made this for you | the future isn’t what it used to be

We attended Design and the City, put on by GOOD, at the Nau pop-up store in Soho last night. A few groups I want to highlight quickly are Mercy Corps , DesigNYC, and the Center for Urban Pedagogy or CUP.

According to MercyCorps.org

Mercy Corps is a team of 3700 professionals helping turn crisis into opportunity for millions around the world. By trade, we are engineers, financial analysts, drivers, community organizers, project managers, public health experts, administrators, social entrepreneurs and logisticians. In spirit, we are activists, optimists, innovators and proud partners of the people we serve.

What I like about Mercy Corps is what they are calling Action Centers. These are actual storefronts in major cities where people can donate their time to help the world. Weather its a minute or a lifetime, all are welcome. They also have a very impressive site at actioncenter.org. The site ranges from telling heart felt current life stories, to actual causes you can get involved in right away.

The next group I want to touch on is DesigNYC.

Design impacts our daily lives in smart, ingenious and often unexpected ways — from the structures we live in, to the public spaces we convene in, to the graphic systems that inform us, and the interactive experiences that connect us.

We created desigNYC with the mission of improving life in NYC by connecting nonprofits and community groups in need of design services with professional, pro bono design resources.

Their site is easy to use, and has a clean layout (it was made for designers :-)). DesigNYC creates a great outlet for creatives who want to do some good for the world.

Lastly, their is the Center for Urban Pedagogy. I was actually on CUPs site earlier that day, and had no idea that they were speaking at Design and the City. They create teaching tools about land use and urban development in New York City. This cute video explains it really well-

What Is Affordable Housing? from the Center for Urban Pedagogy on Vimeo.

A stop-action animation on the technical definitions of affordable housing — by Rosten Woo and John Mangin of CUP, animator/designer Jeff Lai, and Glen Cummings of MTWTF. Narrated by Lisa Burriss. Sound by Rosten Woo.

What MTFY really likes is the Who Lives Here online map. Check it out for yourself here. We are a sucker for great information aesthetics, and this delivers. Look at the Lower East Side for a surprising comparison of low to high income housing and affordability. This stuff was previously not easily accessible  to the general public. Now, you can print or save a PDF of a particular area for future reference- nice.

There is a part 2 to Design and the City on December 3rd. Go to the Nau site for more info. And buy some amazing sustainable fashion while you are on the site, or at the store.