I just returned from my first-ever cruise ship experience, a long-planned celebration of my father-in-law's 70th birthday. The fam spent a week cruising around the eastern Caribbean on Celebrity Cruise Line's mega-ship, the Millennium. This boat is incredible. It holds nearly 2,000 passengers and about 1,000 workers. It's got a casino, theater, spa, basketball court, art gallery, numerous dining rooms, a stunning amount of food and a high-tech computerized key-card system that lets you rack up huge additional expenses without ever really feeling like you're spending money. The boat is so big that when it is at sea you can barely even feel it move.

Though he won't remember any of it, I'm glad my one-year-old son got the chance to experience the cruise. I don't think there's any way in the world that cruises like this will exist when he is my age. The Millennium, they say, is one of the more eco-friendly cruise ships out there. But that's an oxymoron. The ship may not be pumping raw sewage into the ocean, but at 90,000 tons it's got to take quite a fill-up at the old gas station to keep this big tub moving. It sails almost every day of the year.

When society finally decides that fossil fuels are too valuable or too dangerous to burn for non-essential activity, you've got to think cruise line mega-ships are going to be pretty high on the list of shit to get rid of. If fuel gets expensive enough it may very well make more business sense to just dock a ship like the Millennium in Lake Michigan and turn it into a nice, high-end retirement community with great access to downtown Chicago. Or tie it up somewhere on the Gulf Coast and bill it as a casino resort that can actually dodge on-coming hurricanes. Hell, park it on the west side of Manhattan and call it a hotel. Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay proposed that very idea during the 2004 Republican National Convention. What a visionary. In a world of expensive oil, there are still all kinds of uses for a ship like the Millennium. "Cruising" probably isn't one of them.

No problem. My big insight during our time on the boat was that it really doesn't matter a whole lot whether the cruise ship is actually moving. The sailing from port to port is the least important part of the cruise. The essential experience is contained entirely aboard the boat -- the pool, the breakfast buffet, the constant, never-ending attention of Phillipino deck hands offering you tropical drinks with little umbrellas sticking out of them (and then charging you $8.50). But cruising really only fulfills some aesthetic or psychological need. We could very well have dropped anchor somewhere just over the horizon and sat there for seven days. It would have been pretty much the same vacation. Maybe even better given the state of some of the port towns we visited.

Sure, sailing puts some wind in your hair and gives you the feeling that you're going on a big adventure across the high seas to foreign lands. But it turns out that when a small, eastern Carribbean town retrofits its port to accommodate six gigantic cruise ships simultaneously, it loses a lot of its original charm. In the end, a cruise ship is essentially a gigantic Las Vegas hotel that has some how pulled itself up from its foundations, lumbered across the continental U.S., and plopped itself in the ocean. The sailing doesn't much matter.

This became most clear during our trip ashore to Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. As we approached from sea, the town looked beautiful. It's got these imposing, 500-year-old Spanish colonial fortresses guarding the mouth of the harbor. And the town is still filled with colorful, old buildings built along block after block of narrow, winding, cobblestone streets.

But once you get into town, it's a total and complete disaster. Why? Traffic, of course!

I couldn't believe it. I don't know much about Old San Juan, but this much was clear: The town's entire economy is based on tourism. Its biggest assets are these charming old, winding streets and all of these incredible old buildings. The streets are absolutely perfect for strolling and shopping and sitting at cafe tables. And they are almost totally useless for motor vehicles. And, yet, there is no strolling, shopping, or sitting at cafe tables on the streets of Old San Juan. Rather, the public space between these beautiful old buildings is almost entirely dedicated to traffic and parking. If ever there was a place where everyone would benefit from pedestrianizing the streets, its Old San Juan. I've never seen a more clear-cut case.

The people of Old San Juan, mind you, aren't driving small cars. Puerto Rico is part of the USA. As in the USA, the streets are filled with massive SUV's and pick-up trucks. Most of the sidewalks have been trimmed down to about two feet wide to accomodate the traffic and make room for parking. It's insane.

This is the corner of a potentially beautiful public square that has been turned into a dysfunctional traffic round-about. Add your own horn honking and salsa music blaring from the car stereo to get the full effect. Why leave Brooklyn?

This is one of the main shopping streets in Old San Juan. It's easy to imagine this street filled with cafe tables and local merchants selling wares to the thousands of tourists who squeeze their way along the narrow sidewalks each week. It's hard to imagine that all of this unmoving private automobile traffic is actually essential to Old San Juan's economy.

