided to bring in records a couple of years back. Selling vinyl must have sounded risky at first,” Cochran said. “People have been downloading music, legally and illegally for ages, but it’s been sur­prisingly big for us.” Though he declined to offer exact sales figures, he happily reminded me of Urban’s status as premier vinyl retailer in the country, describing the breadth of clientele that their vinyl section attracts.

“Super hip hop fans come in and pick up a Dr. Dre album. A little girl will come in and buy the new Taylor Swift. I sometimes see older guys coming in to browse the records. I once had a guy in his thirties come in looking for Metallica.”

Urban Outfitters was the 10th leading apparel re­tailer in the U.S. in 2013, but all of the top 10 best selling vinyl albums of 2014 can also be bought there. Urban Outfitters appears to have supplanted the tradi­tional American record store. In the summer of 2012, Cutler’s Record Shop, a New Haven institution since 1948, closed its doors, citing a bad economy and fall­ing CD sales. I told Cochrane about this. He wasn’t living in New Haven at the time of Cutler’s clothing, but suggests that Urban Outfitters has succeeded in vinyl sales by leveraging their reputation as a popular fashion retailer.

“Maybe being just a record store didn’t work,” he said. “The name of Urban Outfitters draws people in. People come for the clothes and the environment, and then they come in and see the display. Corporate’s done a really good job of attracting everyone to the store with their wide range of styles, and the records sell because they fit with the Urban brand.”

I SPOKE WITH YALE MUSIC PROFESSOR MICHAEL Veal about his experience with vinyl. As a music in­structor born during the age of records, his own con­nection to the medium is strong. However, he doubts records’ lasting power as anything but boutique. “I think that though records are experiencing a surge in popularity, they are going to remain a fashion acces­sory,” he said. “They are a cultural cache, they have hipster value. I don’t think a majority of the music con­suming public will return to records. People like myself never left them.”

With no authentic record stores left in New Haven, I visited one a few towns over in Orange, Conn. Merle’s Record Rack has been in business for 52 years, and Mike Papa, the store’s current owner, has been working there for 45. “I’ve never filled out a job application,” Papa told me. “I had my first job in high school work­ing at this record store. Then after I graduated college about thirty years ago, I bought the place.”

Merle’s felt like it had been stolen from the sev­enties. There were no gaudy displays—only humble troughs painted black and filled with gently used re­cord albums. Discount bins overflowed with two-dollar albums. Soft rock—not the heady electro-pop of Urban Outfitters—wafted from speakers. Other merchandise hung from the walls and sat stacked on tables: Beatles posters, 8-track players, incense sticks, Woodstock photographs, dream catchers and Gumby figurines. Merle’s doesn’t just sell records; it sells history.

As different as Merle’s and Urban may appear, both Cochrane and Papa agree that records are attracting many younger listeners. Papa, however, seems more mindful of the technology with which kids are con­suming their music. “A lot of kids come in looking to buy records these days,” Papa said, when I asked about his clientele. “The funny thing is that a lot of them are listening to it on a crappy little turntable that doesn’t give them the better sound, the full am­biance. They’re listening to it on little Crosley things that have one little speaker that doesn’t give you the true sound of the hi-fi stereo.”

Urban’s record display was surrounded by a vi­brant array of these Crosley turntables, some set in lacquered wood, others painted in the lurid colors of the sixties. Cochrane confirmed Papa’s impression, telling me that these Crosley players are popular with consumers. “A lot of kids are getting on board and buying record players,” he said. “Parents are buying record players for their kids at Christmas. Even I got one for Christmas,” he adds. “Our polaroid cameras have been really popular lately too. Well they’re not Polaroid brand; they’re Fujifilm instant cameras. Vin­tage items sell really well.”

IN THE FALL, I VISITED JORDAN BOUDREAU, MC ‘18, to listen to some records. His turntable is twice as old as he is: a Sears Solid State turntable with AM/FM radio, cassette player, and tape recording functionality. When he wants to relax to music, he forgoes his MP3 player, and turns to the old Sears player that he dug out of his attic.

