RENEWABLE ENERGY: Railways and Rooftops
Technology never ceases to amaze. Inhabitat reports on Israeli company Innowattech’s new project to harvest energy from train traffic on the country’s rail lines. Innowattech will line tracks with piezoelectric pads that convert stress and pressure into usable energy, and then hook it in to the power grid. A prototype of the system installed last year was able to generate enough electricity to power railroad signs and lights, with energy to spare. The potential of piezoelectricity is something Urban Omnibus devotees will remember from Fluxxlab’s Revolution Door, a prototype that turned the human pressure of pushing a revolving door into enough power to light up an office building’s lobby.

Proposed solar array on the rood of the Brooklyn Army Terminal | Image: NYCEDC

On the local scene – the City plans to deck out the Brooklyn Army Terminal with photovoltaic solar panels. Dubbed the “Smart Grid Demonstration Project,” the panel array will be the largest solar collector in the city and generate at least 600,000 kilowatts of energy annually – enough to power 120 homes (or 2% of the terminal’s energy consumption). The plan is a collaboration between the New York City Economic Development Corporation and Con Edison, who are using $4.5 million of their American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. Once up and running, the BAT will be used to collect data on storage capacity and management of solar panels, and the EDC says its predicted success will lead to the installation of solar arrays in more locations, and perhaps the continued alliance of public and private money in the Bloomberg administration’s Green Economy Plan.
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PUBLIC SPACE: What’s It Good For, Again?
Have an opinion about public space? Weigh in on the latest installment of the Glass House conversations. Deborah Marton of the Design Trust for Public Space asks, “How can public spaces be designed to help individuals become more active participants – socially, economically, intellectually, physically – in the life of their communities?” As New York’s public spaces become increasingly designed, densified and arguably fetishized, a frank conversation about why public space matters is valuable. The Glass House conversations take a weekly design topic and invite commentary before closing the discussion and choosing a “final word,” so go put in your two cents before this questions closes, tonight at 8pm.
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Outside the City Council Transportation Committee Hearing | via streetsblog.org

BIKE POLICY HEARING
It seems not a week can pass without mention of Janette Sadik-Khan. Yesterday, the City Council Transportation Committee drew quite a crowd at a hearing on New York City bike policy. According to Streetsblog, the line to testify was out the door, reflecting the vested public interest in bicycling politics. The committee, like the public, seemed divided, debating the balance of new bike lanes with vehicle traffic. Committee Chair James Vacca said, “Too many people are starting to get the impression that bike policy is about getting them to give up their cars,” and questioned commuters’ use of bike lanes, while other members requested more lanes for their districts. City Council member and cyclist Daniel Garodnick advocated safety and education like the “Don’t be a Jerk” campaign covered in our Roundup two weeks ago. For more on the meeting, see Streetsblog’s summary of the key points.
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CRIMINAL CHARGES: Raw Sewage and Restaurant Grease
The City is trying to put its foot down to reverse the dire situation of Brooklyn waterways. The Department of Environmental Protection has charged four individuals and four business for polluting Sheepshead Bay with raw sewage and restaurant grease. The New York Times‘ “Green” blog quotes DEP commissioner Cas Holloway’s statement, “Today’s arrests send a strong message to property owners who would turn a blind eye to water pollution, or delay fixing a problem: Take responsibility and act now.”
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URBAN PLANNING SONGS: Top Ten
As cultural commentators prepare their end of the year lists (best movies, books, songs, etc), Planetizen has complied its top ten urban planning songs. This may not be the soundtrack to a holiday dance party, but it does sample the eclectic mix of artists inspired by city spaces. Our additions, “Cities” by the Talking Heads (the list quotes David Byrne saying, “if somebody could write a song about [city planning] I’d have to stand up and cheer for them,”) and this years New York anthem, “Empire State of Mind.” After all, isn’t every urbanist’s dream to wander “streets that make you feel brand new?”

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The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Photo: Giles Ashford

Last Wednesday the Municipal Art Society partnered with Manhattan Community Board 1 (Lower Manhattan) to host a daylong discussion, “Land Use and Local Voices: Is the City’s Land Use Process in Need of Reform?”. The event was organized in response to the 2010 Charter Revision Commission created by Mayor Bloomberg in March 2010, whose recently released preliminary report does not propose major reforms to the land use review and planning processes.

