« Develop Don’t Delay Brooklyn | Main | The Scarlet B Stands For Brooklyn... »
August 17, 2006
Sneak Preview of Bloomberg’s 21st Century Urban Vision
StreetsBlog
As reported in today's Observer a team working under Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has, for the last year or so, been secretly developing a sweeping, new urban planning vision for New York City. In its scope and ambition, the Observer compares the plan to the 1811 layout of Manhattan's street grid system and the 1929 Regional Plan that gave us many of today's highways and parks.
StreetsBlog has been sitting on a copy of this plan since June but has now posted copies on the web site:
Not wanting to jeopardize the potential for this innovative plan to move forward, we held off on writing about it.
NoLandGrab: One big component of the plan is to create more elbow room for devlopment by building platforms over existing expressways and railyards. The scope of the Mayor's vision makes the debate over Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards even more pressing and relevant to the future of NYC.
If a no-bid backroom deal is permitted to go forward for Atlantic Yards, the fear is that this type of development/approval paradigm will become official practice, rolling back many of the important community-based development reforms from the last half of the 20th Century.
The Mayor's "smart growth" innitiatives also seem to run counter to Bruce Ratner's Atlantic Yards proposal, where the "smart" portion seems to have been overlooked.
Posted by lumi at August 17, 2006 8:18 AM