I really like the little balconies on the old Spanish colonial buildings. You barely notice this stuff though, when you're walking along the street. The traffic takes too much of your attention. McDonald's too.

I didn't see any parking signs or permits so I assume that parking on these streets is free. This, to me, is mind-blowing. What a waste of truly precious public space! What is Old San Juan thinking? Whenever someone stopped to get in or out of a parking space, it blocked up traffic for an entire block, often making motorists go berserk. If San Juan wanted to solve its traffic problem, probably all it would need to do is get rid of the parking space and turn it into pedestrian space.

Sometimes I have to reality check myself. I mean, I've been known to be a wee bit oversensitive to urban traffic. Is Old San Juan really that bad or is it just me? So, I Googled "Old San Juan traffic" and one of the very first items I found was some old stock video footage of cars inching their way down the very same street above, filmed from almost exactly the same vantage point. Turns out that it's not just me. Old San Juan is notorious for its traffic congestion. You've got to wonder if the people who run this city even have a clue.

Despite the traffic, we had a great time. When it's time to lock me away in a retirement home, I don't think I'll mind it if the kid puts me out to pasture aboard the Millennium. I don't expect the boat will still be cruising. I just hope its docked somewhere sunny.

12:06 PM | Link | (19) comments   

Almost exactly one year ago, Park Slope Neighbors launched its first campaign. Our goal was to compel Commerce Bank to ditch its plans to build a cookie-cutter, suburban-style, drive-thru building on a pedestrian-oriented shopping street in Park Slope, Brooklyn. We wanted the bank to design a building that better fit the context of our neighborhood and we were successful.

Much to their credit, Commerce Bank’s executives listened and worked with the community. Though it cost them real money, they delayed the opening of their branch, went back to the drawing board, and designed an entirely new building for Park Slope. They were good neighbors.

On Saturday December 17, Commerce Bank opens the doors of its Park Slope branch on Fifth Avenue and First Street. From 9:00am to 2:00pm the bank will be offering refreshments, giveaways, games, prizes and more. PSN has been invited to participate in the ribbon-cutting at 11:00am.

After PSN’s collaboration with Commerce Bank, Borough President Marty Markowitz said, "This project serves as an example to all companies — the best way to do business in Brooklyn is to work with and respect the community." As more and more big developers and corporate retailers look to build and set up shop in our corner of Brooklyn, the Borough President’s words are very much worth remembering and repeating. So often, community advocates' only recourse is get angry and protest -- all stick, no carrot. The opening of Commerce Bank is a rare opportunity for us to give kudos to a big business for collaborating with the community when there was no legal authority forcing them to do so. I think it's great that we don't have to stand out in front of the bank tomorrow morning with picket signs. Because the bank was open to working with us, we got to use our time and energy more productively.

So, if you're in the neighborhood I urge you to swing by on Saturday and give Commerce Bank some positive reinforcement for a job well done. Remind big businesses that it pays to work with Brooklyn's neighborhoods and it's a mistake to exclude neighborhood advocates from big development processes.

3:06 PM | Link | (7) comments   

I haven't been closely following the "War on Christmas" controversy (watching Bill O'Reilly makes me nauseous), but this rant right here is a somewhat genius response.

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11:04 PM | Link | (7) comments   

A new $1.6 million scholarship fund has been set up in my Dad's name, as reported in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Arthur Naparstek looked at urban poverty and instead of seeing a mess, he saw a way to develop the community's assets -- not the money, but the people themselves.

The model worked in Israel, the United States and in Cleveland.

And with nearly $1.6 million in scholarship money raised in his name at Case Western Reserve University's Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations, his optimistic legacy will continue.

Naparstek died in April 2004, but not before he knew that the scholarship fund was in the works.

He spent his life working to improve the hu man condition, said one of his good friends, Steven Hoffman, president of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland.

"His life was about empowering people," Hoffman said. "And these particular scholarships are aimed at training professional leaders in the nonprofit world who are responsible for how civil society gets built."

Hoffman helped to raise $600,000 to perpetuate that legacy by supporting graduate work in nonprofit management for a student from Israel or a U.S. student working closely with Jewish organizations.

