In his scathing critique of the 1929 Regional Plan for New York and Its Environs, Lewis Mumford warned that it should be finally judged not "by its separate details, but by its drift." This holds true of PlaNYC as well.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg's sustainability agenda is chock full of urgent and unassailable proposals for "greening" the city, but is ultimately flawed by a narrow conception of sustainability, insufficient treatment of the economic potential of environmental policy, and a failure to lay out a program for insuring that future growth is equitably distributed. Its glaring omission of "green collar jobs," along with a land use agenda dominated by real estate and its timid proposals for reforming procurement policy all mar its lofty goals. PlaNYC reflects the Bloomberg administration's resistance to innovative approaches that would provide a modicum of social sustainability in terms of jobs, income and neighborhood stability.
To be sure, Bloomberg understands that public and private efforts to foster a healthy environment have significant implications for the local economy. In a 2008 speech, he lamented, "For far too long, environmentalism has gotten pitted against economic development." He went on to declare that clean energy would "be the oil gusher of the 21st century" and that "going green is the best -- indeed the only -- pro-growth strategy."
Yet conspicuously missing from the original PlaNYC report was a discussion of green collar jobs and industries, or for that matter, any explicit strategy for green growth. The recent update includes a token two-page section on "Economic Opportunity," but the overarching framework remains the same.
Instead of promoting development from within, PlaNYC is preoccupied with how to solicit outside investment by "attracting companies and talent:" and "new people" who "bring new ideas and innovation." Bloomberg continues to emphasize large-scale redevelopment projects, characterized as "smart growth" despite their spotty track record in terms of yielding fiscal and economic benefits, and their failure to generate trickle-down benefits to distressed neighborhoods.
The report also offers no roadmap for how the city could augment local production efforts to meet the changing needs of a green economy, including those encompassed by PlaNYC initiatives. Finally, because the administration's notion of "sustainability" does not consider social equity, the plan offers no discussion of the level, distribution and stability of income for current New York City residents, and makes no effort to address disparities in economic opportunity such as those in London's sustainability plan. As far as we can tell from the PlaNYC report, the people of New York City will be as unequal in 2030 as they are today, and low-wage jobs will continue to drive the city's job growth.
The PlaNYC programs have already helped stimulate investment in the retrofitting of buildings, installation of solar panels and improvements to the city’s infrastructure and mass transit, to give a few examples. This should provide local economic development officials with the opportunity to affect how such investments ripple through the local economy, the types of jobs they create, and in some cases, even their wage and benefit levels. However, while PlaNYC emphasizes the many jobs that would be created in construction, maintenance, forestry and engineering, it does not chart a plan for how these investments could create a green industrial sector.
A study commissioned by the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul on green economic development concluded, "Jobs aimed at retrofitting and renewable energy installation, while critical to meet environmental goals … have a short-term focus. Unless these programs are tied to local manufacturing, they will have a limited impact on the long-term development of the region."
The transition to a green economy can afford New York an opportunity to reclaim some manufacturing jobs by identifying niches where local manufacturers have a competitive advantage and strengthening the supply chains to provide the materials and goods for projects stimulated by PlaNYC expenditures. This local production also would decrease greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the distance between manufactured goods and their final destination.
Other cities have attempted to do this. They have built local capacity through cluster initiatives aimed at connecting core businesses with suppliers and new technologies, and fostered the creation of green business incubators to provide logistical support and financing for startup companies.
PlaNYC, however, fails to appreciate the extent to which growth can be achieved by augmenting local production efforts that meet local needs. Instead, PlaNYC's "Transforming to a Green Economy" focuses more on promoting economic opportunities in New York to national and international companies.
Addressing this failure to support fledgling local businesses would require the city's Industrial Development Agency to reallocate its resources. Currently, about 70 percent of the agency's assistance goes to large commercial projects such as office buildings and large retail complexes. Instead the IDA should target subsidies as part of a strategic plan for promoting green industry while strengthening the market for green products by mandating sustainable business practices as a condition for receiving a subsidy.
PlaNYC initiatives will require the city to buy new goods and services, creating a larger market for green products. The city can put this purchase power to good use.
Progressive municipal administrations across the country have long recognized that government's purchasing and contracting can generate jobs and shape local labor markets. Many experts agree that it is entirely justifiable to give local bidders an advantage over outsiders because of the spin-off benefits a local contractor provides.
The updated PlaNYC report discusses the current administration's policy of "environmentally preferable purchasing," which requires agencies to consider the human health and environmental impacts in procurement decisions. New York City procured almost $17 billion worth of supplies, services and construction last year, more than any other city in the country, making it a potentially powerful customer.
