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In This Issue:
– All I Want for Christmas is A Few More Feet
– Spitzer's New Smart Growth Cabinet Could be New Model for Economic Development
– From Rough to Smooth: Finding The Way
– Calendar
All I Want for Christmas is A Few More Feet
For the third year running, London Mayor Ken Livingstone closed several premium retail streets, including Oxford and Regent, to car traffic for the largest shopping day of the year (see photo below). Retailers and shoppers alike watched as holiday crowds – and subsequently receipts – surged. Total for the day: an estimated at 1.5 million people gathered and spent close to $100 million pounds, numbers that have been climbing ever since the initiative was put into place in 2005. Mayor Livingston has expressed a desire to expand the program by closing Oxford Street permanently and rerouting bus service around the district within half a decade.
Many might think that New York lacks the nerve to try such an experiment, but there is precedent – and right here in Midtown. The RPA photo above is our very own Madison Avenue at lunch-hour on April 19th, 1971, when New York City Mayor John Lindsey closed a significant portion of it to traffic. The experiment, which also included Fifth Avenue on Sundays, was highly popular and sustained volume over time, all without reducing pedestrian traffic to the surrounding avenues. Though successful, the idea was never fully taken up by subsequent administrations. Contemporary New York occasionally closes streets, such as Fulton Street during lunch hour or stretches of avenues for the many frequent summer street fairs, but generally major shopping streets are not closed to car traffic during prime shopping days.
What areas would and should we pedestrianize? Observing our major shopping districts of our city over the next few weeks we can get a glimpse of what relief street closings might provide New Yorkers. London claims it regained two-thirds more pedestrian space through the closures. Do the overcrowded sidewalks of Fifth between Rockefeller Center and 59th seem the easy choice? Perhaps Prince between Broadway and 6th? Madison Avenue at lunch-time?
What do Spotlight readers think? Are there major avenues that might benefit from being closed to traffic during the holiday season? Let us know. Send your comments to jferzoco@rpa.org.
– Jeff Ferzoco, Creative Director, Regional Plan Association
Spitzer's New Smart Growth Cabinet Could be New Model for Economic Development
When it comes to smart growth, New York State has historically been more of a laggard than a leader. Although it has the most robust transit network in the nation and some exemplary open space conservation programs, there has been little in the way of coordinated state planning to promote development in city and town centers and curtail suburban sprawl. Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey and other states have taken a much more proactive approach, and can point to results such as New Jersey’s success with transit-oriented development and regional management plans in the New Jersey Pinelands and Highlands.
New York’s status in the national smart growth debate may be about to change. This week, Governor Spitzer announced the formation of a Smart Growth Cabinet that would elevate land use development as a state priority and coordinate the actions of state agencies in support of a center-oriented agenda. The action is significant for two reasons. First, it fulfills a campaign pledge of the Governor to instill smart growth principles into agency plans and investments, which reaffirms his commitment to carefully balancing economic development and environmental goals. Second, it attempts to align this agenda with an economic development strategy that promotes job growth in underperforming cities, towns and villages. Other states have struggled with shaking the image of smart growth as a cloak for environmentalists with an anti-development agenda.
This new initiative from the Empire State could help inject energy into a movement that is showing signs of age. Original proponents such as former Maryland Governor Gleddening have moved into the private sector and state plans everywhere are struggling to fulfill their early promise. By demonstrating that a smart growth strategy can revive struggling cities such as Schenectady, Buffalo or Newburgh, New York State could broaden the base of support for these policies and give a renewed sense of purpose in places like the Rust Belt where “growth management” has a hollow ring.
Specifically, New York’s Smart Growth Cabinet will review state agency spending and policies to determine how best to discourage sprawl and promote smart land use practices. The Cabinet will consist of senior officials from the Empire State Development Corporation, Department of Environmental Conservation, Department of Transportation, Department of State, Department of Housing and Community Renewal and other state agencies that have an impact on growth and development patterns. Concurrently, a $2 million fund will promote initiatives in 3-4 regions throughout the state.
While the initiative has promise, it can also learn some hard-earned lessons from other states. New Jersey had a “Smart Growth Policy Council” under Governor McGreevey, which was supposed to do similar things as Spitzer’s Smart Growth Cabinet. In the end, it did very little, in part because of conflicts between competing state agencies who felt threatened by the idea. Maryland and Massachusetts on the other hand, had similar cabinets that were far more effective. Ultimately, state efforts have only been successful to the degree that they have found a common platform and backed up administrative initiatives with investments, policies and recommendations.