Donors included Jack, Joseph and Mort Mandel (after whom the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations was named), the Robert Goldberg family, the Charles Ratner family, the David and Inez Myers Foundation and other Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland donors.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development contributed nearly $1 million for Naparstek's fund to pay for scholarships for students pursuing the master of nonprofit organization degree at Case's Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations.

Naparstek helped to write federal legislation, including HOPE VI, with U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat, to radically improve deteriorated public housing. Mikulski helped to secure the HUD money.

The first of the scholarships will be granted next year, said Susan Lajoie Eagan, executive director of the Mandel Center for Nonprofit Organizations. Naparstek, who was a professor at the school at the time of his death, was at one point in his career the dean of the university's school of applied social sciences.

"Art had a creative idea about every 30 seconds," said Eagan. "He really motivated, inspired and supported the people around him."

The week before his death, he attended a meeting of the Mandel Center's advisory board, Eagan said. "Even though he was obviously extraordinarily ill, he made the most important contribution that day."

One of the first projects Naparstek took on as dean of the former school of applied social sciences in 1983 was the project of creating the Center for Nonprofit Organizations. He worked with the Mandel brothers to get financial support for the center.

He was among the few in the country at that time who saw the importance of developing strong leadership in nonprofit management, Eagan said.

"Art had energy, enthusiasm, excitement and a sophisticated optimism," said his wife, Belleruth Naparstek. "His optimism was based on knowledge."

The idea of tapping the talents of people to build a financially successful community was applied by the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland in the Israeli town of Beit Shean by linking it to a Jordanian city through business.

"When people saw him coming, they would roll their eyes because they knew they weren't off the hook," said Naparstek's wife. "He had a perseverance that was almost psychotic."

People mattered to Naparstek. He took the time to mentor them and teach them what he knew, she said. "If I am as successful as he was, I will have laid my hands on somebody else and they will carry it on," Hoffman said. "The young people who are successful in receiving these scholarships should only know how honored they should be to be associated with that mission."

by Susan Ruiz Patton, Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter

12:45 PM | Link | (3) comments   

Over the last few months I have been interviewing some of the city’s leading transportation policy and planning experts asking them this one question:

In light of the Atlantic Yards project and the all of the other major development taking place in and around Downtown Brooklyn these days, what policy, planning and design ideas should be considered to ensure that the neighborhoods around Atlantic Yards and the transportation network that serves the area remain functional and healthy?

Remarkably, I found that everyone I spoke with, whether from city agencies, advocacy groups or policy think tanks generally presented the same set of ideas. In other words, New York City's transportation and planning communities know how to solve the area's traffic problems. The ideas are there. The question is whether the city can generate the political will and revenue to make these changes happen.

Still, changes start as ideas. So, here are seven ideas that the city, state and private developer Forest City Ratner should seriously consider to ensure that this massive project of 16-towers and a 19,000-seat arena has a chance to work:

1. Improve subway service and facilities.
Fun though it may be to one day call Manhattanites the “bridge and tunnel” crowd, former Department of Transportation Deputy Commissioner “Gridlock” Sam Schwartz says that Manhattanites don’t like taking the subway into Brooklyn. Data collected by the Brooklyn Academy of Music shows this to be true. To convince Manhattanites to take the subway to events at Atlantic Yards, Brooklyn’s downtown subway stations must be improved significantly, and train service needs to be more frequent and reliable, particularly during big events. This will require significant funding by the MTA.

2. Create incentives to take transit.
To get people onto trains and buses, Jon Orcutt, president of the Tri-State Transportation Campaign, suggests we “build a transit incentive into the basketball ticket.” When people buy event tickets, give them a free or reduced ride on a subway or bus. An interesting version of this idea is being proposed for the 80,000-seat NASCAR track on Staten Island. Tickets to events would be linked directly to mode of travel. Your ticket doesn’t only get you a seat at the racetrack, it also assigns you a parking space, a ride on a ferry, or a seat on a bus. The number of parking spaces around the track has been limited to ensure that Staten Island’s bridges and roads are not overtaxed. By contrast, no such transportation planning has been put forward by the developer of the Atlantic Yards. Rather than computer modeling the area's traffic they are filming the intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth, ostensibly, to show that traffic isn’t as bad there as people believe it is. Note to the videographers: Make sure you film the intersection from the pedestrians’ perspective, not just the motorists’.

