city without a plan | 2011 january | city limits magazine

7/31/2019 City Without A Plan | 2011 January | City Limits Magazine

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www.citylimits.org 1

Vol. 34, No. 6January 2011

IN THIS ISSUE

14 | Wa ing the DeadLomex. Robert Moses.Westway. Jane Jacobs. What New Yorks plannin past tellsus about its uture.

23 | On The MoveTe citys transit system isbetter than you think. Itsalso under more strain than politicians admit.

33 | Five Boroughs.One City. No Plan.Is the citys ailure to plana plan or ailure?

44 | Whose Dreams Will Decide?Te push or nei hborhoodsto have more than a voice

18 | The Ones That Got AwayBi -ticket ideas that havent come to be at least not yet

27 | Flight Plan Dreams o a one-seat ride

30 | Going Somewhereransit improvements en route

39 | Building Tension

Land use controversy under Mayor Bloomber

43 | Could Be A Contender A plan or the water ront?

50 | Three WishesNew Yorks re ional plans

53 | Un air Share?Partial victory at the polls

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No portion or portions o this journalmay be reprinted without the expresspermission o the publishers.

Statement o ownership, managementand circulation, required by 39 U.S.C.3685: itle o Publication : City Limits.Publication Number: 498890. Date o

ling: December 2010. Issue Frequency:Bi-Monthly; January, March, May, July,September, November. Number o IssuesPublished Annually: 6. Annual subscrip-tion price: $25 individual. CompleteMailing Address o Publication: 105East 22nd Street, Suite #901, New York,NY 10010. Complete Mailing Addresso Publisher: City Limits, 105 East 22ndStreet, Suite #901, New York, NY 10010.Director: Mark Anthony Tomas. Editor:Jarrett Murphy. Deputy Editor: Kelly Virella. Owner: City Limits 105 East22nd Street, Suite #901, New York, NY10010. Known bondholders, mortgages

or securities: None.

Te purpose, unction and nonpro tstatus o this organization and the exemptstatus or ederal income tax purposeshave not changed during preceding 12months. Extent and nature o circulation:

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58 | HomeworHow to et involved with your community board

62 | ExtraExtraEvents, Jobs, Announcementsand Ofers

64 | Loo Bac More Tan Jibber-Jabber

CHAPTERS

FIRST FOCUS

MORE

SIDEBARS

ON THE COVER: Souvenirs romNew Yor s planning past andpresent: the 7-train, whoseroute is now being expanded;the MetroCard, which boostedtransit ridership; Nets gear, onsale someday at Atlantic Yards ;a Columbia pennant, soon to bewaved at a controversial WestHarlem development; a baseballcommemorating the Yan ees

rst Series win in their newstadium, erected over communityopposition; and the striped bassthat helped thwart plans or

Westway. Photo by Adi Talwar.

The UnPlanned CityWho will make the new New York?

By Jarrett Murphy Photographs by Adi alwar

04 | The Elections Over. So Lets Tal Issues. A tour o the policy questions that campai n 2010 didnt answer By City Limits sta

10 | Their Day in Court A raphic look at New Yorkers crimes

THE FEATURE12


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 62 The Note www.citylimits.org 3

Aging In PlaceFor many people, New York City is just a place to li e.For others, it is our passion and we take ownership o our boroughs, neighborhoods, and blocks, becomingstakeholders in de ning and rede ning their identity andsuccess. In 1976, as New York crumbled in the wrath o thecitys scal crisis, City Limits was established as an in orma-

tion news service or those with a passion or the city. As wecelebrate our 35th anniversary in the new year, we continueto use the power o investigative journalism and in-depthanalysis to uncover the aspects o public policy that helpyou understand the people, the issues, and the civic pulsethat de nes our city and its neighborhoods.

As New York City has survived epidemics, bankruptcies,recessions, and terrorism to remain the worlds greatestmetropolis, City Limits has chronicled that story and theurban agenda like no other non-pro t media organization.Our investigations are written with you in mind, a citizenconserved about how we collectively make a more equitableand progressive city. By extension, our work serves activists,policy leaders, and decision makers and weve seen whereweve inspired coverage in mainstream publications, withhundreds o journalists rom local, national, and internationalpress ollowing our content.

We do this with a small team o pro essionals, contribu-tors, and volunteers, and support rom readers like you andorganizations that believe in our mission. While our reportinghas won numerous awards and was named one o the citysmost trusted sources on the economy, we are most proud o the act that City Limits is one o the ew places in New York City where journalists publish in-depth stories on civic issues.While weve worked with large institutions to strengthen ourreporting and coverage o important issues including theRegional Planning Association and its archival history or thisissue we are most proud o the advocates and civic leadersthat depend on to bring attention to the issues that are under-reported by mainstream news outlets.

We take our mission seriously and spent 2010 building abigger, better, and more impact ul City Limits but we needyour help. Te Community Service Society o New York, our

new parent organization, has given us support to expand oure orts, but we need your help to sustain our cause.

In 2010, the redesigned City Limits Magazine expanded onnewsstands and more than doubled our online audienceputting us atop o our civic non-pro t news peers in the city.

Weve recently been awarded grants rom the Fund or Inves-

tigative Journalism and Decamp Foundation and joined theInvestigative News Network. We established a direct engage-ment with the White House to help them increase their onlineaudience outreach e orts and advised visitors rom the StateDepartments International Visitors program on medias rolein ensuring democracy.

City Limits is well-positioned to carry the mantle o publicinterest journalism or the nations largest city. Our sole dedica-tion to investigation, our decades o experience and credibi lity,as well as our unique hybrid o long- orm print and web-based,multimedia journalism make us well equipped or this task.Weve outlined goals over the next year to continue to deliverhard-hitting and impact ul investigative journalism, increaseearned revenue through business development, expand reachto and engagement with our target readership, and actively secure oundation investment toward model implementation.

We have identi ed critical next steps toward building our vision o a sustainable City Limits and assembled a small team o pro essionals, contributors, and volunteers committed to usingmedia and community in ormation to stimulate social changeand champion economic justice. As we build the capacity o our organization to serve more o the citys underrepresented voices and provide the necessary community in ormationneeds that create a stronger and more social just society, wewelcome support rom those who share our goals and vision.

WHATS NEW AND WHATSNExT ATCITylIMITS.ORg

The ambulance bay at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. A specialreport at CityLimits.org ound that since the April 2010 closure oSt. Vincents hospital, other downtown medical centers have seenincreases in ambulance runs and emergency visits, which in somecases have strained available sta . Photo by Marc Fader

In our next issueBROOKLYN

T boroug b int bran

COMINg IN FEB RUARY

Te successes o small business in this townare a unction o the incredible grit o minority entrepreneurs who are really pursuing the AmericanDream against all odds. Tey succeed in spite o theNYC en ironment, and not because o it.

-RICHARDLIPSKYINSMALLBUSINESSESSUFFERUNDERABUSINESSMANMAYOR,OC .25, 2010

City Limits staffDirectorMark Anthony Tomas

Editor-in-ChieJarrett Murphy

Deputy EditorKelly Virella

Contributing EditorsNeil deMause, Marc Fader,Jake Mooney, Dianna SchollHelen Zelon

Advertising DirectorAllison ellis-Hinds

Marketing Assistant

Nekoro GomesCreative DirectionSmyrski Creative

Proo readerDanial Adkison

InternsBecca Fink, Barry Shi rin

BoardMark Edmiston, chairAdam BlumenthalAndy BreslauMichael ConnorDavid R. JonesAndy ReicherMichele Webb

IMMIGRATION STILL DARINGTO DREAM

The a termath o a historicRepublican surge might seema strange time or immigrationadvocates to be pushing orpassage o the DREAM Act, which

would allow young people incollege or the military to obtainconditional permanent citizenship.The hope: that lame-duckDemocrats will take a stand.

EDUCATION

HISTORY LESSON:THE KLEIN ERA

A ter more than eight years atthe helm o the citys schools, JoelKlein is stepping down. CityLimits.org o ers a compendium o ourcoverage o his tenure, as wellas a look at what challenges willcon ront the new boss at Tweed

rom the end o the local diploma,to contract issues with teachers, tothe un nished question o whetherto close ailing schools.

DEVELOPMENT

NOT AMUSED

The city says it wants year-round amusements atthe redeveloped Coney Island. But can ride ownersand game operators a ord the kind o rent that a12-month spot at the boardwalk would cost?

Director Mark Anthony Tomas


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www.citylimits.org 5www.citylimits.org 5City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 54 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store4 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6First Focus

When the history o substan-tive American politicalcampaigns is written, dontbother looking for New Yorks 2010 gubernatorial

contest in the inde . Rarely has a statewith so many thorny policy problemsendured a campaign that dealt with so

ew o them. Jimmy McMillans stacheand Andrew Cuomos cojones (or lack thereo ) got the ink that should havegone to the states pension system and jobs crisis. And Carl Paladino had asmany hallway shouting matches withFred Dicker as he did debates with hisDemocratic opponent.

