In This Issue:

– Mayor Bloomberg looks ahead to 2030

– Buy local, save the world?

Save the date: RPA’s Annual Regional Assembly, May 4, 2007. Details will follow when Spotlight returns in January.

– Calendar

Planning to Plan for New York in 2030: The Mayor Starts Down A Fruitful Path
For far too long, New York has been a city without a comprehensive plan. The lack of planning was easy to overlook in the 1970s and 80s as a slow economy and rampant crime conspired to limit demand for development. But the booming growth of the last decade, and the anticipated addition of 1 million more New Yorkers by 2030, has provided a wake up call to all of us. If the city is going to grow without compromising its high quality of life, we will need to upgrade an aging infrastructure system and think carefully about how and where we build.

These are the all-important questions that Mayor Bloomberg and his administration began to publicly address on Tuesday in a major policy speech at the Queens Museum of Art. The Mayor’s speech marked a key milestone in what began earlier this year as an internal effort by the administration to devise a long-term land use plan. With input from a broad range of civic, business, community and environmental constituencies, it evolved into an even more far-reaching initiative that examines the city’s problems through a wider and more inclusive lens than simply “land use.”

The word that Mayor Bloomberg chose to encapsulate an inter-connected set of opportunities and challenges is “sustainability.” As the Mayor acknowledged in his talk, the word is fuzzy. It’s been called “the word that launched a thousand conferences.” Yet it still does a better job than most in recognizing that housing, parks, mass transit, sewage disposal and a range of other aspects of city life are all important to our future.

What the word implies is that it is not sufficient to simply plan for how to accommodate the one million additional residents that are expected in the next 25 years. The more ambitious challenge is to make the city a more livable, more prosperous, more equitable and more environmentally friendly place in the process. As the Mayor explained, even addressing global issues such as climate change and energy should be part of the process.

The Mayor listed ten goals in his speech that addressed targets in housing, transportation, parks, energy, water and sewage, and environmental stewardship to be achieved by 2030. These goals, which were developed with the active participation of a Sustainability Advisory Board representing civic, academic and community interests, can be seen in more detail at nyc.gov/2030. In short, the new plan recognizes the importance of investing in infrastructure of all types, both hard and soft, as a key to maintaining and hopefully increasing the city’s livability and prosperity.

One of the ten goals that illustrates both the laudably specific and simultaneously broad nature of the plan is to ensure that every New Yorker live within a 10-minute walk of a park. It also illustrates the complexity of the challenge. With land increasingly scarce and many New Yorkers already living a good distance from open space, how can we accommodate housing for a growing population while finding enough space in the right locations to meet this goal?

So with the effort well launched, what should we look for to judge its success? With the goal of having a specific action plan by early in 2007, time is short to engage in a meaningful public dialogue and still work through the many difficult issues remaining. Here are a few things to watch for as the process unfolds:

Is the public process inclusive, and does it provide enough information to help citizens make thoughtful choices? As one surveys the work done by communities around the country, one consistent sign post that signals long-term success, even if it poses short term difficulties, is a public process that not only incorporates input from all elements of citizenry, but structures the dialogue in a way that encourages informed citizens to understand and debate the implications of different alternatives. The City will make a good start this weekend by releasing an easy-to-read insert in the city’s newspapers outlining the challenges and goals for 2030, along with the aforementioned website.

Does it engage in a discussion of controversial issues such as congestion pricing, inclusionary zoning, and other “third rail” topics? These tools can be the right ones to help the city meet the goals that the Mayor has outlined, but there is a tendency in many public planning efforts to gloss over these tough choices because of their controversy. It is too much to expect that an action plan to be produced in a few months will resolve these issues, but it should actively debate them and provide a roadmap for future action.

Does it successfully address the central issue of how to keep the city successful in the global economy while dealing with the widening gap between the wealthy and just about everyone else? As Mayor Bloomberg has said, New York City is a luxury product in many ways. People pay a premium to live and work here, and receive value for so doing. But maintaining a high-value, high-cost product can make it even more difficult, and more important for residents at the bottom and middle of the scale to receive value for their lives here, and not just barely adequate.

Does it address the political and fiscal realities of dealing with Albany and suburban neighbors? Politics is the ultimate means to get to the places the Mayor wants to go. This means coming up with realistic plans that include everyone from Capitol Hill and The White House in Washington, to surrounding counties in New Jersey, New York and Connecticut that could be vital for certain decisions.

Do the Mayor’s actions on immediate issues match the long-term strategies? Short term work should match long term goals, and it will be important to see if the City’s budgetary and program decisions reflect the stated goals, including maintaining a robust transit network, expanding affordable housing, and improving open space.

As a member of the Advisory Council and a participant in Tuesday’s discussion in Queens, I can report that the Mayor and his impressive team have undertaken this effort with the right intentions. Planning has always been difficult in this city, and the Mayor has done an excellent job getting started. Ultimately, effective planning both anticipates and encourages the growth it seeks to handle. If the city invests wisely in its infrastructure of all types, it will spark more growth both economically and in population, because the city will be a better place to live and work. If the city fails to do so, then the city’s growth projections may not pan out as the city declines economically and becomes less livable.