“What do you want to hear?” he asked, gesturing towards his small library of roughly twenty albums. I pulled out an album with no art: just a pink cardboard sleeve missing a chunk in a corner. It was a Columbia Re­cords album, “Hawaiian Melodies, by Harry Owens and His Royal Hawai­ians.” I handed it to him. He took the album from me and crouched over the turntable. I watched as he pried open the sleeve, peeled apart the thin sheets that encased the vinyl, and carefully pulled out the disk by its edges. He lifted the needle on the turntable and slid the disk into place.

“The record player’s a bit broken, but it sounds fine.”

Jordan placed the record on the machine and it began to spin; the raised needle gently lowering into the vinyl’s grooves. At once, Owens’ rendition of “Princess Poo Poo Ly” drifted out of the speakers. The sound felt dampened and a faint crackling persisted throughout the song.

Afterwards, I talked to Sam Smith, TD ‘18, about why he liked records. “They make me feel fancy,” he said. “I’m being more honest here than I’d like to admit. I also like the little needle thing. There’s a whole big to do of put­ting on a record.” Listening to a record with Jor­dan had felt satisfyingly tedious. Unpeeling the sleeve, removing the record from the player: the movements looked more deliberate and natu­ral than tapping on a screen. Every action had some reaction: a sound or distortion. When a button is pushed, a wheel starts to spin; a needle drops.

Near the exit at Merle’s, Papa had hung framed news clippings from articles about Merle’s onto the wall. “Going Back in Time,” read one headline. “Nostalgia seekers treasure vinyl discs,” said another. The re­cord store and the modern fashion boutique seem to profit from the nos­talgic appeal that Professor Veal mentioned; the belief that “older is better.” Traditional record shops entice younger listeners with a “fancier” music experience. At Urban, vinyl records have become accessories to retro fashion.

SMITH’S FAVORITE RECORD ALBUMS ARE A MIX OF OLD AND NEW: a copy of Kanye West’s College Dropout that he bought from Urban, and his first edition copy of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors. His favorite album, however, is Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run, which he only has on MP3. “I’d love to have that album on vinyl,” he told me. He thinks it’s worth buying again just to hear it on a different media. “It sounds a little bet­ter,” he said. “Listening to vinyl is like watching a movie on 35mm film. It’s the same movie, but I don’t know, it feels more tangible. It might not be obvious, but the uncompressed version of a song is very large. When they edit down to MP3 they have to cut out a whole range of sounds that are theoretically outside your hearing range.”

According to Papa, a good record album doesn’t sound just a little better, it makes a big difference. Recently, both casual and professional listeners have been drawn to this vast difference in quality. “A lot of peo­ple that are going back to records are musicians. They can hear the high pitches and the low pitches.” He demonstrates by moving his hands in waves. “Imagine all that you hear through your earbuds as a flat line—in the business it’s called death line. When you listen to real analog audio taken from a vibration, it’s much higher and much lower. You can hear the waves. When you listen to a real record player with solid speakers, the sound comes at you in stereo. That’s what gives you the warm full acoustic sound.” Even within our range of perception, there are tangible musical qualities that are lost in the digital world of ones and zeros.

In addition to the decline in sound quality, Papa mourned the long-gone pastime of listening to a whole record album. “Back then, albums were developed to take you on a journey,” Papa said. “You pulled out a record, put on side one and played it through. Then you turned it over and you played that side through. You played the album from beginning to the end, then you did it again and again, and one more time when your friends came over. Nobody does that anymore, but I guess there weren’t a lot of things clamoring for your time back then. ”

Papa hesitates to bring in newer music to Merle’s because of the way people consume it today. “Artists build albums around single tracks now. I can’t bring in new stuff when three weeks from now everybody will have moved onto the next big thing. Back then when you bought a record, you owned it. You weren’t going to throw it away.”