Despite this, Bloomberg administration does not seem to have a local purchasing policy. The recent decision to award Nissan a 10-year exclusive contract to provide a new taxi fleet is a case in point. The city rejected a rival proposal by Karsan that would have manufactured its taxis in Brooklyn, generating hundreds of stable, high-paying jobs.
Adam Friedman, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, has argued, "It is pointless to invest in green jobs if they have no place to go." Indeed, a study by the Center for Community Innovation at UC-Berkeley contends, "Cities that preserve land already zoned as industrial will place themselves at a competitive advantage for attracting green businesses."
Numerous studies have demonstrated that space is the primary challenge facing New York City's manufacturing businesses. Rather than addressing this issue as part of a green jobs initiative, PlaNYC exacerbates these pressures through its real estate-led development approach that privileges the "highest and best" use of land. This means, for example, that housing almost always takes precedence over manufacturing.
With the exception of the Industrial Business Zones created in select areas, this continues the administration policies of the last 10 years. It has already rezoned approximately 20 percent of the city's industrial land and continues to allow big box stores, hotels and other nonindustrial uses in manufacturing zones.
The resulting real estate speculation is only fueled by the PlaNYC report. It, for example, proposes the rezoning of many manufacturing zoned areas -- especially in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island -- as the solution to future housing needs. PlaNYC also assumes that "underutilized waterfronts" and any site within a 10-minute walk to a subway should be reserved for housing, thereby cutting off industrial activities from mass transit and the waterfront. This is not inconsequential from an environmental perspective since every large barge that brings material into the city replaces as many as 60 trucks.
Karen Chapple, a planning professor at UC-Berkeley, reminds us, "Despite the rallying cry for green jobs as pathways out of poverty, a green economy does not necessarily mean well-paying, green-collar jobs unless local job standards and training programs are in place." Indeed, a sizable number of potential green-collar jobs entail redeploying workers in industries that tend to pay low wages. For this reason, another Center for Community Innovation reportlists living wage and benefits ordinances as its first recommendation to policymakers.
This is especially relevant to New York City, which has seen a sharp rise in the working poor and an unprecedented level of income inequality. New York City ranks worst with respect to inequality of household income among the 50 largest cities in the U.S., with the top 1 percent of the population receiving 44 percent of income in 2007, according to a report published by the Fiscal Policy Institute. A recent study by the Drum Major Institute further details the extent to which the city's lowest-paid industries dominate new job growth.
Despite these trends, PlaNYC does not incorporate wage or local hiring requirements in its projects. In fact, the Bloomberg administration is fighting a City Council bill that would require the recipients of economic development subsidies for large projects to pay their employees a living wage of $10 an hour with medical benefits or $11.50 without. Meanwhile, the city has subsidized the creation of poverty wage jobs through its awarding of grants, tax incentives, and land use changes to stadiums and shopping complexes. In order for the city to achieve equitable and sustainable long-term economic growth, public investment in green industries must be tied to a living wage.
In the absence of leadership from the Bloomberg administration, the task of coordinating the city's economic development activities with its sustainability plan has largely been left to non-governmental organizations such as Urban Agenda (now the Alliance for a Greater New York), the Pratt Center for Community Development, NYC Apollo Alliance, and grassroots efforts such as Green Worker Cooperatives. In 2009 Urban Agenda and the Center for American Progress published the New York City Green-Collar Jobs Roadmap, a detailed overview of workforce development resources and needs, a breakdown of potential growth industries for a high-road green economy, and a host of essential policy recommendations to be incorporated into PlaNYC.
Despite such initiatives, the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability still has not engaged in a meaningful discussion of green collar jobs and industries. To be sure, PlaNYC's reports contain an implicit strategy for economic development, assuming that becoming greener will make New York ripe for outside investment. The reports also explicitly recognize that many of its initiatives will result in job creation if workers are adequately trained. However, the lack of a specific plan for green collar jobs cannot be dismissed as an oversight given the cacophony of voices that called on the city to address this shortcoming after the release of the first report.
Perhaps the problem stems from two conflicting agendas within this administration. Economic development officials have been charged with pursuing growth at any cost while the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and other agencies seek to mitigate the harmful effects of growth. If economic development officials considered growth as more a strategy than goal, more a means than an end, then PlaNYC might have focused on harnessing the emerging green economy to achieve a more just and sustainable city.
Dan Steinberg is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at Columbia University.
After 40 years of widely criticized development at the South Street Seaport, yet another company is about to make another try to get the venerable neighborhood right.
In January the Howard Hughes Corp., a spin-off of General Growth Properties, confirmed it was reviving development plans for South Street Seaport. While it has begun preliminary discussions with SHoP Architects, it has yet to release the design plans.
Doing so is particularly important for an area scarred by failed development projects. The direction the Howard Hughes Corp. chooses to take holds large implications for the future of the South Street Seaport neighborhood and whether it will continue as a symbol "urban renewal" or a finally emerge as a vibrant, historic community and commercial space.