Te circus atmosphere was partly aproduct o the act that everyone knew who was going to win, but now that the votes are counted is when the real sus-pense begins. Cuomos mantra duringthe race was that he wanted to build amandate or the kind o sweeping changethe Empire State desperately needs.Beginning on Inauguration Day, New Yorkers nd out whether he can deliver.

Check that: whether and what he candeliver. Shielded by his huge lead in thepolls and his main opponents stupe yingbluster, Cuomo aced ew questions andgave ew answers on what speci c policies

he plans to pursue. Be ore the balloting,City Limitsdispatched its reporters to ndout what Cuomo was and wasnt sayingon key issues. Heres a preview o whatto expect when Cuomo takes the oath:

HOUSINgWhen a ormer ederal housing secre-tary runs or governor in the midst o ahousing-triggered recession in the statewhere public housing began, does itmean new ideas are coming? Yes and no.

Tere are plenty o worthwhile initi ativesin the housing plans candidate Cuomoarticulated, advocates say. But there were

ew bold ideas. And what is le out is asrevealing as what is included.

In his campaign materials, Cuomo saidhed push to make the ederal Low-IncomeHousing ax Credit programthebedrock o nancing the developmento a ordable housingmore attractiveto investors and would take a leadershiprole among governors to push Congressto und the und the National Housing

rust Fund, which Congress created in2008 but never unded. I the Obamaadministration gets the amount it wantsin the und, New York State would see$111 million or a ordable housing.

Foreclosures continue to roil the state,eviscerating gains in homeownershipin black and Latino communities anddraining the s tates tax base. From Febru-ary, when the state banking departmentbegan keeping track, to October, 134,000New York State homeowners receivednotice that their banks are beginning

oreclosure proceedings. Cuomo said oneway he would minimize oreclosures asgovernor would be by scrutinizing ser- vicers to prevent aulty ones. In responseto the number o vacant and abandoned

firstfoCUs

properties that the oreclosure crisis hasle in many communities, Cuomo saidhed establish land trustsinnovative,publicly controlled legal entities thatcan acquire and maintain large areas o vacant land and manage their return toproductive use.

Advocates who have been beating thedrum about the problem o overlever-aged apartment buildingspropertiesbought or exorbitant sums during thereal estate boom by owners who thoughtthey could jack up rents on low- andmoderate-income tenantspraisedCuomo or including plans to use thepower o the state mortgage insurance

und and bank-regulating entities topush lenders to write down the debt onsuch buildings.

But like nearly all the proposals inhis urban agenda, the role Cuomoenvisioned or the state was primarily advisory or involved the applicationo in uence, not the exercise o directstate government authority. In someareaslike ederal tax creditsAlbany has no direct power. But in others, Cuomowas simply silent about using authority the state might have: His blueprint, or

instance, said nothing about Mitchell-Lama units being removed rom thesystem or about protecting rent-stabilizedtenants rom harassment.

Rent regulation laws are up orrenewal next year, and as ever, there willbe a pitched ght between real estateinterests and tenants over weakeningor strengthening dozens o provisions.

enant activists have been trying torepeal vacancy decontrol, the provisionby which regulated apartments becomemarket rate i they are vacated and thelegal regulated rent reaches $2,000 amonth, since it was reinstated in 1997.Cuomo has revealed nothing about how hell navigate those battles.

Cuomos plan was also mum onnancing or public housing. Te admin-

istration o Gov. George Pataki ceasedall unding or operational expenses,and local housing authorities have beenstruggling to maintain their stock since.

Eileen Markey ENERgyCuomos energy and power agenda wasmore than 23,000 words long, including

ootnotes, stretched out over 150 pages.

But two words that never appeared indocument, together or separately, whydraulic and racturin .And whiledocument did discuss natural-gas drillin other terms, the omission o hydra

racturing by namehydro rackinshortwas notable.

Te states next governor will presover administrative decisions that codecide whether, how and where tdrilling is allowed to take place, andCuomo, the debate is particularly setive: Power companies with a staknatural gas were among his campaiglargest contributors.

Proponents say drilling into the shwhich o en involves pumping waand chemicals into cracks in the rodeep underground, could yield enounatural gas to change New Yorks polandscape pro oundly, providing plen

uel or power plants across the s tatcountry while replacing coal, a dirresource, in rehabilitated older planCritics maintain that it threatenspoison groundwater wherever it occincluding in the vast watershed that suplies drinking water to New York C

In his campaign literature and stateme

the Elec n ove .s Le t lk i ue . A look at the policy questions that campaign 2010 didnt answer

Candidate Cuomo unveiled his urban agenda at City Hall 10 daysbe ore the election. But li e the campaign in general, the agendaavoided speci cs. Photo by Marc Fader

A house in southeastern Queens, epicenter

o the oreclosure crisis in the ve boroughs.Photo by Colin Lenton.


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 56 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store6 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6First Focus

Cuomo indicated that he is seeking tomaintain a tenuous balanceto encour-age expanded natural-gas use, as he doesin his power agenda, while ensuring thatthe gas is obtained in a way that does noharm to the environment.

Because so much o our supply o energy is based on natural gas uel,ensuring a supply o low-cost natural gasis important to New York, his positionpaper maintained, adding that drillingcould help the upstate economy andreduce the need or more environmen-tally destructive resources, like coal. Still,it added, New York State must ensurethat, i and when the shales naturalgas is obtained, it does not come at theexpense o human health or have adverseenvironmental impacts.

New Yorks energy market was deregu-lated in 1996, and consumers now chooseamong dozens o companies to providetheir electricity. With power use expectedto escalate over the coming decades,particularly in crowded downstate areas,companies are vying to build new plantsand power lines and to develop new uelsourcesall endeavors that require stateand local government approval.

Cuomos energy plan made it clearthat he likes wind and suggested that he

opposes coal. He has also long said thathe avors closing the Indian Point nuclearplant in Westchester County when itslicense expires in 2013. But Cuomo hasmade no speci c proposal to replace thepower Indian Point generates.

Cuomos our years as attorney generalo er precious ew clues about his pre er-ences on energy. In 2007 he investigated

ve power companies seeking to buildcoal plants in other states, question-ing whether their investors had been

ully advised o the nancial costs thattheir emissions could create. Begin-ning in 2008, he began cracking downon con icts o interest involving localofcials and wind powercompanies. And in 2009he charged that Fortuna, anatural-gas-drilling com-pany, had misled upstatelandowners into signingun avorable leases. Tecompany settled andagreed to pay $192,000to the state.

Jake Mooney SCHOOlS

wo weeks be ore Elec-tion Day, aides to Cuomo

said his education policy book, whichwould detail education re orm policiesin speci c, was orthcoming. Voters wentto the polls with no such report havingbeen issued by the campaign.

In his campaign policy book Te NewNew York Agenda,Cuomo merely glancedat education re orma startling gloss,given the issues prominence in Wash-ington and Albany and at City Hall. Itsdoubly startling given New York Statessecond-round Race to the op win andthe political and nancial support Cuomodrew rom prominent pro-school-choiceor pro-charter organizations like Demo-crats or Education Re orm. Set against

While Cuomoscommitment to equitable

unding is welcome,advocates say, its not

clear where the moneyswill be ound to address

the disparities.

A power plant looms on the edge o Astoria. Cuomos energy policy calls or the closure o Indian Pointbut says little about how to replace the nuclear plants generating capacity. Photo by Marc Fader.

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www.citylimits.orgwww.citylimits.orgCity Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 58 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store8 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6First Focus

the context o his rst run or governorin 2002, when Cuomo championeduniversal preschool and literacy as vitaleducation e orts, the candidate seemedto have shi ed his ocus away rom the

classroom to matters economic.Schools in New York are richly unded,Cuomo said during the campaign, but earnlow marks or achievement. We are No.1 in spending in the nation and No. 40 interms o per ormance, he stated in theseven-candidate debate held on Oct. 18at Ho stra University. o cure the undingexcess, he proposes economies o consoli-dation and management and alleviatingunspeci ed un unded mandates.

Cuomo additionally said that competi-tion, school choice and charter schoolsshould spur school improvements, inline with New Yorks Race to the opwin. But the recent rise in the statescap on the number o charter schoolsnotwithstanding, the vast majority o students in the state continue to attendtraditional public schools, and on thoseinstitutions, Cuomo articulated ew speci c policy goals.

He did, however, take up a thememade popular by outgoing city schoolschancellor Joel Klein, the Rev. Al Sharp-ton and Newt Gingrich, among others.Cuomo asserted at the Ho stra debatethat inequity in education is probably the civil rights issue o our time.

Te way we und education, throughthe property tax system, by de nitionis going to be un air. And it is. Cuomosaid. Because richer districts have more

valuable property to tax, they can a ordto spend more on their schools and theirstudents than poorer district can.

