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November 19, 2009
In Third Term, Bloomberg Must Align All Agencies With PlaNYC
Streetsblog
by Ron Shiffman
Co-founder of the Pratt Center for Community Development, professor at the Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning, former City Planning Commissioner and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn Executive Board member Ron Shiffman critiques the failures of the Bloomberg administration — and lays out a road map for how it can make good. One key aspect of that — scrapping Atlantic Yards for the UNITY Plan.
When it comes to sustainable development, the mayor's record is mixed at best. Many of his agencies -- such as the Department of Design and Construction with David Burney at its helm, the Parks Department under the able direction of Adrian Benepe, and the Department of Transportation under the energetic and farsighted leadership of Janette Sadik-Khan -- have done a fabulous job promoting and implementing the goals of PlaNYC.
...Unfortunately, creativity, innovation and commitment to the principles of sustainability stop with these few agencies. Other public servants charged with planning for the future of the city have abdicated that responsibility. The Department of City Planning, despite some exemplary work on open space design and enhancing opportunities for world-class architecture, has ignored planning for the New York City of 2030. Instead, it has focused on rezoning the city as if we still lived in the 1960s, using the language and planning concepts of that discredited era rather than preparing to meet the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
Together with private developers, the city's Economic Development Corporation and other quasi-government entities, the planning department has embraced outmoded redevelopment plans for Willets Point in Queens, Hudson Yards on the far West Side, Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, and Columbia University's expansion into Manhattanville without any substantive regard to the principles and goals of PlaNYC.
These large-scale development plans fundamentally ignore the issue of sustainability. And they cast the form of the city in concrete for a century or more.
Posted by eric at November 19, 2009 5:45 PM