The seaport area, home to some of Manhattan's oldest architecture, has been the focus for development and revitalization projects dating as far back as the 1970s. Yet after 40 years of development, the neighborhood is far from successful.
In the 1980s, the development of the mall by the Rouse Co. was seen as a way to draw visitors to the area and help the museum's finances. Despite the commercialization of the area, the Seaport Museum of New York still faces financial trouble, taking out numerous loans over the past five years to cover its increasing debts.
The museum must deal with few visitors, on top of what founding president Peter Stanford has called mismanagement by museum chair Frank Sciame and president Mary Pelzer. As a result, the museum has closed its landside galleries, placed 32 staff members on unpaid furloughs and is in talks to remove the neglected historic boats from Pier 17.
The mall, opened in 1985 as a "festival marketplace," akin to Harborplace in Baltimore and Faneuil Hall in Boston, has also had its problems. Residents have blamed the mall for distorting the area's historic atmosphere and driving up property values, forcing out local residents and businesses.
The seaport "was never meant to be a mall," said Robert LaValva, founder of the New Amsterdam Market and a prominent critic of the development that has occurred in the area.
In 2008, General Growth Properties concluded the solution to these development difficulties was more development. It began plans with SHoP Architects to tear down the Pier 17 mall and in its place build a series of two-story retail buildings and a six-story hotel.
General Growth also planned to construct a 42- story condominium tower at the foot of Pier 17 over the Fulton Fish Market.
The plan received mixed support, but development ultimately stopped in 2009 when General Growth Properties declared chapter 11. (The company restructured and left bankruptcy protection last year.)
Howard Hughes Corp., which holds a long-standing lease on Pier 17, has now taken up the area's development. While any design is only in its preliminary stages, eventually the final plan must go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP, which requires approval from the City Planning Commission and the City Council. Considering how divisive the 2008 plan was among Lower Manhattan residents, the new plan could face serious obstacles. Its ultimate success will depend on its ability to unite the diverse community visions for the Seaport.
Julie Menin, board chair of Community Board 1, which began preliminary evaluations of the 2008 development plan, stressed the need for more retail.
"There have been more than 30,000 new residents [in Lower Manhattan] since 9/11. There's a tremendous amount of residential need for new retail," she said.
Retail also plays a critical role in drawing tourists to the South Street Seaport.
"I'm on holiday and someone said [the seaport] was a lovely place to come to,' said one tourist from Belfast. "And there's Abercrombie for the kids."
"We'll definitely be coming again. We’ll come back to the mall," said a visitor from New Jersey.
Yet many local community groups oppose the massive commercialization of the South Street Seaport, which they think detracts from the area's rich history as one of New York's oldest districts.
Simeon Bankoff, executive director of the Historic Districts Council, an advocacy group, said that if the new plan was "anything similar to what General Growth was proposing three years ago," his organization would be "unalterably opposed."
"They were proposing a completely out of scale, inappropriate tower that would dwarf the entire district and change the landscape. They were going to demolish the historic Tin Building and create some faux copy of it. The list goes on and on and on," Bankoff said.
The Fulton Fish Market, which consists of the market stalls on South Street, the Tin Building and the New Market Building, is a particular point of controversy for development plans. A community rally on May 25 emphasized the need to preserve these historic buildings. Although the market moved to Hunts Point in the Bronx in 2005, its original buildings at the seaport remain vacant, used only for parking.
To LaVala, public involvement in whatever comes next is key. Although the area's streets are closed to traffic, making it " feel like a suburban shopping mall," the city owns the fish market, the surrounding streets and many buildings in the area, he said.
"Because they are owned by the public, the public should become more involved with determining the future of this place, which is a nearly intact 19th- century wholesale market district, a priceless asset of this city and a monument of worldwide significance," LaVala continued.
LaValva founded the New Amsterdam Market to in 2005 to, he said, "preserve and rekindle the original vision for the Fulton Fish Market." It now is open only on Sundays during the summer, although he would like to see it become a permanent fixture in the district.
Another key issue for residents is open space. Menin said that many community board members who leaned toward backing the 2008 development plan did so because they believed it would create more public space in the area. General Growth "had talked about building a park space and a large community center,” said Menin.
Critics, though, claimed the plan would tie up the area with so much of the space devoted to retail and the proposed hotel.
"Essentially, it's a hotel complex that other people will be able to walk around," said former New York City councilmember Alan Gerson, a major critic, in 2008.
The 2008 plan "would have ruined the Seaport altogether," LaVala said. LaValva. “"t would have been made into a luxury residential area that felt accessible to only those that could afford it."
The Howard Hughes Corp. will face a challenge in considering all the competing demands. Any effective design must carefully balance retail space with public space for the community-- all while respecting the character of the South Street Seaport. It also must satisfy the many people who do not like what the area is today.
