February 13, 2012 · www.gothamgazette.com

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Adding Teeth to Community-Based Plans
March 13th, 2008

The effort to put some legal weight behind the city’s community-based planning process has gained a bit of momentum. It seems that Councilmember (and mayoral candidate) Tony Avella is drafting legislation to give some teeth to them. Currently, the plans, called 197-a plans, are advisory in nature only.

Although the 197-a plans submitted to the city are generally approved, competing plans often stifle their implementation. For example, just yesterday, a developer’s plans for the East River waterfront in Manhattan were approved by a City Council committee, even though they are in conflict with the plan developed by the local community board.

“197-a has been flawed because it’s basically the city saying that neighborhoods can have a say in development but in fact it has no force of law,” Avella told Brownstoner, who first wrote about the upcoming bill yesterday.

The bill is the progeny of the eight year old Campaign for Community-Based Planning. The campaign is a coalition endorsed by eight council members, a dozen community boards, and even more civic organizations (including Citizens Union, the sister organization of Gotham Gazette’s publisher). Their platform calls for improving the capacity of community boards to plan; ensuring that community boards’ reflect the districts they represent; and providing communities with the tools they need to implement their plans.

But some of the comments on the Brownstoner blog raised concerns about the idea, one of which revolved around the ability to ensure that citywide needs are met. “The needs of the community are only one aspect of a sound plan,” one reader said. “You also need to take into account the needs for the city as a whole. If all planning were community based, then there would be no power plants, no waste transfer stations, no sewage treatment plans, no bus depots, etc.”

The platform would give 197-a plans a right-of-way, but it also calls for the benefits and burdens of citywide needs to be distributed equally.

“That concern is only true in neighborhoods that are privileged and don’t want to accept their share of the burdens,” says Elizabeth Yeampierre, the executive director of UPROSE, a community group based in Sunset Park. “A lot of environmental burdens are clustered in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.” A 197-a plan for Sunset Park was recently approved by the local community board there.

Still, flexibility in planning needs to be stressed, says Eve Baron, director of the Planning Center at the Municipal Arts Society. “It’s not wise to make any plan bound by law,” she says. “But what we have right now is nothing. We want 197a plans to be taken seriously. Any plan that would go against one needs to explain why.”

By Mike Muller on March 13, 2008, 2:10 pm
In category: Land Use | No Comments »

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