Starting in 1993, the Campaign orFiscal Equity pressed the state and then-

governor Pataki or sufcient undingto assure that all o New Yorks publicschools meet their legal (and moral)obligation to provide a sound, basicpublic education through high school,despite each districts economic status.Te resulting legislation, the 2007 StateEducation Budget and Re orm Act, wasdesigned to in use more than $7 billioninto state public schools over our years,o which $3.2 billion would be directedtoward New York Citys neediest students,along with an additional $2.35 billion in

oundation aid.But budget stasis in 2009-10 roze CFE

dollars two years into the plan and essen-tially extended the phase-in o unding

rom our years to seven, with paymentsanticipated to resume in the 2011-12school year. Additionally, class-sizereduction planning integral to the CFElawsuit has been essentially abandonedby the NYC Department o Education,with the approval o state educationcommissioner David Steiner, a er theDOE cited economic constraints. It isnot clear i or when class-size reductione orts will resume.

While Cuomos commitment to equi-table unding is welcome, advocates say,its not clear where the moneys will be

ound to ul ll CFEs legally mandatedobligations, which the state has essentially

permitted to languish unmet. hereis also uncertainty about how Cuomowill cap local property taxes while alsoimproving school achievement.

Helen Zelon

JOBSI the seven-member comedy act thatwas the Oct. 18 gubernatorial debate canbe said to have had a serious message, itwas most likely this: Its the jobs, stupid.Amid the prostitution jokes, one o themost pressing questions o the night washow New Yorks next governor plans toaddress an economic uture that looks,by anyones reckoning, bleak.

Cuomos plan is described in the 224-page A endawhich eatures a 33-pagechapter devoted to economic develop-ment. Among Cuomos promised re orms:

A $300 million Jobs Now tax credit thatwould re und payroll taxes or any new employees hired by New York businessesand kept on the job or at least one year.

Revamping the Empire Zone economicdevelopment program to ocus on key growth industries. Subsidy recipientswould be required to indic ate how many jobs they promise to create. Tose whoachieve their goals would get subsidiesequal to 80 percent o state income taxwithholding or the new jobs; compa-nies creating less would be subject toa clawback, orcing them to repay thesubsidies on a prorated basis.

Re orming the states industrial devel-opment agencies, by instituting regionaleconomic councils that would overseedevelopment strategy and prevent localagencies rom using state money to poach jobs rom elsewhere in New York.

Capping local property taxes andotherwise reducing regulatory and taxobstacles or companies wishing to moveto New York.

Some o Cuomos proposals shouldplease critics o the current subsidy systemthe need or clawbacks, orexample, has been a common re rainamong development experts who say thattoo o en, companies collect taxpayer dol-lars and then ail to supply the promised jobs. And two o his proposalsJobs Now

The governor-elect has said he will attac the states unemployment by re orming economicdevelopment programs. Above, clients at STRIVE, a job training program in East Harlem.

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and his revamped Empire Zoneswould encouragecompanies to create higher-wage jobs by tying thesize o companys subsidy to its level o employee pay.

Still, numerous questions remain as to how e ectiveCuomos proposals would be. For example, clawbacksmay seem oolproo : I a company doesnt meet its jobgoals, the state gets its money back. Yet the governmentmust rst ask or that money backan unappealingoption to public ofcials who dont want to appearun riendly to business. According to documentscompiled by the subsidy watch group Good JobsNew York, P zer received $46 million rom the New York City IDA in 2003 in exchange or creating 1,000 jobs. When the company instead announced layo s,the IDA declined to implement the deals clawback provision, merely vowing to reject any P zer request

or additional subsidies.Some observers are also concerned that Cuomos close

ties to many advocates and bene ciaries o traditionaleconomic development deals will present a roadblock tosigni cant change. Cuomos Upstate Business Advisory Council included such business leaders as Jordan Levy,who as chair o the Erie County Harbor DevelopmentCorp. opposed attaching a living-wage requirement tosubsidies or a proposed Bass Pro superstore in Bu -

alo. Cuomo has also received signi cant campaigncontributions rom major recipients o developmentaid in New York State. Jerry and Robert Speyer, whohave given more than $100,000 to the Cuomo guber-natorial campaign, are principals o ishman Speyer,the megabuilder that partnered with the NYC IDA orthe new Yankee Stadium project.

By Neil deMause

Some worry thatCuomos close ties to

many advocates andbene ciaries o traditional

economic developmentdeals will present a road-

bloc to signi cant change.


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www.citylimits.org 11www.citylimits.org 11City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 510 The Death and Life of the Neighborhood Store10 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6First Focus

For the past 20 years, the cityscrime rate has carried great politicalweight. Recentrevelations about

suppressed crimereports raise ques-tions about how valid the rate is.

Te act is,accurate or not, theofcial rate coversonly the sevenindex crimes thatare tracked nation-ally by the FBI:murder, rape, elony assault, robbery,burglary, grand lar-ceny and auto the .While these are themost serious crimes,and are thoughtto re ect broadertrends in crime inthe city, they are a minority o theo enses or whichNew Yorkers arearrested.

O the 96,000 elony arrests in New York City in 2009, drugcrimeswhich are not tracked by the crime indextotaled26,000. And there were more than 245,000 misdemeanorarrests in 09 that also arent covered by the citywide crimestatistics. In addition, the city in its most recent scal yearhanded out more than hal -a-million summonses or minorcrimes and violations.

For a uller picture o what laws New Yorkers are break-ing, City Limits gathered in ormation on every de endantscheduled to appear in one boroughs criminal court on onedayin the Bronx on Monday, Nov. 15, 2010. Te graphicson these pages re ect the composition o that days caseload.

New Yorkers and their crimes

Their Dayin Court

Source: WebCrims. Fourteen crimes omitted because incomplete data. Arraignments of people arrested just befor

their court appearance werent included. In cases where person faced multiple charges, the designated top charge w

used. Both arrests and summonses are included

Open containerDisorderly conduct

Littering Marijuana use or sale

DUI, reckless dri ing respassing Crimes in parks

Biking on sidewalk Public urination

Drugs (Non marijuana)urnstile jumping

Unlicensed ta iCorporate ta e asion

Larceny Noise

Unlicensed/unleashed dogsWeapons

Resisting arrestSpitting

Loitering Obsructing re dept.

Unlicensed endorHarrasment / Endangerment

Unlicensed air rifePossession o orged

documents

185292720171313121110765544433322311


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 612 The UnPlanned City www.citylimits.org 13

TH EfEatUrE

TheUnPlannedCity

Who will make the new New York?

THE ROAD NOTTAkEN: A model othe Lower ManhattanExpressway, oneo Robert Mosessde eated dreams, atthe Cooper Union inNovember.

By Jarr tt Murp y / P otograp s by A i alwar


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6 www.citylimits.org14 The UnPlanned City

hrough a canyon o thin skyscapers the road runs romthe Williamsburg Bridge and into the great gray city.White cubes are stacked to orm apartment buildings tothe right and le a wall o high-rises that decrease inheight as the road descends rom the bridge down intoa subterranean vein, a highway sliced across the islando Manhattan. Above this road, some o the residentialcubes are stacked in giant triangular arches. From thele , tra c rom the Manhattan Bridge is merging in. On

the right is the Hub, a locus o commerce and transit where subways,buses and a people mover monorail system interconnect. Nearby isa swirling structure that combines a school and parking garage. Aheadis the Holland unnel and the interstate system that runs clear acrossthe American continent.

Its a dream come true. But only at 1:384 scale.Tis all the Lower Manhattan Expressway, an idea born in the 1930s

and nurtured by Robert Moses be ore it was killed in the late 1960s,lived again in a gallery at the Cooper Union. A team o architects,

aculty and students recreated a model that visionary architect PaulRudolph built in the early 1970s or what appears to have been a brie ,doomed reconsideration o the Lomex proposal.

Led by architect Ed Rawlings, the re-creators had only a ew draw-ings and photographs to work rom to resurrect Rudolphs vision o a uturistic urban viaduct lined by ultramodern residential towerscomposed o dozens o uni orm residential cubes and linked by swirling ramps to centers o commerce and mass transit. Tis wasnot just a new road going through an old city. Tis was a new city rising with the road.

Lomex. Robert Moses. Westway. Jane Jacobs. What New Yorks planning past tells us about its uture.

NEW PEDESTRIA ACCESS to eycrossroads li eTimes Square is aBloomberg-era twison an old idea. MayLindsay wantedto close Madison

Avenue in Midtownto cars, but the ideawas de eated.

CHAPTERoNE

WakingThe Dead


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No one is sure why the model, unded by the Ford Foun-dation, was created in the rst placeespecially in an erawhen big planning concepts and automotive-centric designwere very much out o style. No one knows what happenedto Rudolphs original design. No one has been able to nd theshort movie that was made about the project, the script orwhich at one point declares: Te beauty o automobiles inmotion stirs us all.