New Yorkers will have fewer sausage and lemonade stands to frequent this spring and summer.
The Bloomberg administration is limiting the hours that street fairs can operate and restricting how far they spread out. Citing budget constraints the city is cutting the number of police officers available to provide security at the events. And it also plans to discontinue some long-standing street fairs.
The new policy will please New Yorkers who are bothered by the traffic disruptions the fairs cause and the monotony of many of them. But those who enjoy the events will have fewer chances to browse costume jewelry racks while eating funnel cake. Vendors, production companies and the organization sponsoring the fairs all face a loss of profit. And while the city's new rules may save money, experts on the fairs says the chance will do little to nothing to address the dreary sameness affecting many of the al fresco bazaars.
The number of street fairs citywide faces a roughly 25 percent reduction this year, and large events cannot be held on the same strip within subsequent weeks. A street festival, to use the city's term, is defined as "a street activity requiring a multi-day and/or a multi-block street closure," by to the Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management's website.
Last year city streets hosted 321 fairs that generated $1.6 million in revenue for the city. But the city also paid police $4 million in overtime to watch over the festivities. Under Bloomberg's proposed cuts there would be roughly 240 fairs this year.
To cut back further, the city is denying permits to traditional street fairs seeking new sponsorship in an effort to limit how many will operate this year. Long-running fairs in Brooklyn on Cortelyou Road and Ditmas Avenue and a Church Avenue Street Fair has been canceled because the original director, Rabbi Zvi Florence, passed away in March, and the city would not transfer the permit to a new official.
"For anyone to call this a 'new fair activity' rather than an extension of the previous 25 years has never been to our Church Avenue Fair," Larry Jayson, president of the Abermarle Neighborhood Association, told city officials in a letter in late April. "This is the same fair, same location, same event, just new sponsorship."
As street fair season begins, operators are trying to adjust to the new rules.
Clearview Festival Productions, which organizes street fairs, has chosen to consolidate events in order to avoid reducing operating hours.
"In some cases some of those events were not practical," said Robert Ashe, on-site manager for Clearview. "For the vendors, operating from 12 to 5 instead of 11 to 6 drastically affects their business."
Clearview will host 17 fewer fairs this spring and summer than last year, when it organized about 100 fairs. The company held its first 2011 street fair on March 19.
Robin Redmond, executive director of the Flatbush Development Corp., which coordinates the Flatbush Frolic, an annual seven-block street fair in September, worries that ending the fair at 5 p.m., an hour earlier than last year, could reduce profits and deter businesses and artists from participating.
"Vendors will receive a better return toward the end of the day," Redmond said.
The economics of street fairs in New York involve production companies, like Clearview, that receive a commission based on the vendors they attract. Sponsors, such as Flatbush Development, cover vendors' operational costs. In return, vendors pay a fee for the space they rent. They make profit based on how much money they generate in sales.
Redmond is requesting a special permit from the city to extend the fair an extra hour, but then vendors would not be able to arrive at their stations as early as in past years to set up their stands. Redmond believes the new rule may turn away potential new vendors but longtime partners will continue to take part in the Flatbush Frolic.
"We think our vendors will still be happy," Redmond said.
While the mayor's policy will save the city money, it does little to promote more diverse fairs. Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy organization focused on improving the city, believes New Yorkers seek a shift away from the ubiquitous mozzarepa, sausage and lemonade stands that he calls "more or less the same."
Just scaling back on street fairs is missing the larger point," Bowles, the coauthor of a study on street fairs, said. "The answer is a little more complicated."
City Councilmember Daniel Garodnick, who chairs of the Committee on Consumer Affairs, is drafting bills to encourage local businesses to participate in street fairs more and to promote communication between community boards and vendors.
"There's mainly soulless, corporate enterprises made up of socks and sausages," Garodnick said. "The city is granting permits to the same groups year after year. It should allow new groups to participate."
He suggested that production companies require vendors to submit requests to encourage a wider variety of vendors to apply for booths. Bowles believes new vendors should be offered discounts on renting their spaces as an incentive for them to sell their merchandise in street fairs.
Street fair production companies have "had a long time to improve what they do and have had little incentive to change the system. Some competition might be a good thing," Bowles said.
The Bloomberg administration's policy that prevents street fairs from obtaining new sponsorship may make the current situation worse, according to Bowles. "The unintended consequence is that it stifles innovation by not opening them up to new sponsoring organizations that want to be more unique," he said.
Garodnick also is proposing legislation that would require street fairs to post their location on a city website at least one week prior to the event.
His constituents have complained about the traffic changes made by street fairs. Streets are closed off as long as the fair is set up on that day.
"It will allow people to find them if they wish or avoid them if they don't," Garodnick said.