Veal agrees. “Nowadays, people don’t want to spend so much of the entire album when they’re only going to listen to three or four songs,” he said. “If albums weren’t as long people might be more inclined to buy them in their entirety. Peoples attention spans are taxed to their limits by all the infor­mation that surrounds us.”

At Urban, however, modern sells. “We sell both old and new stuff,” Co­chran said. “Any current musician will also release albums in vinyl. A lot of kids have come in to buy Taylor Swift’s new album. Katy Perry was also another big seller. They never fly off the shelves immediately, but after a week or two of the digital release, the kids come in and pick them up.”

In 2014, music industry revenue saw a five percent decline from the previous year. Vinyl record sales, however, jumped 54 percent. Rock mu­sician Jack White led the surge, selling 86,700 copies of his new album Lazaretto last year with over 40,000 in the first week of its release. It was the best-selling vinyl album in 20 years.

At a time when it takes just seconds and the click of a button to listen to any music you’d like, it’s hard to make sense of the record craze. Sure, some listeners enjoy the extra effort that comes with a record while others hear the music differently. But records aren’t new. What’s new and ap­pealing is the bright packaging on the Urban Outfitters wall. While they’re hearkening back to another time, records are becoming an accessory to another brand on Broadway.

Yale’s first connection with China dates back to 1835 when Yale graduate Peter Parker, class of 1831, opened China’s first Western hospital in Guangzhou. In 1854, Yung Wing, a Chinese national recruited to Yale by Parker, became the first person from China to earn an American degree. 180 years later, Yale’s relationship with China has exploded, connecting thousands of students and faculty involved in various research, scholarship, and exchange programs.

The opening of the Yale Center Beijing marks the latest development in Yale’s burgeoning collaboration with China. Unveiled at a conference held in Beijing last week, the center is funded by a handful of alumni. Stretching 16,500-square-feet in the city’s Chaoyang District, the complex features meeting rooms, classrooms, a lecture hall, and office and working spaces to be used by any members of the Yale community living or working in China, including the over 150 current faculty conducting China-related research. Donald Filer, executive director of the Yale Office of International Affairs, described the Center’s creation as a reasonable next step in the enhancement Yale’s academic exploits in China. “Every year we have scores of undergraduates heading to China for language study, internships, independent research, and many other reasons,” Filer said in an interview with the Herald. “Having this physical place provides us with the opportunity to extend many of the things that we’ve already been doing. This center gives us a base that’s ours.”

In a press release on the opening of the center, Yale alumni donor Neil Shen, SOM ’92, who chairs the center’s Advisory Committee, also described the Center as a meeting ground for all of those involved in these academic and cultural experiments. “We admire how Yale has been convening so many thought leaders in China,” Shen said. “We want this center to facilitate and accelerate those efforts and to cultivate academic and culture exchanges across broad range of subjects between China and the U.S. This can have widespread benefits for the future of China and, we feel, for Yale as well.”

The center is by no means a pioneering venture in the region—Harvard, John Hopkins, and New York University are among throngs of American universities that have established campuses in multiple major Chinese cities. In fact, it is only the latest of Yale’s ventures on the Asian continent, the most famous (and controversial) to date being the partnership between Yale and the National University of Singapore. But the creation of Yale Beijing is nevertheless a milestone. As an impressive structure in the center of China’s capitol, it is a physical testament to Yale’s desire to forge collaboration with an economic and political superpower. The opening of the center can be regarded as a turning point in the University’s overseas expansion and its attitudes towards exporting its particular brand of higher education to environments that are decidedly different from its New Haven home.

***

Only in its infancy, the center’s primary purposes remain unknown. At the inaugural conference, both Yale faculty and faculty from Chinese institutions conveyed that the new opportunities offered by the center would largely benefit graduate programs based on Yale’s New Haven campus for now. On the first day of the conference, Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies announced a dual degree program with the Tsinghua University School of Environment in Beijing. In the coming months, a number of Yale’s graduate schools will also begin to use the center in collaboration with peers in China.

Currently, there are no programs for undergraduates designed to make use of the center, though Filer believes that with time, more programs will appear as individuals and departments begin to express interest.

