A Day in New York City with NYC Public Design Commission’s Rebecca Macklis

Rebecca is an urban strategist and transdisciplinary designer committed to advancing the holistic, equitable, and resilient design of the public realm. As the deputy director for architecture, urban design & special initiatives at the NYC Public Design Commission, she works at the intersection of design and policy, overseeing the review of complex mixed-use projects with a focus on the provisioning of public space, housing, and urban systems. Leading a portfolio of the Commission’s collaborative cross-sector initiatives, Rebecca also overseas interagency working groups for urban design and alternative project delivery as well as the Annual Awards for Excellence in Design. She is the managing editor of Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing and co-author of Women-Designed NYC. As an Urban Design Forum Forefront Fellow for Turning the Heat, Rebecca researched the risks of extreme heat to advance public health equity and climate justice.

6:15am: I have a standing alarm set for 7am but if my body wakes up on the right side of the bed, I am up by 6:15am with coffee in hand. My husband’s schedule is variable, but this week he has been out the door by six, so I wake up to a fresh brewed pot still warm on the counter. I am early to wake but slow to rise; I get back in bed with coffee in-hand and spend the next hour or so reading news and catching up on the stuff of life.

On the day I am writing this, I caught up on personal correspondence and spent a frustratingly long amount of time transferring lab results between my doctors who share a medical portal and those who don’t! This month I have been slowly emerging out of a flare up of my autoimmune and connective tissue disease and healthcare management is still punctuating most every day.

7:00am: I am trying to ease my body back into movement and spend some time doing mat Pilates and gentle yoga to reduce inflammation. I am aiming to work up to run again by September. Writing it here to hold myself accountable!

7:45am: On a typical day I’d either eat breakfast and start getting ready to go into the office, or log into my VPN and begin to dig into my pile up of emails before the rush of activity at 9am. Today an old friend from architecture school is coming over for breakfast to brainstorm on life and some recent projects before we head into our respective offices, so I put up some more water and plunge a second pot of coffee for the day.

8:15am: A summer morning that starts with stone fruit and notebooks on a roof is a good morning.

9:00am: When the weather is nice, I try to carve out time to walk to work across the Brooklyn Bridge but today is a subway day. This month marks seven years at the NYC Public Design Commission (PDC) yet walking up the steps of City Hall to our office never gets old. The steps are currently under construction which can make for some lovely background noise on calls, but the silver lining of which is that the construction fence is wrapped with project highlights from the City’s Percent for Art program.

9:30am: I get to my desk in time to send off some admin emails. Last month we celebrated PDC’s Annual Awards for Excellence in Design at the NYPL Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library and today’s focus was closing the loop on outstanding press inquiries and vendor accounts.

10:00am – 1:00pm: All staff jump into a marathon of a Zoom meeting with various commissioners to review project feedback and discuss our upcoming public meeting agenda. As New York City’s design review agency, the PDC reviews permanent structures, landscape architecture, and art proposed on or over City-owned property. Our mission is to advocate for innovative, sustainable, and equitable design of public spaces and civic structures with a goal of improving the public realm and related services for all New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs.

The Commission is made up of 11 members who serve pro bono and meet monthly to review and vote on projects submitted by City agencies. In support of this work, PDC staff each oversee the review of up to thirty project proposals per month and coordinate with both commissioners and partner agencies on project-specific feedback and larger City-wide initiatives in the lead-up to our monthly meetings. Depending on where we are in our review cycle, mid-mornings are typically blocked for these long commissioner review meetings or held for focused work to share out feedback and discuss next steps or coordinate comments with agency partners.

1:00pm: I eat a quick snack at my desk and take a moment to look through material samples for a new-build project that were just delivered from an applicant team.

3:00pm – 5:00pm: PDC executive director, Sreoshy Banerjea, and I hop on the subway to Brooklyn for a site visit. Because of the sheer volume of projects we review, site visits are not a regular occurrence but today we are meeting an applicant team, sponsor agency, our PDC President Deborah Marton, and some additional commissioners on-site to discuss feedback from last month’s public meeting. We walk the site perimeter to get a better sense of the public right-of-way (ROW) and discuss public realm adjacencies.

5:30pm: On the walk back to the subway a friend and colleague from the Department of Transportation (DOT) and I decide to grab a coffee to catch up. Coffee extends to a drink and food since I hadn’t had time earlier for a proper lunch! Normally at this time I would be in focus mode wrapping up workflows for the day; the early evening conversation was a welcome change of pace.

7:00pm: I decide to walk an extra few blocks to take the ferry home. It is finally neither 90 degrees nor raining so why not lean in! While waiting for the ferry I take some time to catch up on personal messages and call my grandma. She is 101, one of my best friends, and has a knack for being both a tough critic while also putting the stuff of life in perspective. We talk at least every couple of days, and I usually leave with both an action-item to report back on and a new Yiddish word in the brain-bank from her book group.

7:30pm: Once home I pull together a quick salad and log into my VPN to catch up on emails that piled up while on-site this afternoon. This time of day is also often when I work on more focused writing workflows like preparing briefing documents or decks for our monthly meetings. If my body is behaving and I have the energy, cooking is one of the ways I unwind. Today time and energy are not on my side so throwing some washed produce in a bowl and calling it a day will have to do.

8:30pm: Fernando and I have been ships passing in the night with our schedules lately so when he gets home, I log off work and we head to the roof for some fresh air to decompress and to catch up on the day. An albeit long day bookended by outdoor conversations is a good day.

We end up devolving into healthcare conversations as he looks over the labs that came in this morning and helps me work through some appointment follow-up.

9:00pm: I come back downstairs to work on this Madame Architect write up but realize I am overdue for my Duolingo of the day! Spanish is Fernando’s first language and although we have been partners for over a decade, I am embarrassingly elementary at it. My biggest issue is speaking so I have committed to a summer of practice with the goal of taking a conversation class this fall. I plant myself on the couch to complete a 30-minute module while trying not to be discouraged by the chortling at my pronunciation from the peanut gallery.

9:45pm: The end of the week has snuck up and I am set to do final reviews for GSAPP’s MSAUD (urban design) summer studio tomorrow. I get back onto the computer and read through the syllabus and course outline to prepare.

10:15pm: Spoon count. Living with chronic illness, taking count of my pain and energy levels each night is a daily practice in order to ration capacity throughout the week. Spoon Theory was shared with me early in my diagnosis and I find it to be a helpful way to think through my exertion and reserves. I’ll save you all the hyperlink but feel free to look it up! As I continue to wind down, I realize I have over-extended from the long day. I send off some messages to cancel next-day plans for an early morning FaceTime with a friend in the UK and for a Movies with a View screening at night in Brooklyn Bridge Park. Oh well. I appreciate my friends’ enduring patience with my last-minute cancellations and scattered response times.

10:30pm: Lights out…after scrolling through social media for a few minutes or scouring Etsy for used furniture for our new apartment. I’m looking forward to waking up with my alarm tomorrow and calling it a night promptly after I get home from reviews.

I want to say a heartfelt thank you to Julia for encouraging me to step into writing this piece and into talking about the full cross section of my day; professional practice, health footnotes, and everything in between. Also, to Catherine Chattergoon, who beautifully advocates at the end of her Madame Architect “Days With” feature for how we can all collectively work to support those with chronic disease and invisible illness through our systems of professional practice as well as with the built environment. Onward!