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Regional Plan Association's 8th Annual Regional Assembly Tuesday, May 5, 1998 The Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers with speakers Kenneth Jackson Adele Simmons and Governor Christine Todd Whitman |
"Creating the Capacity for Growth" will focus on the importance of targeting policy and investment initiatives toward our urban and suburban centers as the places which can best accommodate new economic activity. It will build on the substantial achievements we have already made in implementing the Third Plan, and will continue the dialogue on how best to improve the Region's economy and quality of life.
Join us on May 5 and participate
in discussions on how to promote sound, fair and sustainable growth
for the whole Region and how to keep pressure and focus on the
issues that will shape our future.
Read
"Creating the Capacity for Growth" by RPA Executive
Director Robert D. Yaro
Read
a transcript of Governor Whitman's speech.
WORKSHOPS - click
to read the position papers from the workshops
Suburban
Highway Congestion: What to Do When We Cannot Build Our
Way Out of It?
The shift of people and jobs
to the auto-dependent suburbs has led to unprecedented highway
congestion, and road congestion is the single biggest constraint
on economic growth in our suburbs. Building more roads is
not a solution because of high costs and local impacts.
Bolder solutions are needed and are available. Traffic management,
time of day pricing and cash-out of parking are among these new
tools. Do we have the courage and conviction to try them?
The answers may lie in two corridors in the Region—one in
Connecticut, the other in New York—to be discussed in this
session.
Moderator: Emil H. Frankel, Esq., Counsel,
Day, Berry & Howard
Panelists: Christopher Bruhl, President
& CEO, Southwestern Area Commerce and Industry Association
of Connecticut, Scott Vanderhoef, County Executive, Rockland
County
AIA/RPA Design Workshop
This is the Second Annual
workshop on urban and suburban design issues, sponsored jointly
by RPA and the American Institute of Architects New York Chapter.
Crosstown
116th: Bringing the Principles of Habitat II Home, from
Istanbul to Harlem
Crosstown 116 is the pioneering
civic triumvirate created by the American Institute of Architects
New York Chapter, the City College of New York School of Architecture
and Environmental Studies, and the local communities and organizations
in Upper Manhattan, working together along the 116th Street corridor,
river to river. Crosstown 116 is sponsored by the US Department
of Housing and Urban Development, in response to the United Nations
Habitat II world conference on cities. This panel will focus
on exciting new plans being developed for 116th Street that will
bring the city building principles of the United Nation's Habitat
II conference to this corridor in Norther Manhattan.
Moderator: Robert Geddes, FAIA, Architect
Panelists: Lance Jay Brown, AIA, Professor,
City College School of Architecture and Environmental Studies;
Aliye Pekin Celik, Officer in Charge, NY Office, United Nations
Centre for Human Settlements; Beth Greenberg, AIA, Architect,
AIA New York Chapter Housing Committee; Ghislaine Hermanuz,
Director, City College Architectural Center; Alex Savaadra,
Program Associate, Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone
Riding on the Edge: Transit,
Land-use and the Remaking of Suburban Sprawl
The maturing of older sprawl
centers is one of the biggest challenges facing the Region.
Areas such as Roosevelt Field in Nassau County ("the Nassau
Hub"), unlike the newer "edge cities," have all
of the components of a true city_millions of square feet of office
and retail space, museums, cultural attractions, parks and entertainment
destinations. Yet, these places are so vast that they remain automobile-dependent
"non-places." This workshop will consider the
potential and limitations of using transportation improvements
to turn sprawl centers into true places. Using recent work
at the Nassau Hub by RPA and the Long Island Regional Planning
Board, the workshop will address a number of compelling questions:
What are the limitations of transit improvements in sprawl centers?
What urban and suburban design principles apply? What is
a model 21st Century suburban center?
*This workshop will be
held during Session II only
Moderator: Robert Geddes, FAIA, Architect
Panelists: Robert Lane, Director, Regional
Design Programs, Regional Plan Association; Carlos Macedo
Rodriguez, PP, AICP, Manager, Special Projects, New Jersey
Office of State Planning; Brian Shea, Partner, Cooper Robertson,
Ltd.
Parks
that Pay for Themselves? Governors Island and the Hudson
River Waterfront Park
Protected green spaces and
quality outdoor recreation opportunities are critical components
of the Region's quality of life, especially in New York City and
other urban areas. But those striving to create new parks
are increasingly being challenged to do so with little or no public
funds. This panel will examine two places—Governors
Island and the Hudson River Waterfront—where parks that "pay
for themselves" are being considered and will assess whether
this new model can work.