“The center’s just opened,” Filer said. “There will be a lot happening there in the future, and it will depend on people’s interests. Different people have expressed interest in using the space. A number of faculty members in the East Asian Languages and Literature, Political Science, and History departments have shown some interest, but many of them are still working out how they want to use it.”

Linda Lorimer, the University’s vice president for global and strategic initiatives, is also confident that the space will eventually become of greater use to the undergraduate population.

“The center has been built to have study carrels for students doing research in Beijing, and they will be available for undergraduates as well as graduate students,” Lorimer said. “Undergraduate admissions intends to use the center for its work—so prospective undergraduates [from the area] may find themselves there.” Lorimer also described the center as a potential hub and gathering space for the more than one hundred undergraduates who study Chinese in the summer in Beijing through Yale’s Light Fellowship, as well as those participating in summer internships.

The potential research and cultural exchange resources that could be provided by the Center would seem to align with Yale’s mission as a leading university. However, some members of the Yale community see Yale Beijing’s opening as more than simply expansion of Yale’s educational tools.

***

As Yale continues to deepen its academic connections in China, some have expressed concern that Yale is falling short in exporting its values in international ventures. It is a problem faced by many American universities: a recent conflict broke out between Peking University and Wellesley College, which have formed an academic partnership with each other similar to that of Yale-NUS. In October 2013, Peking University Professor Xia Yeliang was dismissed for expressing pro-democratic views, and in response, 130 members of Wellesley’s faculty signed an open letter decrying Peking University’s decision. The partnership between both schools nevertheless remained intact.

Yale’s relationship with the National University of Singapore, which required collaboration with the Singaporean government, similarly proved controversial. In the spring of 2012, members of the Yale faculty discussed issues concerning civil rights and freedoms in Singapore. In April 2013, Yale’s Arts and Sciences faculty passed a resolution expressing their “concern regarding the history of lack of respect for civil and political rights in the state of Singapore.”

James Sleeper, professor of political science, believes that with China, Yale once again faces challenges in navigating its international relationships. He noted, however, that the dangers for Yale are less overt that they have been with Wellesley. Rather than directly opposing the existing in stitutions in the countries of expansion, Yale’s system of education abroad may prove too complicit with the coercive laws of these nations, he explained.

“What we should fear most is not open conflicts over academic freedom, like Wellesley’s conflicts with Beijing,” Sleeper said, “but an all-too-smooth convergence of both Yale and its Chinese hosts toward authoritarian, state-and-corporate-run academic programs.” A possible effect of such a convergence is limitations on freedom of expression. He said professors and students forced to study under the restrictions imposed by the government could even preemptively censor themselves before receiving threats or punishments. Rather than a liberal education fostering intellectual independence to challenge existing restrictions, it could be a new means of subtlety reinforcing them, Sleeper posited.

This arrangement, Sleeper believes, could prove more toxic, for he believes that Yale’s academic exchanges are empowering the authoritarians in these regimes. “We don’t need more ‘creative’ authoritarians—we need more independent citizens, here and in Asia,” he continued. “But regimes like China’s and Singapore’s are welcoming and funding Western liberal educators who are willing to make too many compromises without saying so.”

Lorimer, however, believes that the Center is nothing more than an “extension of the significant and long-standing work of Yale faculty in China,” she said. She mentioned the Yale Law School’s Center on the Peking University campus that has existed for over a decade, Yale’s large research center on Fudan University’s campus, and the School of Public Health’s establishment of a Center for Biostatistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University earlier this year.

Filer reiterated Lorimer’s views in defense of the center. “Our relationship with people and institutions in China has been changing over time, but this isn’t our first foray into China,” he said. “This is a continuation of a near-200-year relationship. Yale has the longest history of any western institution with China. We already have these tremendous relationships with colleges there. The center is simply responding to the potential to do more things for all the people at Yale.”