And no one can say what the city would have been like i city leaders hadnt de unded Lomex in 1969, although peoplehave their hunches. Most o the time, the visceral reaction is,Oh my God, Im so glad they didnt build that, says StevenHilyer, director o the archive at the Cooper Unions ChaninSchool o Architecture.

But the problem that Lomex was trying to solve remains.Te automobile in motion might not be beauti ul to New Yorkers, but the car is still very present in 2010 New York.Sure, the expressways dont cut through Manhattan like Lomexwould have. But they do have the borough surroundedtheBQE, the Grand Central, the Deegan, the Cross-Bronx, andeven the New Jersey urnpike on the west.

I keep looking at it and I dont think that its dystopian, saysBrett Littman, head o the Design Center, which organizedthe exhibit. Yes, it suggests a city totally alien to the one weknow. But or some, thats just what New York isnothingmore than a provisional citya city which will be replacedby another city, as amed urban designer Le Corbusier put it.

In some ways, thats the li e o the city, says Littman:change. Were not Prague. Were not China either, but werenot Prague.

Be ore the project was killed, a short set o support beamsor Lomex was built at the Manhattan end o the Manhattan

Bridge. Te beams are proo that, or all that has changed inNew York in the past 50 years, one question runs constant: IsNew York as good as the city it might have been?

Right now, more so than at probably any other time in itspast, New York City is thinking about its uture.

City Hall is dra ing an update to PlaNYC 2030. Te City Planning Department is nalizing Vision 2020, a plan or thecitys water ront. Te Economic Development Corp. is pursuing2020 plans to enhance the uture prospects o the c itys mediaand ashion industries. In October, the Municipal Arts Society gathered industrialists, pro-cycling activists, developers, parksadvocates, community organizers, architects and bureaucratsinto one room or a two-day huddle on how to make a g reener,more success ul New York. Te Regional Plan Association,creator in the past century o three landmark plans or New Yorks growth, is considering launching a new one.

Meanwhile, the just-completed election is likely to usher ina new world o scal reality, and the recently- nished Censuswill give New York its rst look in a dec ade at what kind o city it is becoming. Climate change is a reality. Global competitionis inescapable. An aging in rastructure needs updating i theregion is to keep up.

So the need to plan is obvious. And the desire to plan is

mani est.Un ortunately, the way New York City plans is largely broken.Unlike many major American cities, New York has never

completed a comprehensive plan or its uture. Instead, it haspassed zoning laws to try to constrain the private market. Telast attempt to deal with zoning in a comprehensive way? Fi y years ago. Under Mayor Bloomberg, more than 100 neighbor-hoods have been rezoned, but it is not clear that those changes

ollow a logical, equitable or comprehensive plan or how toaccommodate the hundreds o thousands o new residentsthe New York o 2030 will have to house, employ and move.

In the 1950s, New York City set up community planningboards to give neighborhoods a voice in their uture. But theseboards have never received the unding they need. In the late1980s, the boards were given the power to cra proactiveplans or their development, but the process is so dauntingthat only a hand ul o boards have actually gone through it,and some did so only to see many o their wishes overruledby the city. When a developer or the city wants to change theway land is used in New York, there is an approval processthat is supposed to give those community boards a voice. Butthe voice is o en disregarded.

At the same time, developers complain about a processthat is too slow, too unpredictable, too open to manipulationby interest groups with little legitimate connection to thecommunities they purport to represent. Communities gripeabout a system that gives them little chance to reshape dealsthat will alter the city they know. Environmental review is lessabout preventing harm and more about avoiding litigationsometimes unsuccess ully. Citywide issues, like living wagesand a ordable housing, are addressed one development at atime. E orts to spread burdensome acilities like waste trans erstations equally are handled on an agency by agency basis.

For some, thats just what

New Yor isnothing morethan a provisional citya city

which will be replaced byanother city, as amed urban

designer Le Corbusier put it. ARCHITECT ED RAWLINGS,with the Cooper UnionsStephen Hilyer, theDrawing Centers BrettLittman and a team odesigners recreated amodel o LOMEX thatpioneering designer PaulRudolph built in the 1970s.Rudolphs original modelwas lost, so this yearsroom-si ed re-creationrelied on maps, drawingsand a ew photos.

The Rudolph modelsdisappearance is onemystery. Another is why,wor ing in the years a terthe city had illed unding

or LOMEX, Rudolphcompleted the project.

Rudolphsdesign combines

the expresswayahighway slicing acrossManhattan to connectthe Williamsburg andManhattan bridges withthe Holland Tunnelwithultramodern housing, a

uturistic transit hub (theround structure in thecenter o the photo at le t)and a people movertransit system.


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West Side Stadium Yankees anaticRudy Giulianipushed the idea oa West Side Yankeesstadium so hard,he came up witha needless ballotquestion in 1998 justto keep stadiumopponents romputting orwarda re erendum on

the West Side proposal. When the Yankee proposaladed, Giuliani shi ted to a desire to get the Olym-

pics or New York, with the West Side Stadium as alinchpin o the citys bid or the games. The New

York Jets became the potential anchor tenant. In2005, with the Bloomberg administration backingthis idea, it was blocked by Assembly speaker Shel-don Silver.

Congestion PricingIt was a ColumbiaUniversity pro essor,

William Vickrey, who won a Nobel Prize

or advancing theidea o using ees todiscourage people

rom driving duringrush hour. Londonimposed a tra -

c charge in 2003 with some success.

But when Mayor Bloomberg tried to bring the ideato New York, he ran into opposition rom garageowners, small business operators and commuters

rom outer borough neighborhoods poorly servedby mass transit. It didnt help that the rollout o theidea rst by the business lobby, then as a last-minute addition to PlaNYCle t many New Yorkerscon used on whether Manhattan-based corporationsor outer borough residents were supposed to bene t.

City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6 www.citylimits.org18 The UnPlanned City18 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6The UnPlanned City

LomexFirst conceivedin the 1930s andpushed by RobertMoses two decadeslater, the LowerManhattan Express-

way, or Lomex, wasa highway linkingthe Manhattanand WilliamsburgBridges to theHolland Tunnel.

Building it would have meant tearing up mucho the area around Broome and Delancey Streets.

Amid opposition by Jane Jacobs and neighbor-hood residents, the city killed the project in 1969.Lomex was one o three cross-Manhattan highwaysenvisioned by auto-obsessed planners; others weresupposed to run across Midtown and Harlem.

WestwayThere used to be anelevated highway along the west sideo Lower Manhat-tan, and in the late1960s a plan tookshape to ll in someo the riverbank,sink most o the roadin an undergroundtunnel and use thenewly created land

or parks and development. A multi aceted opposi-tion sprung up, arguingamong other thingsthatthe project was a waste o money that could bebetter spent on transit. In 1985, a ter a ederal judge

ound that hed been misled about the impact othe project on the striped bass, the idea died.

Big-tic et projects that havent come to be at least not yet

As industrial acreage is disappearing along withblue-collar industrial jobs, the city is surrendering manu-

acturing land to a university, to residential developersand to dreams or a convention center in Queens. Tecity is expanding its transit system but cannot a ordto operate the current network. New York is reducingcarbon emissions but building massive parking garages

or its new stadiums and malls.Oh, and PlaNYC? Not actually a plan.

Tis spring and summer New York had an opportunity to rethink how it grows when a charter revision com-mission set out to impro e the way the city go ernsitsel .At the commissions public hearings, there was anoutpouring o concern about the way the city is grow-ing rom civic organization like the bar associationand Citizens Union to the communities a ected by Bloomberg-era development policy in all its mani esta-tions: Atlantic Yards, Yankee Stadium, Willets Point,West Harlem, 125th Street, Greenpoint-Williamsburg.Te charter commission responded, dedicating a wholehearing to expert testimony on the pros and cons o

the way the city plans, or doesnt plan.But when it came time to make concrete proposals,

the commission o ered only a minor tweak to theway the city tracks data on environmental burdens.Tat measure passed on Election Day. But it barely scratched the sur ace o the need or re orm laid onthe commissions table.

We knew that we were on a highly restricti ve clock,says Matthew Goldstein, the City University o New York chancellor who chaired the charter revision com-mission. Although he had been talking about it sinceearly 2008, Mayor Bloomberg didnt appoint the chartercommission until this past March, and thendespitepleas or a longer time-linethe panel aimed hard atgetting questions on the 2010 ballot.

Te Goldstein panel published its ndings on landuse and other areas where it did not act, hoping toequip a uture panel to do a more thorough job. Butits unclear that such an opportunity will arise. Why would it? Te current system avors the mayor and theCouncil, whose individual members have all-but vetoauthority over development projects in their districts.

the one th G aw

For the mayor, that means power. For Council members, itmeans money. Developers and their lobbyists are reliablesources o campaign contributions.

Te charter commission hearings and the Lome e hibitare only the latest indications that New York is thinking about the way it grows.

