In this issue of Spotlight on the Region:

– New York City Struggles to Get Over Its Inferiority Complex

– The Mayor as Urban Designer

– Design and Development Collide in an Appropriate Setting

– Calendar

Back on Top, City Gingerly Flexes its Muscles

Back when he was just a comedian, Al Franken played a self-help obsessed character on Saturday Night Live named Stuart Smalley. Smalley tried numerous 12-step programs and was often seen staring into the mirror, chanting: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!” It’s a mantra that New York City would do well to learn, and one that Mayor Bloomberg seems to be taking to heart when it comes to the City’s dealings with developers.

For much of the last generation, the city has suffered from a well-deserved inferiority complex. All of the traditional urban ailments made New York the national poster-child for the dirty, unsafe city, even when it wasn’t literally burning. The city was a place you wouldn’t want to visit, never mind invest millions of dollars to build an office tower or a residential building – at least not without a massive subsidy.

And so New York’s poor self-image became institutionalized as a parade of elected officials rolled out the red carpet for any development project willing to look twice at our once proud city. And until recently, even the massive turnaround of the past decade hadn’t convinced us that, doggone it, people like us enough to invest here without massive concessions.

Enter Mayor Bloomberg and his recent revelation that the city’s 421-a program needlessly gives tax abatements to developers of tremendously profitable residential development. The city is now considering radical changes to this program, which is also a mechanism for generating affordable housing.

In its current form, 421-a gives significant real estate tax abatements to all developers outside of the core Manhattan area (96th Street to 14th Street on the East Side and down to Houston on the West Side). The result is hundreds of millions in foregone real estate tax revenue for the City. Those developments within the core area may receive the abatement, too, if they include affordable housing (or, more often, provide some in central Brooklyn and the South Bronx where land is cheaper). Rental buildings receiving the abatement must follow the rent stabilization board’s guidelines for rent increases, even if their apartments are over $2,000 per month. The Mayor is now considering removing the Manhattan core area distinction and requiring developers in any part of the city to include affordable housing if they want to receive the abatement. It is a welcome acknowledgment that neighborhoods like Wall Street, Harlem, Williamsburg and other communities throughout the five boroughs are hot residential markets in no need of subsidy.

How this new policy would affect the city’s housing markets would be a good indicator of how much has changed. Doubters say that the abatement is still needed to lure developers to areas they wouldn’t invest in otherwise, and weakening it will depress New York City’s housing market. Underlying these arguments against the 421-a reforms is the fear of what will happen when the air goes out of the housing market. Even accounting for the inevitable ups and downs of the housing cycle, the long-term fundamentals of the market are far stronger than when the subsidy program was designed. However the market reacts, the Mayor’s decision to proceed over protests from developers would be an assertion that the city is no longer a red-headed stepchild desperate for any attention it can get.

This positive step by the Bloomberg administration makes one wonder why our inferiority complex still seems to dictate negotiations with developers on big projects. In fact, almost all of the administration’s most favorite projects – the Atlantic Yards mega-development, the new Yankee Stadium, Bronx Terminal Market, and even Governors Island – allow developers tremendous leeway without demanding substantial concessions in the public interest.

Take the proposed new Yankee Stadium, currently steaming its way through the approval processes. Putting aside the pros and cons of building a new stadium, there are a number of reasonable conditions that the city could have requested of the development team to show good faith and an interest in the good of the surrounding community. The plan calls for a whopping 75% increase in the stadium’s parking, despite a decrease in seating at the new facility. These new parking spots are responsible for much of the loss in park space that will plague the community, especially during the several years of construction. A proposed solution that would reduce the need for parking and pollution in the asthma-scarred Bronx is the construction of a new Metro-North station at the stadium. Everyone seems to agree that it is a good idea, but without a push from the City the Yankees have not stepped up to the plate to pay for at least a share of the $80 million station. Anyone who really thinks Mr. Steinbrenner will take his team to New Jersey is stuck in 1985. He isn’t going anywhere, and should do a better job for the community that the team calls home.