With the category of land use relegated to the back pages of the commission report, the day turned into a discussion of the issues affecting development and the inadequacies of the current land use review process for development proposals in the city, especially with respect to the input of local stakeholders.

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer began the discussion by highlighting two points that would recur throughout the day: the need for professional expertise on community boards (CBs) and the necessity of long-range planning. Stringer cited the Planning Fellowship Program he implemented to have a planning student assigned to each Manhattan CB. In addition, his discussion of long-range planning focused on the idea of making planning and development an “apolitical process.” The prospect and possibility of land use planning without politics was disputed throughout the rest of the day.

The first panel discussed what distinguishes the city’s land use process in relation to other cities and municipalities in the US. Sandy Hornick, Deputy Director of Strategic Planning at the NYC Department of City Planning, noted that after failed attempts in 1940 and 1969, the city still does not have a comprehensive long-term plan that addresses land use. David N. Kinsey, a New Jersey planner and Visiting Lecturer at Princeton University, echoed the need for comprehensive planning. He noted New York was unique among US cites with its site-specific ULURP process rather then a comprehensive master plan.

The question of participation also arose as moderator Ethel Sheffer, Principal at Insight Associates and Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s GSAPP, asked Sara Logan, Bronx Community Board 6 member, to elaborate on issues facing community participation. Logan noted that, despite many active community members, participation rates are lower in the outer boroughs. Later on in the day Adam Friedman, Director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, spoke to the necessity of engaging city residents and providing them with the necessary tools and attention – as they have “chosen to be New Yorkers.”

The questions of zoning and site-specific development were picked up by the second panel, “Time for Change? Perspectives on Planning in the Five Boroughs.” Josiah Madar, a Research Fellow at NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, presented a study of recent rezonings in the city (PDF). The study uses a lot-level analysis to demonstrate that the majority of rezonings between 2003 and 2007 were intended to preserve the existing residential character of neighborhoods with higher rates of homeownership and income level than the city’s average. Madar noted that while these rezonings help to “preserve the best,” there also needs to be more attention to zoning changes that help to “move the ball forward on ensuring housing affordability.”

Friedman stressed the “uncertainty” and “unpredictability” of ULURP. Yet in contrast to other speakers, Friedman did not suggest a comprehensive plan but rather the development of a land use matrix that would be used to understand how projects help city goals. Meanwhile, Eddie Bautista, Executive Director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, addressed the 1989 City Charter Commission’s addition of ‘Fair Share’ and how its lack of enforcement follows in a pattern of well-intentioned requirements that are not met or enforced and are thus rendered useless.

Moderator Eugenie L. Birch, Professor of Urban Research and Chair of the Graduate Group of City Planning at University of Pennsylvania School of Design and Co-Director of Penn Institute for Urban Research, ended “Time for Change” by asking her panelists what “the city of the 21st century should look like?” For Bautista, the hope is for a a city “that doesn’t adhere to 1962 zoning standards.” For Brian Cook, Director of Land Use and Planning for Stringer, the hope is for an adaptable land use planning body removed from the political sphere.

Stringer and Cook’s call for “apolitical” planning concluded the morning, but the difficulty of avoiding the political began the afternoon with the final panel, “Looking Ahead: The Future of Community Benefit Agreements in NYC.” CBAs are private contracts between a developer and a group of organizations who purportedly represent the community without political input. Moderator Vicki Been, Boxer Family Professor of Law at NYU School of Law and Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate, began the discussion by questioning whether CBAs are apolitical in New York. She went on to provide some background to the longstanding issue of private agreements between developers and community groups, often characterized by a lack of transparency in the decisions leading up to the siting of development.

The uniqueness of CBAs in New York compared to the rest of the US was noted by Benjamin S. Beach, Staff Attorney at the Community Benefits Law Center, who spoke of the potential for successful CBAs to complement the public process and serve as an enforceable contract. Following up on Been, he noted the problem of public officials involved in the CBA process. David Reiss, Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, may have put it best when he said CBAs in New York “face legitimacy issues.”

The day finished with a conversation between Julie Menin, one of the hosts and Chair of Manhattan CB1, and Eric Lane, who served as the Executive Director/Counsel to the 1989 NYC Charter Revision Commission. Asked why the charter commission decided not to take on land use, Lane suggested the commission wants changes that “will get done” — changes that require less effort than the creation of a land use regime and a long-term plan — and that land use should be addressed by a commission that has been given time and thorough briefings. Lane ended his comments by stating the need for land use to be evaluated every ten years, because beyond best intentions “even the greatest expertise has politics associated with it.”