Notwithstanding, the center demonstrates that Yale now has a physical presence in Beijing. Lorimer and Filer have both stated that there are no plans to create a Beijing counterpart to Yale-NUS, but it is evident that the center is Yale’s attempt to create a presence in a political and economic giant. “Clearly, it’s an attempt by Yale to keep a foot in what, after all, will be the world’s most important nation-state in our lifetime,” Sleeper said. “But, equally clearly, Yale is going to try to learn from the mistakes it made in becoming too deeply and inextricably involved in a joint venture with the regime in Singapore.

The center’s opening is an opportunity for Yale to demonstrate its efficacy beyond New Haven. Indeed, it is forward-looking of Yale to expand its real-estate in what is regarded to be a rising superpower. But the center perhaps remains in danger of allowing its environment, which does not adhere to the same standards of academic freedom, to dictate its direction. Resting on the shoulders of a legacy initiated by Peter Parker and Yung Wing over 100 years ago, the center should be cautious to allow the core mission of Yale to guide its progress as it navigates this complex yet invaluable international relationship.

–Graphic by Alex Swanson

Drivers on the interstate today enter New Haven via Route 34: a cold, industrial welcome into the heart of the city. In three years, if Phase Two of New Haven’s Downtown Crossing Project goes as planned, that highway will be replaced with a tree-lined boulevard, grass, wide pavements, bike lanes, and maybe wall art. New shops and apartments will crop up. One of the lead developers in the Project, Kiran Marok, described the planned region as a “whole new district with its own personality.” This grassy new neighborhood was conceptualized about ten years ago, and the Board of Alders approved a more detailed plan for it in December 2013. Now that the appropriate funds have been raised, city officials announced in a Mon., Sept. 29 board meeting that they are honing in on the specific aesthetics about the project. And they’re seeking feedback.

“This formal meeting is being held to mark the turn in design phase from conceptual work to more detailed design,” said Michael Piscitelli, deputy economic development administrator for Mayor Toni Harp. “This meeting will be full of technical detail, and comments and concerns are important for the city as they move into the project.”

Up for debate: the width of bike lanes and whether streetlights will be “classical” or “modern” in style. These were the details that officials delved into at the public meeting. The blueprints for Phase Two of the Project have yet to be finalized, but now the money is secure.

Karyn Gilvarg, ARC ’75, executive director of the City Planning Department, said that the State of Connecticut pledged 21 million dollars to the project, in addition to New Haven’s 12 million to meet the total projected cost of 33 million for this phase of the project. The commitment has not been formalized, but Gilvarg said that they expect this to come in the next month. In the meantime, city officials are trying to make the new neighborhood’s image a little clearer.

About 40 New Haven residents came to the community room in the public library to talk about it. For instance, what color the highway signs should be when people enter New Haven.

***

The bigger picture is that the Downtown Crossing Project is an attempt to correct an old urban planning mistake. Route 34 was conceived during the ’40s Urban Renewal Era to serve as a corridor between New Haven and the surrounding towns in the lower Naugatuck Valley. Designed to cut through residential neighborhoods, the highway’s construction displaced 881 families and demolished 351 buildings, according to the Project’s website. Route 34 also split downtown New Haven in two, separating Yale’s main campus and the city’s central business district from Yale Medical School, Union Station, and other city neighborhoods.

Construction of the highway was abandoned in the ’70s but its impact on New Haven has lingered. Hundreds of small businesses were destroyed and never reemerged; historic neighborhoods were never rebuilt. The small streets and wide pavements of downtown New Haven were shunned in favor of large, pedestrian-unfriendly super-grids. Collateral development has been scarce. Gilvarg has been focusing for the last decade on how to fix the problems the highway created. She was appointed to the City Planning department 10 years ago, during the tenure of former mayor John DeStefano.

“Almost 10 years ago we started looking at how to get rid of the highway that came right through the middle of the city,” Gilvarg said. “We wanted to use some of that land from the highway for new buildings and to reconnect communities that had been cut apart by that limited access highway.”