A er nearly 40 years in purgatory, Robert Moses wasdusted o in 2007 or a three-museum retrospective o hisli e and work. Tere was overdue credit given to Moses rolein the expansion and improvement o the city and states park systems. But when it came to Moses most obvious contribu-tionbuilding a lot o roadsthe retrosp ective went out o itsway to give him credit or, well, building a lot o roads. Teachievement o Robert Moses was that he adapted New York City to the twentieth century, was how Columbia University pro essor Kenneth Jackson ramed it.

As she had done in li e, the author and urbanist Jane Jacobsdidnt let Moses (or his apologists) have the last word. Anexhibit exploring her work went up at the Municipal Art S ociety shortly a er the Moses re ections came down. Everybody lovesJane Jacobs, and thats the problem: Just about everyone has

appropriated Jacobs to posthumously endorse or denountodays development projects, no matter how violent the intlectual jujitsu behind the linkagelike the spokesman or developer who described a plan that conemplated using eminedomain to evict light industry and low-income residentbuildings as real Jane Jacobs stu . As Pratt Center or Cmunity Development senior ellow Eve Baron puts it, EiJacobs or Moses is invoked depending on whats being sol

Tis past summer, Mayor John Lindsay was reconsi dered a Museum o the City o New York exhibit, PBS documenand book, and attention was paid to his overlooked role enlivening the citys urban designor at least trying to. As JaSanders wrote in the Lindsay retrospective, one o the s evplanning teams Lindsay created to promote advanced urbdesign ideas came up with a plan to close Madison Avenbetween 42nd and 57th streets to carspermanentlyaallow buses only down a center lane. Te idea was laid to reby the Board o Estimate in 1973 at the behest o taxi owners and department stores.

And this all, veterans o the Westway battle gatherecelebrate the 25th anniversary o their de eat o a plan tin the edge o the Hudson River on the Lower West Si

Photos courtesy Library oCongress, Department oCity Planning, City Hall.


11/33


a water supply network spanning eight upstatecounties, a subway system that ran to parts o theBronx that were armland at the time o its con-struction, even the dull but use ul Commissi onersPlan o 1811 that laid out the grid pattern o city streets rom the Battery to 155th.

odays city has some similarly ambitiousthinking to do. With the population at an all-time high, the city is expecting another 700,000

peoplemore than live in Bostonby the year2030. And the rezonings that the Bloomberg teamhas done, encompassing nearly a h o the city,will accommodate at their maximum 200,000people. So somehow, New York City has to nd away to house another hal -million people, to getthem to and rom work, to nd school seats orthe kids and parks or their weekends, and to doit all in a time o shrinking budgets, rising seasand little aith in the e ectiveness o government.

Robert Yaro, the president o the RegionalPlan Association, says New York is no longer justcompeting with London and okyo. Singapore,Hong Kong, So Paulo, Bogot and others are now challenging New Yorks appeal to businesses andtourists. Tis is all going to be about who putstogether the best planning package, he says. Bigcities know that theyre competing or constituentsaround the world to come to their city. You cantdo that piecemeal.

A consensus is emerging that New York City needs to plot its uturethat it needs to think about not just where people will live but how they will move, that it must plan comprehensively, notepisodically. And, many say, the voices o com-munities must be made stronger.

Is New York as good as the city it might havebeen? Te answer is about more than asphalt andsteel. Tat was the striking thing about the Lomexmodel at the Cooper Union: Tere were buildingsand roads and cars. But there were no people.

The need to plan is obvious. Andthe desire to plan is mani est.Un ortunately, the way New YorCity plans is largely bro en.

The Commissioners Plan or New York lays out the streetgrid rom the Battery to 155th. Little space is designated

or parks. The modern city is created when Manhattan and parto the Bronx annex the east Bronx, Brooklyn, Queensand Staten Island.

New York becomes the rst city to create a citywidezoning regime.

The Regional Plan Association issues its rst plan or theNew York metro area. Road building is emphasized.

Robert Moses de eats an e ort to create a citywidemaster plan, which he ears would threaten his power.

Moses kills another master plan e ort.

Manhattan Borough President Robert Wagner createscommunity planning councils, orerunners o the citysmodern community boards.

The city revises its Zoning Resolution. Jane Jacobs pub-lishes The Death and Li e o Great American Cities.

RPA issues its second regional plan, sounding an alarmon sprawl.

Mayor Lindsays master plan or the citys uture diesamid political squabbling.

The city creates the Uni orm Land Use Review Proce-dure or consideration o zoning and developmentdecisions.

A major charter revision includes new provisions toallow communities to plan their own uture and toprotect neighborhoods rom disproportionate envi-ronmental burdens. Years later, critics will say thesemechanisms did not deliver on their initial promise.

RPA issues its third regional plan, calling or thepreservation o open space and comprehensiveimprovements to the areas transit system

Mayor Bloomberg launches PlaNYC, a strategy orsustainable growth as New York absorbs a projected1 million more people rom 2000 to 2030.

Congestion pricing, the highest-pro le policy inPlaNYC, dies in Albany. But other PlaNYC initiativesmove orward.

The Department o City Planning nalizes its 100threzoning o the Bloomberg era.

A ter hearing calls or re orm, the Charter Revision Com-mission considers changes to the citys land use system,but opts to leave the work or some uture panel.

1811

1898

1916

1929

1939

1950

1951

1961

1968

1969

1976

1989

1996

2006

2009

2010

2008

Top: TheCommissioners

Plan. Middle:Robert Moses

and his proposedBattery Par Bridge.Bottom: Bloomberg

unveils PlaNYC.Photos courtesy

Jleon, Library oCongress, City

Hall.

One Story,Building

Planningand the lack thereofthrough New Yorks history

creating an area or a park and residential developmentand sinking the West Side Highway below ground southo 40th Street. Tough it was backed by all levels o government, Westway s opponents saw it as yet anothersurrender o the citys physical shape to the needs o theautomobilea boondoggle that would spur a rash o unwelcome development on the West Side with money that would be better spent on mass transit.

Te idea was killed in 1985. Instead o Westway, the city received more than a billion dollars in transit unding. Butthe Lower West Side got West Street, a six- to eight-lanehighway separating New Yorkers rom the river, wherea prettybut pretty thinstrip o park has taken shape.

And while there were many sound arguments againstWestway, none won the day. Instead, Westway died whena ederal judge ound that the projects proponents hadunderstated the threat that the development posed to thestriped bass that lived among the piers and bulkheads onthe rivers edge. It was a preposterous conclusion, but itwas at a point where everyone was exhausted by it, says

Craig Whitaker, the architect who designed the project.Te act is this was on the heels o Robert Moses and

there was a great deal o mistrust o planning, Whitakeradds. For a generation o ofcials, Westway was a clearwarning sign that a big idea would be politically dangerous.

Of course, New York has built plenty of big thingsin recent years, like the new Yankee Stadium andCitiField. Smaller private developments trans ormedscores o city neighborhoods during the recent real estateboom. And other big things are still being built: AtlanticYards, the Second Avenue Subway and our skyscrapersat Ground Zero.

Whats unclear is whether the right things are gettingbuilt, or getting buriedand whether the decisions aboutthe citys uture are guided by any consistent idea o whatNew York wants to be, and how it wants to get there.

Tis doubt uels the recent, misguided nostalgia orthe Robert Moseses o the world, the men who gotthings done unencumbered by community oppositionor environmental reviews. Boy, those were the days! Buti Moses way has died, Jane Jacobs hope or grassrootsplanning has been stillborn. For all the lip service paidto her, little about New Yorks development comes romthe bottom-up. Even the Westway victory, as sweet asit was or community opponents, was not really aboutcommunity input, but rather a judges pique over whathed been told about the ate o a small sh.

Neither Moses nor Jacobs New York has come to be.Maybe we need a new idea o how to make the city.

For all that New York likes to think o itsel as spontane-ous, its very existence is the result o thought ul planning:


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www.citylimits.org 23The UnPlanned City City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 622

his summer there was a breakthroughliterallyin New York Citys e ortsto upgrade its mass transit system. A1,000-ton boring machine burst througha cavern wall below the Port Authority Bus erminal to complete the 9,300 eeto tunnel in which an extended No. 7train will run. Te rst major expansiono the subway system since the 1960s,

the elongated 7 line will link new development in theHudson Yards area to the rest o the city.

Te 7-train extension is part o a massive project tobuild up the long-neglected West Side. Conceived back when the idea o building a stadium or the Jets droveWest Side planning, the Hudson Yards project inc ludeschanges to the zoning code that could create 28 millionsquare eet o o ce space, more than 12,000 residentialunits, and retail and hotel development. Te Jacob JavitsCenter is also due or an expansion.

Tere is one odd thing about the 7-train expansion.Te project began with two stationsone at 41st and

enth and another at 34th and Eleventhbut is now down to one. So the city is spending $2 billion ona mile o track and a single station, and residentialdevelopers who were counting on the second sta-tion to make their projects viable are le in a lurch.

