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 May 17, 2007 | Vol 6 No. 10 |
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In This Issue: – PlaNYC: What’s in It for the Suburbs? PlaNYC: What’s in It for the Suburbs? The involvement of stars like former President Clinton is a sign of the extraordinary urgency and symbolism that fighting climate change has taken on. But for Bloomberg’s own PlaNYC to succeed, he will need the support of less heralded folks than Clinton or the CEO of Deutsche Bank. He will need the support of the suburban legislators, council people, mayors and civic leaders whose names are seldom in the national media. The Mayor’s considerable communication skills will be tested in the weeks ahead as he and his civic allies seek to convince these more suburban constituents. The challenge is magnified by the sheer scope of the initiative – 127 separate recommendations dealing with land use, transportation, energy, housing, air and water quality, open space and climate change. In some quarters there are also long-standing suspicions that inclusive-sounding initiatives like this are really vehicles for narrower interests, such as wealthy Manhattanites or single-issue environmentalists. Part of the response to these concerns is the breadth and diversity of the coalition that has formed to support the initiative. RPA has helped form the Campaign for New York’s Future (www.campaignfornewyork.org), which includes more than 80 organizations from the business, labor, public health, and environmental justice communities, national environmental organizations, community networks, regional planning groups, transportation advocates, and religious leaders. Many have been vociferous opponents of the City, and this Mayor, in the past, and few would give unqualified support for every recommendation. What unites them now is the chance to seize a unique opportunity to advance common goals for a more a livable city and region. In fact, this coalition can claim some ownership of the plan, having nurtured the ideas, advised the Mayor’s planning team, and now working collaboratively on implementation. But with some notable exceptions, the response outside of the city’s boundaries can best be described as varying shades of disinterest or wariness. This is understandable. It is, after all, a plan meant primarily for current and future residents of the five boroughs. But while it cannot be mistaken for a regional plan, PlaNYC clearly has implications for the entire metropolitan region. To the credit of the Mayor and his team, the plan approaches the future challenges of the city as those of regional systems. A good part of the reason for the plan’s regional perspective is political, since major parts of the plan cannot be implemented without the support of the Governor and state legislature. In this instance, however, political considerations mirror a substantive reality. A long-term vision for sustainability has to be regional in order to succeed. The city can’t accommodate the growth it expects without expanding suburban labor markets connected to the city with improved transportation. Air and water flow freely across municipal boundaries, and as the 2003 Northeast blackout demonstrated, improved energy reliability and conservation in one part of the region should be of interest to everyone. For Long Island, the Hudson Valley, New Jersey and Connecticut, the particular benefits of this plan are substantial. PlaNYC’s recommended actions would reduce soot produced in the city by 40%. That means cleaner air, less asthma and better health for the towns, cities and counties surrounding New York City as well. Reduction in the amount of sewage discharged into Long Island Sound and the Hudson River Estuary means cleaner water and shorelines for all of the jurisdictions along these waterways. More reliable electricity and water supply systems create more opportunities for shared back-up systems. The proposal to charge drivers $8 (less bridge and tunnel tolls) to enter the Manhattan Central Business District will speed the trip for those who choose to drive, and fund transit improvements for those who do not. And of the funding proposed for transportation, a major portion would go to projects serving areas outside of the five boroughs, including Long Island Rail Road’s East Side Access and third track, Metro-North access to Penn Station, and New Jersey Transit’s new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson. Of course, the costs will be shared as well, and there are bound to be negotiations over a fair allocation of both costs and benefits. As important, there also needs to be recognition of a growing number of plans and actions by county executives, municipal leaders and citizen groups in other parts of the region to combat climate change, foster smart growth and improve quality of life. In fact, while other jurisdictions can learn a great deal from the PlaNYC initiative, New York City can similarly learn from suburban successes with transit-oriented development, open space preservation and other policies. There is clearly an immediate need to act on the proposals put forth by the Mayor. There is also an opportunity to use this as a catalyst for a richer regional dialogue. But there’s been too little critical thinking about whether the public approach to development that has evolved over the last three decades is up to the task. Perhaps the best case for examining where we might be headed is to look at the most massive single project that has recently received public approval. The Atlantic Yards project, which will remake a large piece of Downtown Brooklyn with millions of square feet of development, has moved into the hand-wringing and lawsuit stage. Merits aside, it is worth at least reflecting on what this experience can teach us, because the Atlantic Yards experience is a microcosm not only of big-time development and politics in New York City, but of the often erroneous ways we are building our cities throughout the U.S. At the heart of the controversy and debate over Atlantic Center is an important and fundamental question: when should a development “project” be considered simply a house or office writ large, and when is it an example of “city-building,” signifying an essentially different thing in kind as well as degree? And what is the difference? Space Versus Time A project that makes the leap into city building involves changing space in a fundamental way. In city building, this means altering the existing