These lessons indicate a number of benchmarks for evaluating the success of Governor Spitzer’s fledgling effort. One is persistence. Leadership from the top is essential, but it takes time and effort to change the organizational cultures in agencies that take a narrow interpretation of their missions and are used to autonomy and performance that is measured by gross output rather than long-term impacts. Another is incentives, particularly for the municipalities that have to be brought on board to overcome traditional resistance to higher density, affordable housing and mixed-use development. These can be either in the form of carrots or sticks, and probably need to combine some of each. But in the end, there needs to be powerful incentives for municipalities to act in concert with regional and statewide needs. This leads to a third requirement—resources. It will take far more than a $2 million statewide fund and an interagency cabinet to provide both the infrastructure investments and local incentives that will be needed to get the job done. While the state is in an extremely challenging fiscal environment, this promising start will whither if it is not soon supported by substantial funding commitments.
The responsibility of making this initiative work is not entirely with the Governor and the legislature, or even solely with the public sector. Civic and business interests also need to be mobilized to generate public support, hold elected officials accountable, and match public dollars with private resources. For this reason, Regional Plan Association is helping lead a coalition of statewide organizations to parallel the State’s efforts. A new organization, Empire State Future, is getting started to coordinate activities among participating groups, educate the public and key stakeholders, and advocate for smart growth and urban revitalization policies at the state, regional and municipal level. Stay tuned for more details on this effort. With a push from both inside the Executive Chamber and outside Albany, New York has an opportunity to build on both the successes and lessons learned from the pioneering efforts in other states.
– Robert Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association
From Rough to Smooth: Finding The Way
Riding a bicycle intimately acquaints you with every bump, slice, crease, divot, ledge, ripple and of course pothole in a street, because not noticing means you might get thrown off your steed.
What I have noticed recently in New York City is that it, like most cities in the Tri-State region, has street conditions that can only be described as poor.
Until recently, I blamed City Hall in a knee-jerk fashion. They owned the streets and they took care of them, just not very well. But this isn’t entirely correct, I realized lately. The story is more complicated.
Who does most of the work on what lies beneath city streets, and thus most of the repair work afterward on top of those same streets? Often, it is the private companies that own and operate gas, electric and phone lines below our streets. When Verizon puts in a new phone cable, or Con Edison repairs a gas line, its crews tear up the streets, and its crews repair them. And, not surprisingly, their crews may not put as high a priority on repairing streets as they do on installing phone cables or gas lines.
Then there are the other public agencies with assets below the street, such as the water lines managed by the City's Department of Environmental Protection and the subway and train lines managed by big public agencies that answer to the state.
What it adds up to is many institutions, all working beneath the streets, and then repairing them afterward, often with private subcontractors, which then adds an additional variable to the task of keeping streets neat.
A complicating factor is that New York City and American cities follow the Anglo-Saxon model, derived from Great Britain, of letting private companies do much of the primary work in installing infrastructure. As I said in my book Beneath the Metropolis, [Amazon link: http://tinyurl.com/ys5knw] London didn’t even have a public water system until early in the 20th Century. Before that it had a half dozen competing private water companies, all laying their own lines beneath public streets. New York had a similar condition with its gas and electric lines before a single company with the name Edison “consolidated” them into one corporation.
Having multiple private companies and public agencies responsible for the care of the street creates many opportunities for miscommunications and uncoordinated work. My sources in New York City’s Department of Transportation tell me quite a few horror stories.
France, Germany and Scandinavian countries tend to have the public sector take a stronger lead in maintaining and overseeing the placement and care of streets, and, not surprisingly, they have smoother streets. A friend from Germany once remarked to me, without rancor, that the streets around us at the time – we were in Cambridge, Massachusetts - reminded him of those of a Third World country.
“Apparently no one cares,” he said with some amazement. I don’t think that’s the case, but I do think we have become accustomed to a level of poor street conditions that would shock citizens of other rich nations.
Is there a way we can make our streets better, without completely reorganizing our economy? There is, and that is better public oversight. As I have talked about in other issues with the city, an important but relatively neglected part of government is diligent and conscientious oversight of private companies doing public work. This can be making sure a developer puts in the right kind of escalator in a subway station, to making sure there are good paving standards for private companies to follow, to ensuring enough resources to make sure those paving standards are met.
While Mayor Bloomberg’s recent plan to send out squads of folks on foot and bike to methodically inspect the quality of the streets is a good one, what is needed even more is rigorous enforcement of standards that already exist for the care and maintenance of streets, regardless of who is doing the work.
With some attention, perhaps we can turn our streets from their current collection of bumps, divots and holes, into smooth and seamless surfaces for traveling.
– Alex Marshall, Editor, Spotlight on the Region
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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