4:19 PM | Link | (6) comments   

What Planet Are New York City's Mayoral Candidates Living On?

Last Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The pact, organized by Seattle mayor Greg Nickels, aims to meet or beat the emissions-reduction targets spelled out in the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. (That is, a reduction of seven percent from 1990 levels by 2012.) In a clear rebuke to the Bush administration, which refuses to sign on to Kyoto or even acknowledge the science of global warming, 137 mayors representing 30 million Americans have signed-on to the agreement. For its part, the Bloomberg administration has committed New York City to reducing emissions by transforming its municipal car fleet to hybrid gasoline-electric powered vehicles.

While it’s nice to see the city getting on board with Kyoto—and what could be better than forcing Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz to trade in his SUV for a Prius?—most scientists believe that, at this late date, the measures spelled out in the Kyoto Protocol don’t reduce emissions fast enough to significantly arrest global warming. And New York City’s municipal fleet, huge though it is, contributes only a minuscule percentage of the city’s total greenhouse gases. Look at the far-reaching traffic-reduction strategies being implemented by the mayors of London and Paris, and it’s obvious that New York City could, with just a little bit of effort, do vastly more to cut down on harmful emissions while improving quality of life, boosting the economy and maintaining New York City’s edge as a global leader.

If the Democratic primary campaign underway is any indicator, it doesn’t look like we’re going to get that effort anytime soon. Facing up to the big challenges of the 21st century isn’t up for discussion this election season. Environmental issues aren’t even on the radar. Rather than looking forward and leading, the city’s Democrats seem to be much more interested in looking back and settling old scores. For two months, the candidates, their base supporters, and the media conflict-mongers who frame the public debate, have been talking about Amadou Diallo, the unarmed African immigrant who died in a hail of police gunfire back in 1999. If you had just woken up from deep hibernation and dropped in on the campaign, you would probably think it was 2001.

But it’s 2005. And other cities around the U.S. are getting serious about tackling global issues on the local level. Seeing the mayor of Seattle organize a national coalition to support a global treaty, you get a sense of what we’re missing here in New York. The planet may be melting but our Democratic machine is frozen in the past. They don't have time to fight global warming. They're still fighting the Crown Heights riots. Is it any wonder that the Demcoratic candidates' messages aren’t sticking or appealing? There is no progressive vision. There is really nothing to get excited about.

Living in a man-made world of concrete, it’s easy to forget about the environment. The environment is something they have in Alaska or Antarctica, not here. But New York City has a major role to play in the environmental movement. One of the most destructive forces at work on the planet today is American-style, car-based, suburban sprawl. Sprawl is the most wasteful, inefficient and unsustainable pattern of living human society has ever conceived. Livable cities are, in many ways, the antidote to sprawl. It may come as a shock, but New Yorkers are some of the “greenest” Americans there are. Living piled on top of each other, commuting by foot, bike and transit, we consume far less land and energy than other Americans. This is why urban quality of life is not just a bourgeois issue. It’s no longer simply about police actions to get rid of squeegee men and graffiti artists. Creating a high quality of life for all New Yorkers is an environmental issue of global significance.

Yet quality of life simply doesn’t get framed in broader environmental terms in New York City. There’s no language for it. And other than a few special interest groups, there’s no constituency for it, either. To the old-fashioned, liberal, Democratic machine, the only issues worth talking about are education, jobs and affordable housing. And these issues are all viewed through the thick, highly charged haze of identity politics. Ultimately, this makes it seem like the only thing New York City Democrats are truly capable of talking about is race. And that may very well be the reason why in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least 4 to 1, Republicans have won the mayoralty three times in a row, going on four.

3:42 PM | Link | (4) comments   

Last month's Critical Mass bike ride ended in 34 arrests. Even the New York Times, no big fan of pesky bike radicals clogging up midtown traffic, has begun to notice that something has gone extremely wrong with the NYPD's approach to the once-peaceful monthly ride. Perhaps that's because this month Times reporter Colin Moynihan got roughed up, jacked against a car trunk and cuffed. His crime? Conducting an interview on the corner of E. 6th Street and Avenue A.

It was refreshing to wake up on Saturday morning and see the newspaper of record finally putting a name and a face to the inept and unlawful police crackdown: Assistant Chief Bruce Smolka, former boss of the disgraced and disbanded Street Crimes Unit, the cops who put 41 bullets in Amadou Diallo. The Metro section carried a prominent picture of Smolka in action, roughly dragging a young woman off the street by the collar caveman-style. If it's the same woman described in the news story, she is being arrested for trying to walk away from Union Square with her legs straddling her bike, her feet on the sidewalk. According to Smolka, that's illegal.

Just imagine all the arrests he could make in Portland, Oregon.

My friend Clarence Eckerson recently returned from a trip to Portland, and it sounds like his next visit may be on a one-way ticket. It would be a shame for New York City to lose Eckerson, one of the best bike advocates we've got. Fighting the colossal government bureaucracy, powerful corporate machinery and profound cultural inertia that keeps the city's automotive apparatus rolling (albeit slowly and with much horn-honking), can really run a man down, make him bitter, cynical, angry. Just look at me. Eckerson, however, is like Prozac on wheels, perpetually enthusiastic and making things happen. In his spare time he produces BikeTV, a bi-weekly program that airs on public access channels in New York City and around the country. (Wednesdays on Manhattan Neighborhood Networks channel 57, 9:30 p.m.)