Jane Kelly is a Project Associate at Urban Omnibus. She attends Colgate University where she concentrates in Geography and Studio Art. She was born and raised in New York City.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

The future of our country’s landscape — how and where we will accommodate demographic, economic and environmental changes in the coming decades — is a matter of concern for all Americans, regardless of preference for urban, suburban, exurban or rural conditions. In “A Country of Cities,” a provocative series of opinion pieces published on Urban Omnibus, Vishaan Chakrabarti takes the country to task for its wasteful attitude towards land use. But his voice is one among a crowded field of urbanists and regionalists with diverse views on what the prevailing trends of where we live and what we build indicate about our future. Two other voices that currently command some attention at the national scale are those of Joel Kotkin, urban historian and author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050, and Christopher Leinberger, land use strategist and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute.

Last Wednesday, July 7^th, the Forum for Urban Design hosted a discussion on the future of the American metropolitan landscape with Kotkin and Leinberger. Kenneth T. Jackson, Professor of History and Social Sciences at Columbia University, moderated and Armando Carbonell, Senior Fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, served as a respondent. The discussion centered around what kind of urban spaces should be developed for America’s growing population in the coming decades. Kotkin made the argument that the demand for suburbs remains strong as the millennial generation begins to settle. Leinberger advocated for the creation of walkable urban spaces (read more about Leinberger’s view in his post on “The Avenue,” The New Republic‘s metropolitan policy blog, and check out Greg Lindsay’s analysis of the discussion over at Fast Company.)

Kotkin began the evening with a discussion of how statistics show a changing American population—but a population that still desires a suburban lifestyle. He based this on polls that show that people want to live in suburbs close to the city. Respondents cite safety, sound, privacy and resale value as key motivators. Other data sets suggest that between 2000 and 2009 most growth occurred in suburbs– employment grew in suburbs as compared to central business districts; immigrants are increasingly moving straight to the suburbs. Quoting a 1992 advertisement for a development in Valencia, CA, Kotkin imagines an urban future where one “… can be in my classroom one minute and riding my horse the next. I don’t know whether I’m a city or country girl.” Kotkin offered little in the way of a vision for drastic spatial change for how Americans live. Instead, he emphasized the idea of “reconstituting suburbia” as multi-generational and multi-ethnic in which the same spaces are used in multiple ways by a variety of lifestyles and generations.

While Kotkin relied mostly on poll and government data to show that people still want to live in the suburbs, Leinberger drew attention to the need to move beyond the data that is available and look toward creating new data sets; for social scientists to stop using “existing light” and look for new ways of defining the urban. For Leinberger, this entails escaping the vocabulary and subsidies of the post-war decades, as well as creating new data to recognize the structural changes that have occurred as America has moved away from an industrial economy.

Leinberger views ‘city’ and ‘suburb’ as obsolete terms that do not reflect structural changes that have occurred in the past 10-15 years. He moved beyond Kotkin’s affirmation of the norm to assert the need for a new foundation: walkable urbanism. Using transportation as the driver of development, Leinberger distinguished between drivable suburbs, reliant on highways as the predominant transportation infrastructure, and walkable urbanism, in which multiple modes of transport (trains, car, sidewalks) are available to residents. Leinberger stressed the extent to which the built environment should be seen as a “reflection of the underlying economy,” and how the surplus of drivable suburbs in America is the result of government policy dating back to the 1950s—what Leinberger deems “the largest social engineering project” in our country’s history. In discussing the government policy that built the suburbs, Leinberger brought up the difficulty of constructing other forms of development as drivable suburbs are often the only legal forms. More dense and mixed-used development are often not permitted within existing zoning regulations. For Leinberger, the result is a pent-up demand for walkable urban space, for places with high walk scores and density, access to transit, “Disney-fied” mixed use place management—for New Urbanism.

The follow-up responses and Q+A yielded a more complete conversation on the role and potential of transit in shaping how Americans live. When asked about the rising cost of vehicle ownership and the environmental impact of suburbs, Kotkin maintained confidence in the ability of technology to adapt the vehicle, or come up with a replacement. For his part, Leinberger focused on the need for large scale investment by both the public and private in alternative transportation options.