Moderator: Robert Pirani, Director of
Environmental Programs, Regional Plan Association
Panelists: Albert K. Butzel, Chair, Hudson
River Park Alliance; Kathy Madden, Vice President, Project
for Public Spaces; Marcia Reiss, Deputy Director for Policy,
Parks Council; Jane Thompson, Principal, Thompson Design
Group
At-Risk Students in the Information
Economy
A central issue to the Region's
capacity for sustainable and equitable growth is the persistent
gap between the skills of low-income youth and the escalating
demands of employers for high academic achievement, creativity
and technological literacy. Some encouraging signs
have emerged in the last few years, from dramatic improvements
in the performance of some low-income schools to successful programs
for drop-out prevention. This workshop will examine the
impact of recent reform efforts, such as higher academic standards,
the alternative school movement, school-to-career programs, and
technology in the classroom. Most importantly, it will address
the vexing question of how to take small scale successes and bring
them up to scale in large urban school systems.
Moderator: Christopher Jones, Director,
Economic Programs, Regional Plan Association
Panelists: Beverly L. Hall, Ed.D. State
District Superintendent, The Newark Public Schools; E. Phillip
McKain, President, CTE, Inc.; Lewis H. Spence, Deputy
Chancellor, New York City Public Schools
Regional Rail: Where are We Two
Years After the Third Plan?
Providing efficient and convenient
mass transit is a vital issue in creating the capacity for growth
in this Region. The Third Plan proposed a series of major
new rail initiatives under the umbrella of Regional Express Rail
(Rx), which would create a more seamless, modern and user-friendly
system. Since that time remarkable progress has been made
toward turning that plan to reality. This session will highlight
the progress being made on many of the elements of the Plan with
presentations from the transportation agencies.
Moderator: Peter W. Herman, Esq., Partner,
Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, and Chair, Regional Plan
Association
Panelists: Brenda Levin, Commissioner,
New York City Planning Commission; Thomas Prendergast, President,
Long Island Rail Road; Edward S. Seeley, Jr., Economic
Consultant; Carl Weisbrod, President, The Alliance for
Downtown New York; Jeffrey M. Zupan, Senior Fellow, Transportation,
Regional Plan Association
Climate Change and the New York
Region: Will We Become "The Baked Apple?"
RPA recently held a series
of climate change breakfasts which drew together leaders of the
financial, insurance and business communities to discuss potential
impacts of climate change on the regional and world economies.
These discussions identified a host of issues such as land use,
property values, food and energy prices, manufacturing processes
and health, all of which stand to be affected by climate change—whether
for better or worse may depend on government, business and even
personal priorities and choices. Topics to be discussed
include: What is the state of the science (what's sure and
what's not)? What are the potential impacts on the Region's
growth? How will business affect and be affected by climate
change? What policy options are governments in the Region
considering?
Moderator: Linda Descano, Vice President,
Environmental Affairs, Salomon Smith Barney
Rebecca Craft, Vice President,
Enterprise Planning, Prudential Insurance Company
Panelists: Winifred Armstrong, Consulting
Economist, Regional Plan Association; Kenneth Blower, Director,
Health, Safety and Environment, BP America Inc.; Stuart Nagourney,
Project Manager, New Jersey Climate Change Workshop Group;
Cynthia Rosenzweig, Research Scientist, NASA Goddard Institute
of Space Studies
Redeveloping Brownfield Sites:
Market vs. Planned Approaches
RPA's Third Plan calls for
a comprehensive program to reclaim the Region's estimated 50,000
brownfield acres and strongly urges that these areas become the
focal points for growth in the Region. There are more than
100,000 leaking underground fuel tanks, spill sites, or former
industrial sites included in the government's registry of known
or potential toxic sites in the Region. Many other sites
have little or no contamination but carry the stigma and bureaucratic
burden of brownfields designation. Making these sites productive
once again promises to bring new opportunities to urban neighborhoods
blighted with derelict land and to provide alternatives to further
suburban development on the Region's outer fringes.
In two panel discussions, this
program will discuss market-based and planned approaches encouraging
brownfields and vacant land redevelopment. Panel I will
focus on market approaches, such as tax abatements or liability
protection that help move sites back into productive use.
The second panel will focus on planned approaches for sites that
require heavier public involvement and commitment. What
types of programs have been successful? When are market
approaches the appropriate response to a site, as opposed to planned
approaches? What tools are available to local communities
to plan for brownfields redevelopment, both locally and in a regional
context? These panel discussions are funded by a grant from
the Lincoln Institute of
Land Policy.
Moderator: Christopher Daggett, Principal, Chadwick
Partners
Panel I (Session I only)—Market-Based
Approaches: Peter
Aagard, President, OENJ Corp.; James Chalmers, National
Coordinator, Coopers & Lybrand LLP Contaminated Property Valuation
and Transaction Services Practice; Alex Cohen, Brownfields
Coordinator, Newark Economic Development Corporation; Peter
J. Skosey, Urban Development Director, Metropolitan Planning
Council, Chicago, Ill.
Panel 2 (Session II
only)—Planned Approaches:
Thomas Grohe, Project Manager, Emscer Park International Building
Exhibition; Juanity Joyner, Director, Community Outreach
and Site Remediation, Associate Director, Isles, Inc.; Charles
Lee, United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice;
Stephen O. Noble, Team Leader, Kemper Environmental
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