Phase One of the project, which will be completed this fall, involves the conversion of Martin Luther King Road and South Frontage Road into tree-covered boulevards, and the construction of an office and commercial building on College Street. Another part of the Downtown Crossing project’s first phase was the demolition of the New Haven Coliseum—the only high-capacity venue in the city— to make way for the development in Phase Two.

***

The development in question is large-scale—if all goes as planned, the city will have a whole new neighborhood. “We are developing an urban village,” said Marok, who is director of programming, planning, and development for the Canadian real-estate development company “Live Work Learn Play.”

This company is privately developing a “mixed-use development” on the empty lot. This means that residential buildings, retail, hotel, and office space will be centered around a public square. “We see this as a new district with new personality that will tie into the rest of New Haven,” Marok said. “That’s why the Orange Street project is crucial because in order for us to be a new district but feel naturally and organically a part of the city, we needed to reconnect all the neighborhoods around us as well.”

And, Marok said, affordability is a priority for Live Work Learn Play. “It’s important for this to be accessible to everybody,” Marok continued. “So we look at this as a mixed income development. There will be 20 percent affordable housing. And within affordable, we mean a range of affordability. We hope that anyone who wants to live here will be able to live here.”

Some New Haven residents, such as DeStefano, thought that this was a good step in terms of affordability. New Haven resident and activist Wendy Hamilton said she thinks it’s not enough. “We have a growing homeless population, a growing unemployed population, and there are no places for them to live,” she said. “20 percent affordable housing is not enough. That figure should at least be over 50 percent.”

But the questions that came up on Friday were more technical—less on affordable housing and more on bike accessibility. The question now is how the lines of the city should look, as specifically as possible.

***

The design firm Parsons Brinckerhoff has been working on road-planning for the project, and they told residents that they’ve reached 30 percent completion. So it’s time to get feedback.

Piscitelli presented the firm’s plan and solicited feedback. He described a new intersection at Orange Street, stormwater drains, where and how trees will be planted, and the type of streetlights that will be used.

He then brought up the “transition zone” from the highway to Orange Street—a place where drivers’ high speeds coming into the city could pose risks to pedestrians and bikers. Here, Anstress Farwell, director of the Urban Design League, had an idea.

“Instead of the green-panel overhead signs we usually see, we could use very simple black lit-up signs to direct drivers,” Farwell said. Piscitelli nodded and agreed.

One of the issues that sparked most discussion among residents was the proposed addition of bike lanes. The current plans for the project include separated, two-directional bike lanes along Union Avenue and Water Street—a bike-friendly approach that may have been a response to resident concerns that Phase One of the project didn’t do enough for bikers and pedestrians.

“Phase One of the operation didn’t have any public benefits to pedestrians and cyclists,” resident Aaron Goode said. He said he’s looking forward to seeing what the new phase of the project will entail, especially for cyclists.

The bike lanes were discussed at length—from their width on specific streets to whether they should be separate from or integrated into car lanes (the former is much safer). But not all residents left the meeting happy. Melinda Tuhus, an avid biker, said after the meeting that she believes that some of the project’s proposals, though well-intended, are misplaced.

“I recognize that the Water Street intersection is a very complicated one, and I do appreciate some of the changes that have been made,” Tuhus said, “But I don’t feel like the changes they’re proposing for cyclists make much of an improvement. They are placing bike lanes in streets with the least amount of car traffic. That could change with the construction, but we’re not getting separated bike lanes where we need them right now.”

Tuhus spoke up during the meeting, as did a number of other people with concerns and simple questions. The details of the meeting were perhaps exhaustingly technical, but the truth is that the Downtown Crossing Project is no longer an abstract blueprint. It’s gaining a shape, and that shape is still changing. But now, when we picture New Haven in three years we can visualize more than the abstract “seamless city” that Mayor Toni Harp described at the beginning of the meeting.

We can visualize bike lanes on Water Street that go two ways, and we can argue about their width. These concerns might seem small, but they are the questions that shape cities. The public meeting was a step in shaping New Haven—working out the kinks in the vision of a connected city, and a step towards making it happen.

– Graphics by Zachary Schiller