A discussion of the differences among America’s cities and the difficulty in changing America’s urban form brought the visions of the two speakers together to the point where Carbonell asked: are these really two different visions? Both emphasized the need for a national planning regime, changes in zoning, the ability to give people options, and growth in smaller, sometimes recovering industrial, cities through the construction of new developments. Leinberger’s “walkable urbanism” that collapses the city/suburb binary doesn’t look that far off from Kotkin’s “reconstructed suburbia” with increased commercial use, especially through the lens of new urbanism.

The conversation drew out the crucial changes and issues affecting America’s urban areas—yet chose to address them selectively. Dialogue about transit-fueled development might have benefited from the acknowledgment of how low-income populations are the most dependent on public transport and the potential that development at transit nodes offers for mixed-income housing. Leinberger’s discussion of private and public investment addressed dated subsidies and the potentials of transit infrastructure, yet neither speaker discussed in-fill development or retrofitting existing infrastructure.

What struck me as most problematic about both Kotkin’s and Leinberger’s views is their assumption, reinforced by the lack of opposition in the Q+A, of a population that is composed almost entirely of economically mobile, highly educated whites and immigrants between the ages of 30 and 70. Topics such as affordable housing — especially mixed-income development — were absent. Much in the way “urban” was once coded as blighted minority, the suggested move away from “urban” and “suburban” towards something new, regionalism perhaps, seems to code for a vision of white neighborhoods that have shed the economic and social baggage of both the urban and suburban. While Kotkin and Leinberger diverge in the specifics of answering the question “what will we build?” they may be more alike than not in the ways they imagine future urban spaces and what they omit when imagining them.

Jane Kelly is a Project Associate at Urban Omnibus. She attends Colgate University where she concentrates in Geography and Studio Art. She was born and raised in New York City.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Community board review, surveys, neighborhood impact assessments, public hearings. Traditional methods of soliciting public input on major design projects can be a little dry and uninspiring. And that’s if you even know about them — public participation is often limited to those motivated few who know to show up and have the time to do so. But when a project — say, a new public park on a 172-acre island in New York Harbor — requires a ferry ride to visit, the vitality of the space depends on getting people to show up. So, how do you create a destination? The answer might be as simple as this: ask people what they want, make it easy for them to tell you, and then give it to them. That’s the theory behind the extensive public outreach effort that led up to and is now responding to the Governors Island Park and Public Space Master Plan, an effort masterminded by Leslie Koch, President of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation (GIPEC). We sat down with Koch in Building 110 on Governors Island, where visitors can view and respond to an exhibition of the master plan, to talk about the ideas and efforts put into envisioning New York City’s future island oasis: the outreach methods they employed, the challenges of identifying an audience for a park on an island with no existing constituency, why designers need to engage with the public, and how Post-it notes and hammocks can lead to the thoughtful design of public space. Listen to her thoughts below:

Click audio player to listen to Leslie Koch. Running time: 9:52.
Right click here to download the mp3.

For nearly two centuries, Governors Island was used as a military base. In the mid 1990s, when the Coast Guard closed its operations on the island, interest developed in identifying a public use for the island. Beginning in 1995, a coalition of civic groups called the Governors Island Alliance, along with local community boards, elected officials and other interested parties, worked to build public support for the transfer of the island from the Federal to the State and City Governments and to solicit public input on how the island should be developed and used. The State and City of New York co-purchased the land (at a cost of $1) from the Federal Government in 2003 with goals of revitalization and development. (Earlier this year the State relinquished control to the City after ongoing funding problems impeded progress.)

In 2006, Leslie Koch was appointed President of GIPEC, the agency responsible for the planning, redevelopment and operations for 150 acres of Governors Island (the remaining 22 acres are designated as a national monument and are thus operated by the National Park Service). She has since led the charge to “bring Governors Island back to life” and put into motion the process of creating a vision for its future; a process that encompasses everything from designing a park in the 100-year flood zone (the first project in New York City designed with climate change in mind, according to Koch) to reminding New Yorkers of the majesty of the Statue of Liberty (just for tourists you say? Take a look at it from Picnic Point).