Similar examples can be found for all of the other aforementioned projects. The underlying theme is that the City – and New York State as well – seems to believe that the only way to get these projects built is to work as a junior partner of the developer, even if the developer’s goals are not entirely in tune with City goals for affordable housing, open space or general quality of life. This is not to minimize the importance of cooperation between public and private sectors on mega-projects, but the process is often backwards. Rather than taking the initiative by facilitating a public discussion, setting guidelines and then encouraging competitive proposals, the City and State frequently limit the possibilities by waiting for developers to generate the ideas for city-shaping projects.

To be sure, the city is not an easy place in which to build. Land and construction are expensive and getting more so. There is more that needs to be done to make more land available and reduce costs, particularly the uncertainty and delay that cost money. But the demand, at least for residential development, retail and many mixed-use projects, has far outstripped these costs.

Perhaps the Mayor’s aggressive push to get Larry Silverstein to renegotiate the World Trade Center lease is another sign that things are changing. We shouldn’t be naïve enough to think that developers will ever have no sway over the officials they schmooze with and help elect, but overcoming the deep-seated inferiority complex that still seems to drive many of these deals could at least lead to better public outcomes.

So everyone should be watching the 421-a process closely, because if changes are successfully made it could be the first step toward a more rational approach to development in New York City. Hopefully, it will be one that is both developer- and community-friendly. If the city is going to add another million people and jobs over the next two decades, we’ll need a lot of new development. But the developers need New York just as much as we need them, so our elected officials are positioned to demand that projects make sense for the city, not just the bottom line. New York is once again a very desirable place to live and work, and it’s time that the City’s policies reflect our newfound self-respect.

– Jeremy Soffin, Vice President for Public Affairs, RPA

The Mayor as Urban Designer

Running a big city requires the skilled management of dozens of departments specializing in functions that the mayor can’t possibly master personally. Many mayors choose to focus their attention on one or two areas of expertise, sometimes foreshadowed by their prior professional experience and sometimes not. Rudolph Giuliani was a famous prosecutor who as mayor of New York focused on fighting crime. Michael Bloomberg was a leading businessman, but as the current mayor of New York he has focused as much on schools and housing as he has at direct business development.

Mayors are often blind to aspects of a city to which they have no background or affinity. Giuliani, for example, missed the importance of infrastructure in building and maintaining a great city. Given all the lenses through which a city can be seen by a leader, and the different uniforms a mayor can wear, which one makes for the best mayor? This obviously depends on the city in question, and the needs of the moment. But it is also true that one of the best roles for a mayor, and one that has been generally neglected, is the mayor as architect and urban designer. That is, as someone who sees his or her city as a physically functioning place, and focuses on designing and redesigning it to make it work better.

Given the physicality of a city, why it is so rare for a mayor to be a trained urban designer? It’s probably because the set of skills needed to win elective office tend not to be the ones that propel one into the study of design, or even urban planning in general.

Jaime Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba, is an architect and urban planner who achieved international acclaim for his reengineering of that Brazilian city around avenues lined with tall apartment buildings and served by buses that function as above-ground subways. Closer to home, the recent mayor of Charlottesville, Virginia, was Maurice Cox, a working architect before coming to office.

But Lerner and Cox are the exceptions. What happens more often is a mayor comes to power with no training as a designer, but with an affinity for looking at a city through the lens of architecture and urban design. Mayor Pasqual Maragall of Barcelona, an economist by training, won acclaim by rebuilding the physical environment of the city in a variety of ways during his 15 years as mayor.

More recently, former Mayor Enrique Peñalosa of Bogotá, a trained public administrator, acted as an urban designer when he focused on restricting car traffic, building bike paths and generally improving circulation on his city’s streets. This and related work, like renovating semi-abandoned plazas and squares, helped improve problems such as the city’s high crime rate. While in office, Peñalosa also focused on social equity challenges like enrolling more poor children in the city’s public schools. These actions all related, the mayor has said, because they were all about opening the city to all of its citizens, whether to a park or a school. Now the former mayor is working on a book that is reported to advocate a new model for development of a third-world city.