public realm of streets and other public spaces in a substantive way. Streets are being closed, or new ones proposed. Parks and squares will be built, or existing ones altered. Altering this bottom layer of streets and essential public spaces must be considered with exceptional care because the streets and open spaces we create today will shape the neighborhoods of tomorrow for the generations that follow. When we change the streets, we’re not just writing a new picture on a piece of canvas; we’re changing the canvas itself. The time issue is similar. When a project reaches a scale at which it uses up so much time that it can be accomplished only in phases over multiple business and political cycles, then it blurs into city building. And not incidentally, it relates to the criteria of space, because projects that alter the very fabric of the city are often those that take a decade or more to be completed. Together, space and time define city building. Usually, a “project” on a single site can be built in three to five years. The same cast of participants will be there to see it through: the same architects to insure continuity in design; the same developers to insure the commitment to financing and quality; the same civic participants to insure the integrity of the community benefits; the same government representatives to insure the adherence to regulations and to manage impacts on the larger context. This is not the case with projects that take many years, and which not incidentally often involve wholesale changes on the fabric of the city itself. And because of this, some different mechanisms are needed to insure that a part of a city is designed and built well. This is the dilemma at Atlantic Yards – and at so many other large-scale redevelopment opportunities waiting in the wings: from the pending wholesale redevelopment of the South End of Stamford, to the arena district in Newark, to the development of the West Side Rail Yards, to the re-making of a future Moynihan Station district. The Project and the City The larger questions raised by Atlantic Yards are not whether one likes Frank Ghery’s architecture (he will probably design only a few of the buildings), whether Forest City Ratner has the public’s interest at heart (why would we expect it to?), or even whether one agrees with the scale and composition of the development (my organization, Regional Plan Association, supports the major elements of the plan). Looking forward, do we have a development model that will lead to better cities, as opposed to better projects? The process that led to Atlantic Yards had two basic flaws, both pointing to the need for a more vigorous role by that much maligned institution, government. There was too little government planning and public input in the early stages of the project, and too little public oversight for the lengthy period in which the development will take place. The result is a development that has much of the housing and commercial development that the region needs—and that is appropriate for the location—but an inadequate plan for public transportation and parks to support it. Similarly, it tries to compensate for the lack of continuous public oversight with a set of overly rigid design guidelines that cannot accommodate changes in architects, market demand or neighborhood needs. Underlying our lack of governmental capacity is a lack of money, which in turn comes down to lack of political willpower. We are unwilling to tax ourselves to create the physical infrastructure – the roads and parks - that would frame future development in the way we would like. So we end up allowing developers to do it, and then are angry that they fashion it more to their interests than to ours. While it is appropriate to capture a portion of the value created by new development to pay for the public infrastructure it requires, funding mechanisms need to leave government with the resources and authority it needs to advance long-term goals for a more livable city. Perhaps not surprisingly, we also lack the capacity of government itself to even manage the private process we have farmed out. This involves such things as the staff levels of the planning department, the staff of parks department, and the people who maintain public streets. On a more abstract level, it’s the people in the planning, finance and other departments who monitor design quality or make adjustments to the plan as real estate markets or community needs change, to say nothing of planning these places in advance of a specific redevelopment proposal. Skeptics to this approach will say that the public sector is broke and voters will punish any politician who raises taxes, tolls or fees. They will say that our civic dialogue has become dysfunctional and litigious. Certainly the track record of the last 30 years or so gives comfort to these realists. And the solution cannot simply be to raise taxes and create more bureaucracy. There are more creative models that are being explored, both here and elsewhere, from funding transit with highway tolls calibrated to control congestion to the flexible design guidelines and review process in place in Battery Park City. Mayor Bloomberg’s planning initiative for a more sustainable New York City demonstrates an awareness of the need to reestablish the role of government in shaping cities, and can be a vehicle for gaining public acceptance of new ideas. But if we are going to successfully remake the city and the region, we will need to confront this issue for what it is—a lack of political will, and not simply the motives and methods of each developer who comes along. The question ultimately comes down to the public and the politicians. Both must be willing to shoulder more burdens, and more responsibility. In return, they will get a city that is more efficient, more beautiful, and more prosperous. Of course, city-building will always be imperfect, and will be to some degree a process without a formal end. But this is far better than the alternative – turning the “city” into a collection of “projects” whose sum adds up to not much. 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 |
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May 23, 6:30 pm
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Spotlight on The Region A publication of Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, President, Alex Marshall, Senior Editor 212-253-2727, x360 alex@rpa.org www.rpa.org |
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