In the fall of 2006, GIPEC launched a design competition for a preliminary vision of the park. Five teams were selected and the call for public response began. The teams’ ideas were presented as part of two exhibitions (one on the island and one at the Center for Architecture), a public forum, public tours and online. The success of the public feedback effort and its impact on the jury process encouraged Koch to pursue similar methods once the winning team was chosen – West 8, led by Adriaan Geuze, with Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Mathews Nielsen and Rogers Marvel – and they began work on the master plan. Online and off, on the island and around the city, using photo booths and rubber stamps, the team took great strides to discover what New Yorkers are looking for in their recreation space. -V.S.

"We collected 1,500 Post-it Notes. People were really thoughtful, whether they were saying "don't screw it up" or "I want a place to walk with the person I love" -- that was a big part of our public input in 2008." -Leslie Koch

"You think of a hammock as a place for contemplation in the shade. ... Well, on Governors Island, hammocks are everything -- they're play devices, they're napping devices, they're gathering devices. ... That has led to a whole host of insights." -Leslie Koch

"We have repurposed our bus shelters ... you can stand somewhere and imagine what it will look like in the future." -Leslie Koch

Percent of respondents who report that these potential improvements are very important or important. From 2008 survey conducted on Governors Island.

All images courtesy of the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation. Rendering of Hammock Grove by West 8 / Rogers Marvel Architects / Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Mathews Nielsen / Urban Design +.

Conversations on New York 1: Alex Garvin with Rosalie Genevro and Michael Sorkin
Thursday, June 17, 2010
7:00 p.m.
Rose Auditorium, The Cooper Union
41 Cooper Square
1.5 CEUs
“Conversations on New York” are presented in conjunction with the League exhibition The City We Imagined / The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010.

Conversations on New York 1 will feature urban designer Alexander Garvin. Garvin played a major role in two of the most ambitious and discussed public planning initiatives of the decade, serving as managing director of the NYC 2012 effort and as director of planning, design, and development for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. The program will look at both of these projects as well as the role of urban design in the transformation of New York over the past decade.

Garvin is currently President of Alex Garvin and Associates, a planning and design firm based in New York City and president of the Forum for Urban Design. From 1996 to 2005, he was Managing Director of Planning for NYC2012. During 2002-2003, he was the Vice President for Planning, Design and Development at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation. He served as a member of the New York City Planning Commission from 1995-2004.

Rosalie Genevro is executive director of the Architectural League. Michael Sorkin is director of the graduate program in urban design at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College and vice-president for urban design of the Architectural League board of directors, president of the Institute for Urban Design, and author of many books, including the recent Twenty Minutes in Manhattan. Tickets are required for admission to League programs. Tickets are free for League members; $10 for non-members. Members may reserve a ticket by e-mailing: rsvp@archleague.org. Non-members may purchase tickets from www.archleague.org.

Co-sponsored by The Cooper Union Department of Continuing Education and Public Programs. This program is made possible, in part, by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. The City We Imagined / The City We Made: New New York 2001-2010 is supported by Sciame and by Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Image: NYC2012 Olympic Village, courtesy of Alex Garvin

Corail-Cesselesse, © Jake Price

The framework for the afternoon of panel discussions and spirited audience involvement was the Action Plan for the National Recovery and Development of Haiti, which was presented at the March 28th, 2010 Donor’s conference at the United Nations. After journalist Gary Pierre-Pierre provided some social and political context for Haiti’s past 25 years, Leslie Voltaire, Haiti’s Special Envoy to the UN, presented the government’s action plan. The rest of the day consisted, in one way or another, of reflections on the prospects and premises of this plan in terms of parallel work currently underway in Haiti and in terms of precedents from such places as post-tsunami Sri Lanka and Indonesia, post-earthquake Pakistan, and post-hurricane New Orleans.

The participation of Ambassador Voltaire distinguished the symposium. This was not a discussion of how best to think about the disaster in Haiti; it was a discussion of how best to act. And the selection of speakers — particularly Ami Desai of the Clinton Foundation, Chris Williams of UN-Habitat and Haitian anthropologist Louis Herns Marcelin — revealed the Institute for Urban Design’s admirable belief that beneficial action must not ignore the dangerous inefficiencies and redundancies symptomatic of dependence on the aid work of 10,000 uncoordinated NGOs. Beneficial action must involve the Haitian government. Voltaire represents the government, but he does so in the capacity of a liaison between the administration of Rene Preval and a community of international donors. Trained as an architect in Mexico and an urban and regional planner in the United States, Ambassador Voltaire has held a variety of ministerial positions within the Haitian government over the past twenty years. The candor, gravitas and humor with which he shared his wide-ranging expertise made the Institute for Urban Design’s stated desire – to begin the long process of matching the skills of an international community of urban designers to Haiti’s redevelopment needs – seem actionable.