As Peñalosa demonstrated, to be attuned to architecture and urban design is to care not only how a city looks, but how it works physically, economically and socially. Urban-design oriented mayors have a better grasp of the systems of their city; they can see roads bringing traffic in and out, pipes carrying water, and homes and businesses on those streets.

In reviewing the history of the mayor as urban designer, one of the strongest examples is Mayor Joe Riley of Charleston, S.C. Content to lead this small southern city for more than 30 years, Riley has used a designer’s vision to rework and stabilize his beautiful but challenged home. He not only has done what is now obvious work, like stabilize the city’s status as one of the most historic cities in the country, but he has also focused on practical issues like Charleston’s role within the region and how it connects to its surrounding neighbors. A lawyer by training, he has become one of the premiere advocates for the mayor as a city’s chief urban designer. He is a founder of the Mayor’s Institute for City Design, a group which works on helping mayors use urban design to rework their cities.

The region is lucky to have both Riley and Peñalosa speaking this month. Peñalosa is giving the third annual Lewis Mumford lecture at City College of New York at 138th street at 6:30 pm on March 23rd. He is speaking at the college’s Great Hall at Convent Avenue and 138th Street. The lecture is open to the public. Riley will be speaking on March 30th at 6:30 pm at the Yale School of Architecture as part of the Connecticut Mayor’s Institute on Community Design, which is being held in cooperation with the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. See the calendar below for more information on both lectures.

– Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region

About Design and Development, On White

The headquarters of the American Institute of Architects in New York is a vivid demonstration that modernism, the architectural movement of the last century that advocated revealing structure and shunning ornament, is still the default position in design. Located in an old storefront just south of Washington Square Park, the Center for Architecture, as it is titled, presents a clear glass wall to the street, which allows passersby to see the bare concrete floors and white walls within. The public face of architecture in New York is resolutely modern and minimalist.

I could have advocated for a more colorful or adventuresome statement, but the center does provide a neutral space and backdrop for its many events, which fill it almost every night of the week. The center’s high level of activity provides evidence of the passion for design and development in this city and region.

On Tuesday of this week, Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic for the New York Times, and Charles Bagli, real estate and development reporter for the same newspaper, gathered at an event hosted by Columbia University’s journalism and architecture schools. The two Times-men were accompanied by their respective deans, Mark Wigley, dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Nicholas Lemann, a noted writer and dean of the Graduate School of Journalism. With Ouroussoff being a graduate of the architecture school, and Bagli of the journalism school, the event had a flavor of a face-off between the two schools, which sit on opposite sides of the neo-classical plaza at 116th Street and Broadway. About 100 people filled all of the room’s minimalist chrome and black chairs. Those unable to sit stood against the white walls.

At first, as journalists are wont to do when asked questions in public, Ouroussoff and Bagli refrained from committing themselves to any particular viewpoint or position, even as Wigley and Lemann probed them on development in the city, particularly at Ground Zero.

But some turf was staked out, in polite fashion, near the end of the event. Bagli, who noted that he had been a roofer both before and immediately after attending Columbia Journalism School, said that all this architecture stuff was “just fashion.” Architects might equip their skyscrapers with funny hats or titanium walls, but the significant acts were performed by the developers and the money men who put those buildings up with their puffs of dollars, or chose not to, in each decade.

These were fighting words to Ouroussoff. While architecture included changes in color, texture and shape that was fashion-like in its rise and fall from decade to decade, the critic said, it also defined the way people related to each other, or could relate to each other. A bare concrete wall gives people different options emotionally and practically than a see-through glass one, he said. He noted how even the arrangement of space at the event, with the four panelists up front in front of a rectangular block of spectators, was an architectural choice that helped define how people related to each other.

And so it went. Afterward it was clear that not much had been resolved, but within the center’s white walls, at least a few marking points had been laid on how a city could be seen, analyzed, and judged.

      - Alex Marshall, graduate, Columbia School of Journalism

March 15
Institute of Transportation Engineers: Tom Schulze of NJ Transit will speak about THE Tunnel, previously known as ARC - Access to the Region's Core. Wednesday, March 15, 2006, Koenig’s Restaurant, 86 South Tyson Ave., Floral Park, L.I., NY. For more info: www.ite-metsection.org.