The process begun this week could become a major legacy for future New Yorkers, on par with the platting of Manhattan’s street grid, building Central and Prospect parks, or creating Greater New York and its five boroughs. But in the final analysis, the success of this effort will hinge on citizens and civic, community and business leaders engaging in the public dialogue that began last Tuesday, and City officials heeding their input. Inevitably, much of this long range plan will be implemented after Michael Bloomberg leaves office in three years. The extent to which his successors feel bound to carry out this plan will depend on whether New Yorkers feel that the plan is in every sense "theirs," and not just that of a term-limited Mayor.

– Robert Yaro, President, RPA

Buy Local, Save The World?
The other day, I wandered over to the nearby Union Square Greenmarket to buy an apple, bypassing the snack shop of our building where some grown in Washington State are sold.

Why would I pass by a perfectly fine looking apple right downstairs for a more expensive one a few blocks away? For a variety of reasons, that add up to making me personally healthier and happier, and I think the world around me as well. Let’s look at my reasons, and see how my choice of buying a local apple was significant.

First of all, the homegrown apple, a Honey Crisp, simply tasted better. Less time spent on trucks on a cross country journey meant that a more delicate variety of apple could be grown and then picked closer to ideal ripeness. That’s important.

Secondly, buying the local apple contributed to a more robust regional economy, which I count as an asset. The New York City greenmarket system, despite some shortcomings and unrealized potential, helps sustain close to 200 regional farmers and supports about 12,000 acres of cultivated farmland. The Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), which oversees the Greenmarket system, reports that each week in the peak season, more than 100 local restaurants buy ingredients from the farmers and more than 250,000 customers frequent the markets.

These customers are not limited to those with fat wallets. First of all, much of the produce, with some exceptions, is quite reasonably priced. Besides that, this past year the NYC Council started a pilot program that gives New Yorkers who receive food stamps even greater access to food at farmers’ markets. This is in addition to the USDA’s WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, which provides coupons redeemable at farmers’ markets throughout the region.

Whether it’s on reasonably priced rutabaga or a pricy lamb chop, by spending their dollars at Greenmarkets, food cooperatives, farm cooperatives (that often go under a program called Community Supported Agriculture) and other institutions that support local agriculture, home cooks, professional chefs and hungry office workers alike are pumping much needed dollars into our rural economy. Choosing the out-of-state foods, on the other hand, directs our dollars to a centralized distribution system made up of a complicated array of producers (farmers), middle-men (who take care of processing, packaging, storage, and distribution) and agribusiness corporations.

Thirdly, the flip side of bolstering a regional agricultural economy is curbing sprawl. According to CENYC, Greenmarket farmers have placed 1,277 acres of farmland into programs that protect land permanently from development. Our region is fortunate to have a variety of such programs including New Jersey and Connecticut’s Department of Agriculture Farmland Preservation Programs, New York’s Division of Agricultural Protection & Development program, as well as initiatives by groups like Scenic Hudson to protect farmland for any interested farmer. Keeping farming profitable is an essential part of such programs.

Fourthly, by buying the local apple I not only supported a farm with likely more sustainable practices, I probably helped to reduce other environmental impacts. The apple I purchased at the Greenmarket was grown on a farm located in Milton, New York in Ulster County, about 80 miles away. The Washington apple traveled 2,800 miles. Various academics have been studying what are known as “food miles.” Researchers at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture (http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/
staff/files/food_travel072103.pdf) found that on average local produce traveled about 56 miles to reach its destination while conventional produce averaged about 1,494 miles.

By definition, transporting food greater distances increases traffic congestion, road wear, and accidents, and uses more fossil fuels leading to air pollution and climate change. In an ideal world, these costs would be reflected in the price of the apple, but that’s not necessarily the case. While comprehensive evaluation is difficult, it’s probably the case that buying local places less of a demand on our finite natural resources.

Finally, by buying local I may contribute to a safer, more stable food system. The recent slew of E. coli deaths and illnesses attributed to tainted spinach and perhaps other vegetables help shed light on a serious flaw in industrial agriculture: it is vulnerable. Growing monoculture crops at such a large scale means that food infected at a relatively low number of sources can impact the entire country’s food supply. During the height of the spinach scare, I bought spinach from a local farmer without worry.

In summary, there are many benefits to buying food locally. But it is not a panacea. Buying all foods locally is neither desirable nor possible without seriously changing our diets. But in general, we can support a variety of worthwhile goals by directing our dollars to locally grown food, even while we should also work to build policies that support a more balanced food system overall. So the next time you’re in the city and want to go shopping for some fruits and vegetables, maybe the question you should ask yourself is not “should I go to C-Town or Gristedes?” but rather “Tompkins Square or Union Square?”

– Robert Freudenberg, associate planner, RPA

Spotlight Will Return After The New Year. Happy Holidays! – RPA Staff

Questions or comments on what’s in this issue? Send them to the editor of Spotlight On The Region, Alex Marshall at alex@rpa.org