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June 18, 2010
Planner Garvin on Atlantic Yards: “A single site rezoned for a single owner with a set of towers and an arena. That's not a public realm."
Atlantic Yards Report
Architect, planner, and educator Alexander Garvin is hardly an anti-development NIMBY. He calls himself pro-development and is proud of his work steering the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) and serving as managing director of the NYC 2012 Olympics effort.
But Garvin, stubbornly enough, is a believer in the public realm--streets, parks, transit system--and thinks that’s where government investment should go, and the private development will follow.
He believes in clear rules and an even playing field, rather than a governmental attempt to pick winners.
And that means that he can’t avoid taking shots at Atlantic Yards as an example of where things went wrong, a project where the public realm was scanted in favor of a single developer and the city's land use review process was circumvented.
Last night, he discussed the major planning ventures with which he’s been involved, part of “Conversations on New York,” sponsored by the Architectural League, in conjunction with its exhibition The City We Imagined/The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 (which will move to Governors Island next month).
...Criticizing AY
“Atlantic Yards: what kind of public realm is there? None,” he responded rhetorically. “A single site rezoned for a single owner with a set of towers and an arena. That's not a public realm. If you're going to increase what you can support on the site, you need to be able to support them with something, such as community facilities, mass transit, and streets, and I have a problem when the upzoning isn't related to that.”
Actually, Atlantic Yards is not an upzoning but an override of zoning. There might be some new facilities, but the timing of a school and a day care center is unclear, and dependent on public money. Meanwhile, streets have been subtracted, rather than added, and there’s no opportunity for multiple developers to bid on separate sites.
Posted by eric at June 18, 2010 10:19 AM