March 16, 3 p.m.
ULI Northern New Jersey, For-Profit and Not-For-Profit Collaboration in Redevelopment. Hyatt New Brunswick, 2 Albany St., Garden State Room, New Brunswick, NJ. To register, call 800/321-5011 or visit www.uli.org.

March 22, 3 p.m.
Harlem River Brownfields: Creating a Community Vision. Bronx Community College, Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. Student Center, Room 207 & 208. 181st Street and University Avenue. After a presentation of the Harlem River BOA Program and existing conditions, the community creates a visioning plan, including goals and objectives for the future waterfront. A Light Dinner will be served. The public is invited to attend this free event. Photo ID required. RSVP to 718-324-4461 or email harlemriver2004@aol.com.

March 23
Enrique Penalosa gives the third annual Lewis Mumford Lecture - "A New Urban Paradigm: Building A Just and Sustainable Metropolis" – at the City College Great Hall. The 2006 lecture will take place on March 23 at 6:30 PM in the City College Great Hall at Convent Avenue and 138th Street. The lecture is free and open to the public. For further information, contact Kathleen Sheridan at kms@ccny.cuny.edu or Michael Sorkin, Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design, at sorkin@thing.net.

March 30
The Mayor as Urban Designer. Mayor Joseph Riley of Charleston, S.C. will deliver the keynote address for the Connecticut Mayors’ Institute on Community Design, hosted by RPA in cooperation with the CT Conference of Municipalities and Yale Schools of Architecture and Management. March 30, 6:30 p.m. Yale School of Architecture, New Haven, CT, Hastings Hall, basement floor. Limited seating. Please RSVP to 203/356-0390.

April 7, 8 a.m – 12 p.m.
The Office of Community and State Affairs at Princeton University and the Policy Research Institute for the Region (PRIOR) at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School are pleased to be hosting the Symposium on New Jersey Issues. The topic "Managing Emergency Management in New Jersey" is one clearly on the radar screens of elected officials and community leaders. The Symposium features presentations by academic and professional experts in the field, followed by a legislator panel discussion responding to the information presented in the first half of the Symposium. Robertson Hall, Woodrow Wilson School. For more information or to register (mandatory), please RSVP as soon as possible to emetro@princeton.edu

April 8
Prudential Financial and other national and local businesses and
nonprofit organizations presents Stepping Out: a Day of Finance, Fashion and Fitness. The conference is a full-day program that will help women focus on some of the most important things in their lives: their financial independence and overall well-being. It will feature general sessions and workshops throughout the day led by national and local authorities on topics for women at every stage of life; a mini-mall with information and resources on health and fitness, beauty, fashion, food and financial topics; and a Girls' Night Out Reception. Saturday, April 8, 2006, Hilton Philadelphia/Cherry Hill, 2349 West Marlton Pike, Cherry Hill, NJ. For more information or to register, see the event's website at www.steppingoutconference.com or call 1-800-287-1677.

April 19-23
9th Annual US/ICOMOS International Symposium, April 19 - 23 in Newport, Rhode Island. "From World Heritage to Your Heritage." The World Heritage List as a rich source of models for the protection and management of heritage sites with a particular focus on World Heritage cities. For more information, go to http://www.icomos.org/usicomos.

April 21
Policy Research Institute for the Region at Princeton University and the Institute for Urban Research at the University of Pennsylvania: Nationally renowned figures will discuss downtowns’ shift from commercial centers to 24-hour mixed-use communities during this colloquium titled, “New Downtowns: A Conference on the Future of Urban Centers.” Panelists will consider the social, political, and economic driving forces behind this change and the planning and design standards new downtowns should reflect, at the state and local level, with a particular focus on cases in NY, NJ, and PA. Friday, April 21, 2006, Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. For more info:http://region.princeton.edu/conference_21.html.

May 5
Come What May: Planning in an Age of Disaster. RPA’s Annual Regional Assembly at the Waldorf-Astoria in Midtown Manhattan. More information will be available soon at www.rpa.org or call 212/253-2727, ext. 317.