CHAPTERtWo

Te citys transit system is better than you think. Its also under morestrain than politicians admit.

On ThMove

COMMUTERS PACk the 7 train atGrand Central station, rush hour,Friday November 12. The extension othe 7 train to 34th Street and Eleventh

Avenueand maybe even to NewJerseywill be the biggest expansiono the subway system in years.


13/33


Packed platforms and crowded rush-hour ridesaside, New York actually has an excellent mass tran-sit system. Were the only system in the world thatsopen or 24 hours, says Gene Russiano , the longtimetransit advocate who serves as senior attorney at theStraphangers Campaign. Indeed, while other masstransit networks eature some round-the-clock service,New Yorks ull sy stem operates ceaselessly. Were theonly system in the world that has regularly scheduledexpress and local service. Weve been express and localsince 1904, Russiano adds. Tere are ew systemsas extensive.

Te nonstop nature o the citys system has helpedNew York create a 24-hour central business districta

signi cant cultural and economic advantage over citieslike Dallas and Atlanta, where the downtown essentially closes at 7 p.m. And the subway system links to a webo commuter train lines that run to points as distant asMontauk, on Long Island; Waterbury, Conn.; and Bay Head, on the Jersey shore. Te thing that we have isthe world biggest regional rail system, says RegionalPlan Association president Bob Yaro. Other placesare trying to replicate that. Its an extraordinary asset.

Yes, the M A has been slow to adopt some new technologiesits only now installing screens thattell passengers on a plat orm when the next train iscomingbut it deserves more credit than it gets. TeMetroCard was a big move orward in the 1990s. Inthe past decade, the move to computer-based signal-ing has allowed dispatchers to know more precisely where trains are in a tunnel and, i the technology isworking (it isnt always), to run trains more closely togetherone reason service on the L line, long oneo the citys worst, has improved recently.

And the 7-train extension is only one o several majorcapital projects under way to improve the system. A ertwo alse starts in past decades, the Second AvenueSubway is being built. A reconstructed Fulton Streettransit hub will be completed in 2014. And the EastSide Access project will give Long Island Rail Roadpassengers a chance to exit at Grand Central, linkingthe LIRR to the Metro North and ve subway lines.

Tis transit system allows New Yorkers to live without theexpense, hassle and environmental impact o a car. Some 4million New Yorkers42 percent o the citylive in house-holds without access to an automobile. Tats equivalent tothe entire state o Oregon not having a single auto. It makes

or a ar higher car- ree rate here than in any other place inAmerica. And according to Municipal Art Society presidentVin Cipola, Even the people who use cars here use them less:nine miles per day versus a 26-miles-per-day national average.

Still, its an understatement that New Yorks transit mix hasits faws. Whole parts o the system are not up to a state o good repair, says Russiano , rattling o a list o needs romtunnel lights to station design to the control board he saw inone M A tower that looked like something out o grand Hotel. Not to mention that the system is, he says, insanely crowded like all the time.

Sam Schwartz, the ormer city transportation commissionerknown as Gridlock Sam, says the problem is a lack o reliability:

oo many breakdowns, poor in ormation, too many crpling service interruptions, especially on weekends, whare un ortunately necessary due to lack o basic maintenaover the decades.

Many o the systems problems are scal in nature: Te Msimply cant a ord to do it better. Others are structural: Lmanybut not allbig cities, New Yorks subway system rates rom the center out, the way it was laid out 100 years aTeres logic to that orientation, given Manhattans traditionarole as the citys center o commerce, culture and governmBut it has meant that getting rom borough to borough is vedi cult, retarding the development o independent downtowin the boroughs. And its a poor t or modern commutipatterns, in which a nurse might live in the Trogs Neck section o the Bronx but work at Elmhurst Hospital in QueeTe Staten Island erry and the bus system tie the boroughtogether but, Hunter College pro essor om Angotti says, every New Yorker knows, the bus system sucks.

Other shortcomings re ect a web o circumstances.

The Staten Island erry and thebus system tie the boroughs

together but, Hunter Collegepro essor Tom Angotti says, As

every New Yor er nows, thebus system suc s.

Citystats Attention,

PassengersThe New York metropolitan transit system serves

1.6 billion subwayriders a year and 5million people on anaverage weekday riding 6,290 subway cars along 659 miles otrack connecting 468stations served by 24subway lines

726 million busriders a yearan aver-age o 2.3 million ona weekdayriding 4,538buses on 245 routes covering 2,070 miles

More than hal a mil-lion commuter railpassengers on an aver-age day riding 11 LongIsland Rail Roadand fve Metro-Northlines.

A NEW WAY TO PAY: Along the Bx12select bus service route, commuterspay at the stop, not on board, in ane ort to speed sur ace transit.


14/33

City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6 www.citylimits.org26 The Unplanned City

fl gh Pl nDreams o a one-seat ride

For decadesNew Yorkhas wanted

a one-seat ridebetween downtownand the airports.Right now, the best

you can do is two.Say you want to

get rom Manhat-tans Fulton Streetto JFK. You take

the A to HowardBeach, then jumpon the AirTrain, and

get to the airport in 58 minutes rom start to nish. In London,making a comparable trip rom Ox ord Circus (which is likeFulton Street, except the people walk slower) to Heathrow means a nine-minute subway ride and a 21-minute journey on the Heathrow Express. So the New York journey takestwice as long (but it also costs only a quarter as much: $7.25

rom Fulton Street to JFK versus $33 rom Ox ord Circus toHeathrow).

The MTA is now conducting a planning study or a new line that would connect the World Trade Center transporta-tion hub to JFK using a new t unnel and an extension o theLIRRs Atlantic Avenue Branch.

But that would be enormously expensiveestimated six years ago at $3.5 billion to $6 billionso transit advocates would pre er to see such money spent on improving orexpanding the subway system, which serves millions opeople in their everyday journey to and rom work ratherthan travelers in their less requent trips to the airport.

Besides, a one-seat ride to JFK rom Manhattan wouldbe great or people in those seats, but most fiers wouldntuse it. Seventy percent o the passengers at JFK are notstarting or ending their trip in Manhattan, says Je Zupan,the Regional Plan Associations senior ellow or transporta-tion. I you ran a train rom Penn Station right to Kennedy

Airport, even i you could do that, the question is, Wouldpeople in other places be able to take advantage o that?

And the answer is no, unless they got to Penn Station rst.Meanwhile, JFK Airport is running into capacity limits.

RPA is exploring potential solutions to the problem: improve-ments in air tra c control, intercity rail, using o -peaktimes more e ciently, pricing travel by day and, possibly,physically expanding JFK.

NEW YORk ON THE MOVE: (Cloc wise rom bottom right)Taxis have gotten greener under Mayor Bloomberg (Photoby Alissa Ambrose), pedestrians in new wal er- riendlyTimes Square, commuters experience bus rapid transit inthe Bronx, drivers are a smaller presence in New Yor thanany other place in America, bi es near the L train stationin Williamsburg.

Can we do better than the AirTrain?Photo courtesy MTA.


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6 www.citylimits.org28 The UnPlanned City www.citylimits.org 29

decades there were calls or a one-seat train ride betweenthe central business district and the citys two airports.Mayor Rudy Giuliani proposed extending the N subway line to La Guardia Airport and building an Air rainlinking the subway system and LIRR to Kennedy Air-port. Neighborhood opposition and budget constraintstorpedoed the La Guardia line. Te $1.9 billion JFKlink was completed, but its ar rom a one-seat rideGiuliani sought. o get to the airport, you have to takethe subway or the LIRR to the Air rain, an hour-longprospect (compared with a comparable 30-minute ridein London). I you want a one-seat ride, you take a cab.

Te obstacles to impro ing transportation in New York are well-known to the citys transportation com-missioner, Janette Sadik Khan; one o her assistantcommissioners jokes that Te only way to get acrosstown is to be born there. But since her appointmentin April 2007, shes employed a range o policies toovercomeor at least drive aroundsome o thoseroadblocks. Tese include 250 new miles o bike lanes,pedestrian plazas in imes and Herald squares, andthe closure o streets or Weekend Walksa kind o street airand Summer Streets, when a route romBrooklyn Bridge, up Park Avenue and as ar north asCentral Park is closed o or a day to permit walking,running and biking. Jersey barriersone o the grungieraspects o transport in the citybecame canvasses orpainters during Hands On New York day this pastApril. Design is important i we want people to treatthe city as a place and not just something to travelthrough, Sadik-Khan told a Municipal Art Society con erence in October.

