by Robert Freudenberg, Senior Planner, Long Island
I'm sure we're all quite familiar with the bad rap that Long Island has gotten over the years from those who have never lived there. You know, that place with the unbearably clogged roads, endlessly sprawling, unaffordable homes, segregated neighborhoods and those soulless strips of commercial and big box stores.
As the nation's first postwar suburb, Long Island is often the poster child for all that we love to hate about suburbia. While there is truth to these grievances, the place must be doing something right. It has attracted generations of city-dwellers, strivers and immigrants seeking a better life. A 2006 survey by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research for the Long Island Index found that 82% of Long Islanders think that it is a good or excellent place to live.
Having grown up on Long Island, I thought looking at this 118-mile long island via my experiences there could offer a more nuanced view. As with any place this large and complex, one person's story is just that, but hopefully it will convey a sense of its appeal and diversity.
Some of my earliest memories include walking amongst the many boats and sea-faring neighbors at my south shore neighborhood's canal of the Great South Bay. It was in fact coastal resources that drew the Island's earliest inhabitants - from American Indian tribes and later south shore baymen who reaped the coast's harvest, to the north shore robber barons with their large estates overlooking Long Island Sound.
Today, Long Island's critical estuaries are protected and managed through programs in the South Shore Estuary, Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound. These waters provide fish, oysters and lobsters to plates across the country and nourish a thriving regional economy as well. My personal experiences with the coast - be it fishing with my Dad, weekends at the beach or exploring nature with friends - are likely to have been replicated for countless others on the Island and help create a collective respect for these resources.
As a young child, my days typically started and ended with a car ride to our nearby Long Island Railroad (LIRR) train station. There, we'd either deliver or pick up my dad as he commuted between home and Manhattan where he worked as an electrical engineer designing the electric systems of large buildings - not the least of which were the numerous shopping malls sprouting up in the region. To the millions of other riders then and now, the LIRR's over one hundred stations serve as convenient and efficient gateways to solid, well-paying jobs in the City. To my Dad, the train was the link between the place he had come from - New York City - and the place that his hard work there had achieved for him and his family: the suburbs of Long Island.
Often, after dropping my Dad off at the station in the morning, my Mom would find a parking spot near the station in downtown Babylon village and we'd make our way from shop to shop, checking errands off the day's to-do list. In this one place, we could pick up the photos that had been developed, drop off the dry-cleaning, buy those peculiar juices from the health food store and, my favorite, pick out cookies from the bake shop.
This scene no doubt played out all across Long Island in the local downtowns that grew up around train stations in the early days of the LIRR. But around the same time my Mom and I were shopping in the local village, the popularity of shopping malls and roadside strip commercial centers were chipping away at the vitality of these downtowns, robbing them of shoppers and making it impossible for local shop keeps to endure.
After a dark period of high storefront vacancies and depressed downtowns, an exciting trend is emerging in many of Long Island downtowns today. New restaurants, performing arts centers, shops and - yes - affordable, multi-family housing units are popping up in places like Patchogue, Copiague, Westbury and Glen Cove, to name a few.
The examples are still too few, and resistance to change runs deep, but progressive leadership and changing attitudes are helping these places transform into community centers where more and more residents want to live, work and play. Like me, I'm sure that the more idyllic memories of childhood are motivating these changes.
Now this isn't to say that I didn't lose an inordinate amount of my childhood stuck in traffic on the way to the mall, passing through communities whose residents were not given the same opportunities to achieve as I was, but what held it all together were the gifts that Long Island had and still has to offer: beautiful, abundant natural resources, convenient connections to New York City and the greater region and the small town charms of suburban downtown life. As we move ahead into a new chapter of the American story, let's pause to take note of those things that worked in the past and use our knowledge to adapt them to a more sustainable and positive future.
I'm sure we're all quite familiar with the bad rap that Long Island has gotten over the years from those who have never lived there. You know, that place with the unbearably clogged roads, endlessly sprawling, unaffordable homes, segregated neighborhoods and those soulless strips of commercial and big box stores.
As the nation's first postwar suburb, Long Island is often the poster child for all that we love to hate about suburbia. While there is truth to these grievances, the place must be doing something right. It has attracted generations of city-dwellers, strivers and immigrants seeking a better life. A 2006 survey by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research for the Long Island Index found that 82% of Long Islanders think that it is a good or excellent place to live.
Having grown up on Long Island, I thought looking at this 118-mile long island via my experiences there could offer a more nuanced view. As with any place this large and complex, one person's story is just that, but hopefully it will convey a sense of its appeal and diversity.
Some of my earliest memories include walking amongst the many boats and sea-faring neighbors at my south shore neighborhood's canal of the Great South Bay. It was in fact coastal resources that drew the Island's earliest inhabitants - from American Indian tribes and later south shore baymen who reaped the coast's harvest, to the north shore robber barons with their large estates overlooking Long Island Sound.
Today, Long Island's critical estuaries are protected and managed through programs in the South Shore Estuary, Peconic Bay and Long Island Sound. These waters provide fish, oysters and lobsters to plates across the country and nourish a thriving regional economy as well. My personal experiences with the coast - be it fishing with my Dad, weekends at the beach or exploring nature with friends - are likely to have been replicated for countless others on the Island and help create a collective respect for these resources.
As a young child, my days typically started and ended with a car ride to our nearby Long Island Railroad (LIRR) train station. There, we'd either deliver or pick up my dad as he commuted between home and Manhattan where he worked as an electrical engineer designing the electric systems of large buildings - not the least of which were the numerous shopping malls sprouting up in the region. To the millions of other riders then and now, the LIRR's over one hundred stations serve as convenient and efficient gateways to solid, well-paying jobs in the City. To my Dad, the train was the link between the place he had come from - New York City - and the place that his hard work there had achieved for him and his family: the suburbs of Long Island.
Often, after dropping my Dad off at the station in the morning, my Mom would find a parking spot near the station in downtown Babylon village and we'd make our way from shop to shop, checking errands off the day's to-do list. In this one place, we could pick up the photos that had been developed, drop off the dry-cleaning, buy those peculiar juices from the health food store and, my favorite, pick out cookies from the bake shop.
This scene no doubt played out all across Long Island in the local downtowns that grew up around train stations in the early days of the LIRR. But around the same time my Mom and I were shopping in the local village, the popularity of shopping malls and roadside strip commercial centers were chipping away at the vitality of these downtowns, robbing them of shoppers and making it impossible for local shop keeps to endure.
After a dark period of high storefront vacancies and depressed downtowns, an exciting trend is emerging in many of Long Island downtowns today. New restaurants, performing arts centers, shops and - yes - affordable, multi-family housing units are popping up in places like Patchogue, Copiague, Westbury and Glen Cove, to name a few.
The examples are still too few, and resistance to change runs deep, but progressive leadership and changing attitudes are helping these places transform into community centers where more and more residents want to live, work and play. Like me, I'm sure that the more idyllic memories of childhood are motivating these changes.
Now this isn't to say that I didn't lose an inordinate amount of my childhood stuck in traffic on the way to the mall, passing through communities whose residents were not given the same opportunities to achieve as I was, but what held it all together were the gifts that Long Island had and still has to offer: beautiful, abundant natural resources, convenient connections to New York City and the greater region and the small town charms of suburban downtown life. As we move ahead into a new chapter of the American story, let's pause to take note of those things that worked in the past and use our knowledge to adapt them to a more sustainable and positive future.
@RegionalPlan