Tonight's episode of BikeTV features Eckerson's Portland trip. He was blown away by what he found over there, especially the "bike boulevards." These, according to Portland City Bike Coordinator Roger Geller are "neighborhood streets with low traffic volume that generally work well for bikes but have been redesigned and engineered to work even better." Bike boulevards are "traffic-calmed" to force motorists to drive more slowly or avoid them altogether. In the places where bike boulevards intersect with busy arteries, the city installs special bicycle traffic signals, extends the curbs, and generally takes extra care to ensure that cyclists and pedestrians can cross streets safely. Portland puts so much love and attention into its bike infrastructure, the city workers who paint the bike lanes started adding funny hats and hair-dos to their cyclist stencil. What do you think the New York Post would have to say about that? The New York City Department of Transportation would have those guys fired by lunchtime the next day.

Geller describes the features found on Portland's bike boulevards as "just simple things." Yet, many of his DOT counterparts here in New York City would consider bike boulevards to be impossibly complicated to set up. So, how does Portland do it?

"We integrate all modes of transportation into every project that we do," Geller says. "Even if someone is working on a traditional roadway project they are still incorporating bike designs into it."

In fact, Oregon state law mandates that every road project include designs for pedestrians, bikes and transit users. The state has even set aside a special fund to pay for it. Not only is this unimaginable for Albany, of the 4,257 employees at New York City's DOT only four are dedicated to working on bike projects. Far from being fully integrated into the agency, they are ghettoized.

Eckerson's camera lingers lovingly at a bike lane that crosses directly in front of a busy highway on-ramp near downtown Portland. The spot is reminiscent of the BQE on-ramp below the Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn where Transportation Alternatives' bike project coordinator Noah Budnick had his disastrous crash a few weeks back. Rather than forcing cyclists to ride a circuitous route away from the on-ramp as is done at the Manhattan Bridge, a high-visibility blue bike lane and large signs warn motorists not to speed onto the highway without first yielding to bikes. It works, and not just because Northwesterners are ridiculously polite. There is enough bike infrastructure and cyclists using it that Portland motorists have learned to look out for and live with bikes.

"Look at New York City," Eckerson says. "Our DOT puts cars first. In Portland, their DOT clearly goes through a thought process that puts pedestrians and cyclists first."

12:21 PM | Link | (1) comments   

In the bloodsport of New York City real estate development, city planners are supposed to function as the referees. In theory, planners mediate between the aggressive, profit-focused real estate developers and the protective, neighborhood NIMBYs. In practice, New York City's referees kick back and watch Team Developer commit hard fouls and run up the score. When urban planning is working, it helps these inherently conflicting parties come to terms with each other and establishes a solid framework for healthy, long-term growth. When urban planning isn't working, you get New York City 2005.

One of the most important tools for the planner is the environmental-impact statement. But in New York these days, the EIS process has become little more than a speed bump on the road to big development. The Hudson Yards EIS evaluating Mayor Bloomberg's West Side stadium proposal is a prime example. "The transportation analysis and environmental review is faulty," says Kate Slevin, associate director of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. To smooth the way for the project, "it underestimates traffic impacts and overestimates transit usage" of future stadium patrons. Her organization is suing the city over the numbers. When planners don't have real power, urban planning by lawsuit becomes the norm.

With the MTA spiraling into insolvency, Slevin believes that the city needs to start asking more of developers. She cites the Red Hook IKEA as a major missed opportunity. The nearest subway station to the Ikea, the F line's Smith-9th Street stop, has been in decrepit condition for years. Recently, the MTA announced that it may not have enough money for a long-planned station renovation. The MTA has also raised the possibility of reducing bus service to transit-poor Red Hook. "Ikea is a huge company," Slevin says. "Why not ask them to give some money back to a struggling transportation system that is ultimately going to serve their business?"

This isn't unreasonable. In 2004 Ikea hauled in $15.4 billion in revenue. Out in suburbia, the giant Swedish retailer is willing to drop $50 million on a highway off-ramp and road improvements. For that kind of money, Brooklyn could have gotten a renovated subway station, a stretch of waterfront greenway, and serious neighborhood traffic-calming. But with city planning AWOL and community opponents' vocabulary limited to the word "no," Brooklyn got nothing but a big box on the waterfront and lots of future traffic congestion.

Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association, puts the boom into perspective. "For 350 years the story of New York is one of continuous flux, transition, and growth. We are just coming out of a quarter century of unusually slow development. In a way, things are just getting back to normal."

Over the last 15 years, New York City officially added 750,000 new residents, more than any other city in the U.S. Including the undocumented, the real number is a couple hundred thousand more. With the rapid influx of immigrants and "every 24-year-old in the country" wanting to live in New York, "we filled up most of the vacant lots and old houses that were abandoned in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The easy stuff to develop is gone," Yaro says. In the next 15 to 20 years, planners expect New York City to grow by an additional 1.5 million. "Where do we put at least half a million additional housing units?" Yaro asks. "Obviously, some places need to be rezoned, like the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront."

The proposed rezoning, announced on Monday, includes some innovative ideas thanks to City Council's editing of Mayor Bloomberg's original plan. But it still has many problems. There are no guarantees that developers will create meaningful amounts of affordable housing, most of the waterfront may end up closed off to the public, and transportation improvements are completely neglected. In fact, the rezoning appears designed almost exclusively to foster the development of dozens and dozens of high-rise luxury condominiums.

Urban planning can be done better. Yaro looks across the ocean to England where Mayor Ken Livingstone's "creative, comprehensive, long-term" London Plan shows another way.
"They're figuring out where to put the next million residents and have some very thoughtful strategies on how to do that. Half of the new housing units built in the next 10 years will be affordable. They're setting high targets to give the city leverage to push for a much greater amount from private developers. And they're developing citywide standards for development on the neighborhood level, something we've never had in New York."

In other words, the London Plan gives that city's planners the tools they need to referee the game. Meanwhile, here in New York City, the referees don't even have a whistle. "Too often the city has allowed the planning process to begin when the developer's proposal comes in," says Yaro. "It doesn't have to be this way."

2:57 PM | Link | (2) comments