The disciplinary ethos of the day’s proceedings, however, rested much more comfortably in the domain of urban planning than in urban design. I can’t speak for the audience assembled in Rose Hall of Cooper Union (presumably comprised largely of architects and designers), but I found this focus on planning principles – the integration of environmental standards and workforce development initiatives, the emphasis on deconcentrating the population of Port-au-Prince, the urgent need to discover who controls which parcels of land (PDF), and, most of all, creating mechanisms for coordinating the efforts of donor countries and 10,000 NGOs – both refreshing and essential. The work of urban design, the symposium’s structure seemed to suggest, must not precede in-depth analysis of how the form of Haiti’s built environment might reflect the complex conditions of the ground in social, physical and political terms. Many people reiterated that what Haiti needs is not reconstruction; it needs construction. But this refrain, even in the context of so much devastation, did not seem pessimistic. On the contrary, it suggested that the crisis presents opportunities not only to replace what has been lost, but also to reimagine the ways the built environment might one day reflect Haitians’ broader aspirations for their country. It also might suggest a role for urban designers in which form follows not only function, but also supports a holistic approach to solving problems that include public health, land reform, political devolution and basic service delivery.

Petionville, © Jake Price

Corail-Cesselesse, © Jake Price

Photographs by Jake Price. Taken in April 2010 in the IDP camps of Corail-Cesselesse and Petionville, these photographs also appeared in the program for “Rebuilding a Sustainable Haiti.” Price shared his motivations for contributing his work for use in the symposium: “I see the photos as a bridge between the architects who want to build in Haiti and the people who live there. In order to build in a place one must have a little sense of how life is currently lived, how the culture moves and breathes and through these photos perhaps just a little bit of understanding achieved.” See more of his work at jakeprice.com.

Cassim Shepard is the project director of Urban Omnibus.

Natural disasters: how can we improve?
Panel discussion with Martin Bell OBE, Dame Barbara Stocking (Oxfam GB) & Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity)
May 25, 2010
Royal Geographic Society, 1 Kensington Gore, London

A mixed and studious crowd gathered at the Royal Geographic Society last week, exuding a slightly nervous goodwill as we waited for latter-day saints Cameron Sinclair, of Architecture for Humanity, and Dame Barbara Stocking, of Oxfam GB, to be introduced.

Natural disasters have long and often been the cause of major political reform, international cooperation and the coming together of intellect and humanity. However, with events occurring at a larger scale and greater frequency than previously witnessed, the need to galvanize and channel our energies seems more urgent than ever.

Panel chair, fêted journalist and erstwhile MP Martin Bell OBE first met Cameron Sinclair while reporting on the violence in Kosovo in the early ’90s. Set up in 1999, AfH engages in building activities, supplied pro-bono by volunteers, in communities of need – defined not only by crises but also including those beleaguered by endemic or sustained poverty. A genuine fairytale of an organization, garnering adoration and disdain in (not quite) equal measure, AfH nonetheless prides itself on somewhere near 5,600 volunteers from over 83 cities, and cynicism notwithstanding, does some amazing reconstruction work.

Behind the cuddly organization and camera-friendly baby face, Sinclair exhibits jaws of steel, using military terminology abundantly; volunteers undertake a “tour of duty,” services are measured “on the ground” and in terms of strategy and impact, and not simply as aid packages to be “air-dropped in.”

Tugboat vs. Ocean Liner
Not for the first time, Sinclair pulled out his analogy of tugboat vs. ocean liner, in his demonstration of the agility of a NGO operating as a small, nebulous and peripatetic network. Perhaps this mentality is best demonstrated by the TED-funded Open Architecture Network, which utilizes open-source innovation to develop and host designs; in three short years of activity, the OAN shares thousands of design projects under creative commons licensing, from the prosaic to the outlandish, across the globe.

The flipside is that whilst tugboat AfH may well be more nimble and efficacious at community level, ocean-liner Oxfam, due to its size and longstanding relationships with organizations such as the UN, weighs in at the criticial stages of advocacy and government policy. Though the effects of grassroots activity can filter up and effect change, such change must be established at the level of national governance to become sustainable rather than spontaneous or sporadic.