3. Limit and manage parking space
The hot book in urban planning circles these days is Donald Shoup’s 700-page thriller, The High Cost of Free Parking. It turns out that the single biggest generator of automobile trips is free, abundant parking. Even if Atlantic Yards is built atop the city’s second largest transit hub, if lots of parking space is available, people will use their cars to get there and traffic congestion will increase. If parking is scarce and expensive, people will be far more likely to leave their cars at home and use transit. At Atlantic Yards, Regional Plan Association’s Jeff Zupan said, it is vital that “we not build a big supply of parking that then creates more of an automobile environment.”

To ensure that the surrounding residential streets don’t become de facto arena parking lots, a residential parking permit program needs to be set up in all of the nearby neighborhoods. So that local businesses are not hurt and residential permits aren’t condemned as “elitist,” the permit system should allow for non-residents to park their cars for one or two hours – enough time to shop but not enough time to attend a basketball game.

4. Design a great pedestrian environment.
The intersection of Flatbush, Atlantic and Fourth is, simply, a terrifying place to cross the street. That is because the needs and requirements of vehicular traffic have, for years, been prioritzed above all else. With the amount of pedestrian traffic that an arena and other development would bring, we need to redesign the Crossroads of Brooklyn with the needs and priorities of pedestrians and transit users first in mind. The developer, city and state need to ask themselves: How can we turn this intersection into a truly great public space?

To begin to do this, we should install traffic-calming features where busy thoroughfares meet quiet residential streets along all three avenue corridors. We should not bury pedestrians in underground tunnels, or narrow the sidewalks to accommodate black limo drop-offs and increased vehicular traffic flow. Gehry’s current plan to build big super-blocks with “towers in the park” set way back off the street has to be redesigned. These ideas are proven neighborhood killers.

5. Get Bus Rapid Transit Rolling (BRT)
Cities around the world are using BRT with great success. BRT gives buses their own dedicated lanes and a variety of other features that vastly increase the speed, reliability and, subsequently, the ridership on buses in crowded cities. BRT is relatively cheap and easy to get up and running. The MTA is studying the idea of turning the Flatbush Avenue B41 into a BRT route. “We have to squeeze more transportation performance out of our streets,” Transportation Alternatives’ Director Paul Steely White, said. “The best way to do this is to switch people out of their cars into high-capacity buses.” The cost of BRT, of course, is that cars would be banned from two or even four lanes of Flatbush Avenue, at least during rush hours when the lanes would be dedicated exclusively to buses. If people really want to solve the area’s traffic problems, this is the price that must be paid.

6. Make Brooklyn more bike-friendly
Visiting Northern European cities many Americans discover, as I did, that the bicycle can be a cheap, fast, clean, efficient and extremely pleasant form of urban transportation. As New York City grows more dense, as the price of gasoline ratchets up, and as local and global environmental issues become more urgent, bicycling is emerging as an obvious solution to some of our city’s most pressing problems.

“The highest rates of cycling in the whole city are in Brooklyn,” White said. If we’re thinking towards the future, then the development of Atlantic Yards should improve Brooklyn’s bike network. Likewise, the Atlantic Avenue transit hub should have a Bike Station, a park’n’ride facility where commuters, shoppers and employees can safely park their bikes during the day and evening.

7. Implement congestion pricing
All these ideas are nice, but how do we pay for them? First, it should be remembered that Forest City Ratner is asking for more than $200 million in public subsidies for the Atlantic Yards project. A significant portion of that public money should be invested in improving the public space around the project. It shouldn’t all go into a half-billion-dollar basketball arena, the most expensive ever built.

Second, every transportation expert I spoke to suggested that we take a very serious look at implementing congestion pricing in New York City. Congestion pricing is an automated tolling system that is used to control traffic. London, the world city most analogous to New York, has had remarkable success with congestion pricing. To drive into London’s busy, crowded central business district motorists are automatically charged 8£, or about $14. There are no toll plazas and drivers don’t have to slow down to pay. The system has been a tremendous success, even in the eyes of earlier skeptics. Traffic congestion is down 38 percent, and if you do need to get through London in a car or delivery truck, driving is now fast and reliable. The system has not hurt local business or reduced the number of people visiting Downtown London. Congestion pricing is raising about $175 million a year, all of which is being plowed back into bus, pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure.

Well-served by mass transit, suffering from crippling traffic congestion, and overrun by through-traffic to the free East River bridges, Downtown Brooklyn is a place that should seriously consider the benefits of congestion pricing.

3:22 PM | Link | (15) comments