Tere already practical bene ts to what city DOhas done: Sadik-Khan says the increased oot trafcaround the new pedestrian plazas has been a boon tobusinesses. And the midtown seating areas have broughtinjuries down 63 percent or motorists and 35 percent

or pedestrians.Under Sadik-Khan, the city is showing an openness

to dramatic ideas. Te administration is studying whatwould happen i it ollowed South Bronx environmentaladvocates advice to tear down the Sheridan Expressway,a relatively little-used 1-mile elevated highway thatlinks the Bruckner Expressway to the Cross-Bronxsomething the Bronx River Parkway does just 4,000

eet to the east.But the changes with the biggest potential are on

the citys bus lines.

In an average year, New York Citys 4,561 buses carry 726 million peoplemore than the second-andthird-biggest bus systems (Los Angeles and Chicago)combined. Buses are more exible and ar cheaper tobuild and operate than trains, but theyre notoriously slow. Te Straphangers Campaign ound last year that thecitys slowest bus, the M42, traveled at an average paceo 3.7 miles per hour. A ve-year-old on a motorizedtricycle would outpace the M42, the campaign cried.

Buses move slowly because they have to ght tra c,

stop at lights andmost time-consuming o allwaitat each stop or passengers to get on and pay their are.In June 2008, the M A and DO began experi mentingwith bus rapid transit, a set o methods to reduce thedelays that make bus service slow. Te city and M Aintroduced bus rapid transitor, their pre erred term,Select Bus Service or SBSon the Bx12 line, which runsalong Pelham Parkway and Fordham Road in the Bronx.

Tey designated bus-only lanes on the roads, scheduledewer stops along the route and started to give buses

priority at tra c lights. But the biggest change has beenhaving passengers pay at the bus stop and get a receiptrather than on the bus.

A er a year, the Bx12 showed a 7 percent increase inridership and a 20 percent decrease in running time.

ransportation Alternatives executive director PaulSteely White says, Fordham Road operates more likea train than a bus line because o the new service.

In October a second SBS line was launched, on theM15 bus line on the East side. Te opening act wasnot awless. M A debuts its Select Bus Service ona workday and its just an aw ul, absurd mess,screamed the Daily News. Te imes made re erenceto glitches and grumbles.

Backers o SBS hope those are just growing pains. Busrapid transit has caught on in Bogot, Johannesburg,even L.A. It might be New Yorks best hope or a bettermass transit system. Sur ace transit really is the only way were going to be able to grow our transit system on thescale that New Yorkers are used to, says ransportationAlternatives deputy director Noah Budnick. Were notgoing to be adding more subway lines anytime soon.

Te M A plans a third SBS route, on the B44 route

Bus rapid transit has caughton in Bogot, Johannesburg,

even L.A. It might be New Yor s best hope or a bettermass transit system.

Whats WrongWith This Picture?

New Yorks transit system is great. But it aint perfect. Here are some major problems with the citys transit network.

Theres noeasy way toget to eitherairport

Vast swatheso Queensare totally othe subway system

Getting across townin Manhattan is very di cult

The concentrationo subway lines inManhattan makesrepair and expan-sion o the systemcomplicated andexpensive

y u d ve he t nNew subway lines? Com er

ell us how youd improve thetransit system by writing to tracitylimits.org. Well collect anyour dreams or a better city

Movingbetweenthe outerboroughsis a pain

M a p c o u r t e s y N e w Y o r k C i t y T r a n s i t


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City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6 www.citylimits.org30 The Unplanned City30 City Limits / Vol. 34 / No. 6The Unplanned City

trafcand it had little i any grassroots support.Still, it would have produced or the M A some $420

million in annual revenue. What never came throughin the 18 months o debate over congestion pricingwas that its impetus wasnt aesthetic or moral or evenenvironmental, but purely practical. New York Cityssurvival depends on mass transit and the system is ina nancial crisis that riders cant x: ransportationis the leading expense o low-income amiliessoak-ing up 30 percent o their pay. Its not just about theCO2 issue, Rocke eller Foundations assistant directorEdwin orres says o the citys transit challenge. Itsabout working people getting to work.

Its unclear i , beyond Bloomberg, New Yorks politicalleadership understands the gravity o the crisis acingthe nations largest transit system. During the debateover congestion pricing, Yaro met with one skepticallegislator and explained that 10 times as many people

rom his district commuted by subway as drove to work.His response was, Dont con use me with the acts.

And during his campaign or governor, Andrew Cuomo said the M A has to get by with the money ithas. What money?

Even as the M A struggles with chronic revenueshortages, it is being asked to transport a growing citya New York that is 380,000 people larger thanit was a decade ago, with nearly twice that numbero people expected to arrive in the next two decades .But the M A doesnt decide where those people go.Te New York City Department o City Plan ning does.

City Planning says it strives to encourage transit-oriented developmentin other words, creating moreroom or development in areas well served by transitand reducing the room or new buildings in neighbor-hoods without good transit links. A recent study by the Furman Center or Real Estate and Urban Policy at NYU nds that the areas where the administrationupzoned, or added residential capacity, tended tobe well served by transit, with 74 percent o upzonedlots within a hal -mile o a subway station. O course,that means 26 percent o the upzoningsor 26 millionsquare eet o potential new residential spaceis notlocated near transit.

Whats more, Furman ound that more than hal thelots that were downzonedor altered to allow smallerbuildingswere near transit. So growth was blockedin areas that had the transit in rastructure to absorbmore people.

And just because an area has a subway line doesntmean its actually well served enough to deal with new residents. It makes as little sense to site a massive new development next to a hopelessly overcrowded subway

line as it does to put it where there are no subwaysat all. But the citys planning process doesnt alwaysrecognize the mismatch between land use plans andtransit in rastructure. For instance, the environmentalreview or the 2007 rezoning o a swath o Jamaica,Queens, ound that the move would most likely resultin more than 5,000 new apartments and more than1,300 new subway riders.

Te subway lines at the Jamaica station were already 14 percent over capacity. But the review ound nosigni cant adverse impact on subways because theincrease in passengers would average out to three new people per overcrowded subway car. Anything ewerthan ve new people per car, the citys regulation orenvironmental review says, doesnt count.

A di erent problem could arise al ong the path o thenew 7 train. Te project began with two stationsoneat 41st and enth and another at 34th and Eleventhbut is now down to one. Teargument the city made when

they dropped it, aside romthe act that they didnt haveenough money or it, was,Development has happenedon West 40th without it, sowe dont want the station, says the RPAs Zupan. Now you put people in places where they expected to havea station, and now theyre stuck without a subway.

Te planning problem starts in the transit system.Tere is no central place that plans or transportationin the tristate region, Schwartz says. Te M A, NYCDO , NYS DO , Port [Authority], NJ ransit, NJ DOand Connecticut DO each do their own planning,which is very dependent on leadership and politics.But it is complicated by the absence o any ormalconnection between the people who plan where New Yorkers live and work (City Planning) and those whorun the transit systems.

Tere is also a dangerous dissonance between whatthe administration sees as progress and what communi-ties detect. Tis goes beyond the NIMBYish oppositionto bike lanes. At the October MAS con erence, Sadik-Khan pointed to a marketing brochure or a snazzy new residence in Brooklyn. She was pleased that oneo her bike lines was eatured as part o the appeal.

But the building in question, New Domino, is wherethe city, contrary to community wishes, changed zoningrules to allow a developer to build a massive new complex, bringing more people to an area o Brooklynwhere transit and schools are already strained.

Te bike lane looked cool. But there was somethingwrong with the rest o the picture.

7 Train ExtensionThe city is paying or this

rst major expansion othe subways since the1960s. The current plan

will extend the 7 train by a mile rom its current ter-minus at Times Square toa stop at 34th Street and11th Avenue. An inter-mediate stop, at 42ndand 10th Ave., has beenscrapped. However, theBloomberg administra-tion is now consideringrunning the train all the

way to New Jersey.

G ng s ewhe eTransit improvements en route

President Obamas sta ein local planning

www.citylimits.org

BEyOND THE BOR

East Side AccessThis link between theLong Island Railroadand Grand Central willtie together the Metro

North, LIRR and vesubway lines. But withan $8.1 billion price-tagand expected April 2018completion date, itsover-budget and behindschedule by $300 millionand 18 months.

Second Avenue SubwayIn the 1930s and 1960s,

unding was approvedor a subway along the

east side o Manhattan.The Great Depressionand the scal crisisstopped those propos-als in their tracks. Bornagain in 1995, tunnelingis now underway

or a line running rom63rd Street to 125thStreet. The rst ride is notexpected until 2018.

34th Street BuswayThe city has been experi-menting with bus rapidtransit as a low-cost way to improve travel. In 2012,a more ambitious businnovationwith the bus

riding in a dedicated,barricaded lane ratherthan contending withother tra cwill openalong 34th Street. Canbus rapid transit workelsewhere in New York?

along Nostrand and Rogers avenues in Brooklyn.Tat will open in 2012. Later that year, the mostambitious project to datethe 34 th Street ransit-waywill open in a busway, a lane thats not justpainted to be bus-only but barricaded by concreteto other cars; Sadik-Khan describes it as a kind o sur ace subway. Te Obama administration isproviding $18 million or the project.

