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June 10, 2012
A protest today about accountability, and the need for oversight when public-private projects have a significant private upside
Atlantic Yards Report
Today's Atlantic Yards protest is about the failure to deliver on promises, but ultimately about accountability, the fundamental issue regarding Atlantic Yards.
At the same time, endless process and too much public input, as Atlantic Yards backers argue in opposing a Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement, cause further delays and continued litigation.
So, how to balance democracy, accountability, and progress?
The NIMBY crowd
That question was raised in Brooklynite Will Doig's 5/26/12 Salon column When the 1 percent say no: Cities need public transit and affordable housing. But outdated laws make it easy for the wealthy to block progress:
For years, Beverly Hills has been trying to derail the planned alignment of the West Side Subway Extension, saying it would be safer to run it beneath Santa Monica Boulevard (though their own study indicates otherwise). The threat of lawsuits and endless public hearings have delayed the project but not killed it; now opponents have released a video claiming that the subway could ignite pockets of methane gas and blow the school to bits....
You could make an equally scary video about the dangers of NIMBYism, which has essentially become an official part of the urban planning process in many cities. From bike lanes in Brooklyn to desperately needed housing in D.C., public micromanagement has become such a problem that several cities are now trying to rein in the Not-In-My-Backyard crowd. “The current process does not work for anyone,” one urban design expert told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We want the Planning Commission to focus on big planning issues, not micro-design issues.”I mostly agree with Doig, but question his tone: are "the anti-development gadflies who have time to go to years of public hearings" really worse for the public interest than the lawyers and public relations professionals paid big bucks to attend them--at least when the hearings concern projects that might be better described as private-public?
And one of the reasons people get alarmed about projects like Atlantic Yards is that city and state planners never contemplated plans for the potentially valuable Vanderbilt Yard and adjacent property. Also, two courts have essentially said that Empire State Development Corporation mislead the public in failing to study a project that could last 25 years.
Posted by steve at June 10, 2012 9:22 AM