But plans or a Hylan Boulevard SBS route inStaten Island have run into political oppositionover the projects impact on parking and car tra c.And a proposal or a Merrick Boulevard SBS routehas been scrapped over the same complaints. Sothe M15 is an important test or SBS in New York.

Getting passengers used to paying be ore they board is only one challenge. SBS lanes can make itdifcult or businesses on the bus-lane side o thestreet to get deliveries. Parking on that side o thestreet is also a no-no, so areas served by SBS have tosurrender parking spaces. And SBS service requires

prohibiting cars rom an entire lane o tra c, whichcan carry 600 automobiles an hour. According to theRPAs senior ellow or transp ortation, Je Zupan,there arent many streets in the city where there areenough bus trips during an hour to make a strongargument or cars to yield the lane.

It dont think its a panacea in every case, he sayso SBS. Tere are selecti vely places where it works.

Indeed, as e citing as all todays transit projectssound, a cold dose o reality is never ar away. TeSecond Avenue subway is supposed to eventually run rom the rom Lower Manhattan to Harlem,but now theres only unding or three stations onthe East Side. And even those are unlikely to be

nished on time.Were putting about $2 billion into just sustaining

a 100-year-old system, and thats a very expensivehobby, says Yaro. Te bad news is that the placesthat want to clean our clock are building brand-new transit systems.

In 2007, as part o his PlaNYC proposal, Bloom-berg proposed a new source o money or masstransit: tolling cars that entered or moved withinthe area south o 60th Street in Manhattan. It waspolitical dynamite; PlaNYCs authors didnt know until three days be ore the report was printedwhether congestion pricing would make it in ornot. Te plan certainly had its awsthere werequestions about equity or neighborhoods poorly served by transit, worries about the impact on smallbusinesses, uncertainty about the ability o the citysarterial highways to absorb the displaced crosstown

Photos courtesy New Yor CityDepartment o Transportation, MTA.


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www.citylimits.org 33

he rst one was in Forest Hills: 61 blocks.East Harlem was next: 57 blocks. TenMorrisania, in the Bronx. Next, BridgePlaza, in Brooklyn. Soon it would happenin Park Slope, City Island, Bayside, DykerHeights, hrogs Neck, Fort Greene,North Riverdale, Astoria, and across virtually all o Staten Island. At one pointduring the Bloomberg administrations

nine-year spree o 108 rezonings, community activ-ist Phil DePaolo heard one rustrated cop at a publichearing remark, Its like a ucking revolving doorwith these rezonings.

Since 2002, New York City has rezoned 9,400 blocks,changing the regulations governing the way land isused (residential? commercial? manu acturing?), thestyle and height o buildings, the size o yards and thedistance between houses. Teres really been a seachange over the last decade, says Paul Graziano, acommunity planner. Back in the 80s, under Koch, andeven into the 90s they would do a ve-block rezoningand say it took them ve years to do it and its the larg-est rezoning theyve ever done and its amazing. Tecurrent administration makes those past e orts look comical. Since Bloomberg became mayor, the city hasrezoned 18 percent o the cityan area comparable to

FiveBoroughs.One City.No Plan.Is the citys ailure to plan a plan or ailure?

CHAPTERtHrEE

WILLETS POINT, ahub or auto worand industry in theshadow o the Metsball eld. known asthe iron triangle, itsugly, use ul and notlong or this world.


18/33


the entirety o San Francisco or Boston. On one rezon-ing, Graziano began talking to City Planning in 1999,during the Giuliani years. I met with City Planningin 2000, 2001, and they thought it was interesting.But nothing really happened until Amanda Burdengot there.

Burden, who carries the honor o being a ellow o the American Institute o Certi ed Planners, has saton the City Planning Commissi on or 20 years and wasnamed its chairand the head o the Department o City Planning15 days into Bloombergs rst term.She says the rezonings are setting the conditions orsustainable, transit-oriented g rowth and are designedto accommodate a population o 9 million New Yorkersprojected by 2030.

Ken Fisher, a ormer city councilman who now represents developers going through the land useprocess, says Burden has le a distinctive imprint onthe city. Amanda Burden has been empowered by themayor to raise the quality o design. Shes notoriously detail-oriented. It doesnt mean that they always geteverything right, but its orced developers that havecome be ore her and city agencies to raise their game,he says. Te RPAs Bob Yaro concurs. Teres been astronger ocus on urban design than at any time sincethe Lindsay administration, he says.

Indeed, zoning under Burden has charted new ter-ritoryinclusionary zoning that gives developers theright to build larger structures i they create a ordablehousing, bonuses or builders who protect culturalinstitutions, provisions to encourage bike racks, neigh-borhood grocery stores and water ront development.

But as impressive as the roster o rezonings andaccomplishments is, the sheer number raises a question:Is there a consistent idea behind what City Planninghas done in Riverdale and in Stapleton, Staten Island,

in Douglaston o eastern Queens and at Hudson Yardsin Manhattans ar west?

Te city says it is pursuing transit-oriented devel-opmentencouraging growth in areas near transitlines and curtailing it in areas that are car-dependent.But the recent Furman Center report nds that whileabout three-quarters o the areas where City Planninghas allowed more growth are near transit, a quarterarent. And more than hal o the areas downzonedhad good links to transit.

Fisher thinks there is a slightly di erent idea at work:Te Bloomberg administration has a philosophy thatrecruitment and retention o talent is key to the cityseconomic development and that the way to do that isby giving that talent places to live, play and work, and

so a lot o the water ront development is dri ven by that.Melinda Katz, now a land use lawyer in private

practice, became chair o the City Councils power ulLand Use Committee at around the time Burden took over City Planning. She says the Sept. 11 attacks o just

our months earlier ueled a eeling that the city neededto act. We had to do something in order to move thecitys economy along. One o the greatest memories Ihave was this unspoken realization or my community that we needed to promote aith and con dence inthe city o New York or business, development andtourism rom countries all around the world, Katzrecalls. We elt that land use could be a great tool orpromoting that con dence. I the rest o the world saw we were active not only in security but also lookingat land use, that would send a message that New York was sa e or business.

hat ocus meant di erent things or di erentneighborhoods. In September 2003, when the city announced the downzoning o 40 percent o StatenIslands residential lots, Bloomberg expressed his

concern or the survival o tree-lined streets andsuburban-style amily homes. So he directedthe City Planning Department to work closely with the borough president to make sure theseapplications proceed quickly through the review process.

But residents o other neighborhoodslikeWilliamsburg, Greenpoint, 125th Street, Jamaica,and other areas that were not downzoned butinstead targeted or increased densitydidnot get their communities preserved. Its truethat di erent policies make sense in di erentneighborhoods. But the Furman Center ound apattern that at least raises questions: Areas thatgot downzonedlike most o Staten Islandwere whiter and wealthier than areas that gotupzoned, like 125th Street and Jamaica.

Most o the issues that are taken up inzoning are really to accommodate developers visions o how the city should be growing, says

Columbia University pro essor Elliott Sclar.Te only time communities have a shot, hesays, is when developers dont have their eyeson a particular project.

New York passed its rst zoning resolutiona document describing what can be built oevery square oot o the cityin 1916, becing the rst city in the world to apply zoninon a citywide basis. Other cities soon olloNew Yorks lead. Developers cha ed at the insion onto their private property rights. Obuilder, the Ambler Realty Co., sued the villo Euclid, Ohio, to challenge the municipazoning rules as an unconstitutional taking. U.S. Supreme Court sided with the village, zoning has enjoyed authority ever since.

By the 1950s, architecture critics and buers in New York began to complain about tstrictures o the 1916 rules, which contributo the wedding cake look o many o Yorks older buildings: o build higher under 1916 rules, builders had to set back the up

oors, so that buildings looked like cake lastacked one atop another. Tere was a desi

or the new, international style o skyscrapesleek, soaring rectangle set in a plaza. And wsome groaned about the con nes o the 1rules, others worried about their looseness: T1916 zoning theoretically would have permi

The absence o comprehensive planning leavesNew Yor City without the oundation or sound

uture growth. Neighborhoods pay the price whendevelopment overloads their streets, schools and

services. Government agencies do not now wheretheir resources will be needed.

A MECHANIC ta es aloo in Willets Point.

Under the Bloombergadministration, land

oned or industrialuse has continued to

dwindlesquee edby the lure o

lucrative residentialdevelopment.


19/33


building to house 55 million people (about as many people as live in modern-day South A rica). So in1961, the city revised the entire zoning resolution.

Tat 1961 regime is still in place, although it hascertainly evolved. It has been amended more than250 times just since 1993. Some o those tweaks arethe neighborhood-speci c zonings, like the 108 so

ar under Bloomberg and Burden. But other changesapply citywideto all balconies, or example, ortransient hotels, the water ront, adult establishmentsor sidewalk

city without a plan | 2011 january | city limits magazine

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