Dame Stocking emphasized that protective measures need to be embedded in local governments and societies as well as at the national level; a predictable but no-less urgent agenda for action included pushing for climate change goals to be met, particularly in the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions, as agricultural societies are placed in greater jeopardy than ever. Governance at the national level needs to become more porous and engaged with disaster management, taking responsibility for aid management and crisis protocol, activating local and social networks; foremost though, year-round disaster risk reduction needs to be acknowledged and given much higher priority both by governments and humanitarian organizations such as Oxfam, though urgent appeal in the event of disaster is oftentimes a more emotive “call-to-arms.”

Media
Indeed, what happens when the media leaves? Media attention naturally drives up donations of resources and time – which need to be spread out over longer periods, rather than arrive in inefficient, erratic spikes. There is also a seeming public appetite for failure, and this is in a sense on the shoulders of NGOs and the media; too often a realistic timescale is not projected, leading to a sense of expectancy and the proliferation of misinformation. The need for commercially saleable news often supercedes deeper investigative journalism; either this reliance on AP-wire reporting must be reversed, or citizen journalism could step up. In fact, such use of social networking has benefited crisis areas in Kenya, Haiti and South East Asia, utilizing GPS technology to create more accurate geospatial maps of activity and need.

Sinclair conceded that the media should be welcomed to critiquing NGO activity where relevant – but they could also hold similar fire to private sector stakeholders or participants, for example the oil companies in the wake of the recent Gulf spill, which was practically unreported in the US mainstream media.

Stocking noted that aid agencies can also be very defensive with the management of information. Increased honesty would create a more fruitful relationship between the media, agencies and the public.

In punk-rock style, Sinclair cited Fred Cuny, whistleblower and humanitarian martyr who’s been missing in action since 1995, as a major influence. And he reminds us that with the increase of social networking, one cannot hide. Instead, the use of storytelling, not to manufacture truth, can expose a greater complexity of aid work than has been attempted. Recognizing the need to share failures, he pondered why donors expect NGOs to demonstrate a 100% success rate when even politicians need just over 50% – a seemingly whimsical thought, but particularly biting in the light of the United Kingdom’s currently “hung” parliament.

Architecture
Architects, surveyors and planners are often at a loss in terms of how to gear their practice towards aid. Firstly, architects can’t expect to get involved straight away – it’s one for the long haul. AfH are often the “last ones out,” and Sinclair states their key activity takes place between four months and four years after crisis events. The key is in balancing immediate humanitarian concerns with the potential for economic stability and recovery, towards long term solutions. For example, a crisis in housing in Haiti must not benefit the manufacturers of prefabricated housing in Iowa, whilst creating no jobs and making no use of indigenous skills and materials in Haiti. Architects operating in a humanitarian sphere needs must accept greater liability, looking at his projects less like an artwork but more like a business model, much in the same way as a developer.

No final delivery is worse than no response at all, so architects cannot afford to be prima donnas about designs; a degree of humility must be learned. Yet beauty need not be discarded for functionalism; what needs to be produced is not just a beautiful building aesthetically, but also in terms of equity; “building in beauty” at this level becomes crucial because of the maintenance and subsequent equity. This is an example of an aesthetic concern being reconfigured in terms of development and sustainability in economic terms.

Sinclair and Stocking both underlined the importance of utilizing both indigenous and donor skill sets – squeezing not just money or even donations-in-kind but crucially, knowledge. Like the sunken-eyed Bob Geldof at LiveAid (go study pop history, those of you too young to remember), the perkier Sinclair exhibits a hunger for extracting the maximum from those who approach his organization, but unlike Geldof, they don’t just want you to “give us your f***ing money” – they want your mind too, which, in these times, is all to the good.

N.B.  Hat-tip to Cameron, the guys at AfH and particularly to Susi J Platt & Purnima McCutcheon, designers of the Yodakandiya Community Complex, briefly discussed during the RGS event, it was also shortlisted for the Aga Khan Award 2010 on the same day, and deservedly so.

Shumi Bose is an architectural writer and researcher. She lives in London.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York. Images via 21st Century Challenges.

Five years ago, a collection of international urban experts convened in New York for the first conference of the Urban Age project, a worldwide investigation into the future of cities that has since visited Shanghai, London, Johannesburg, Mexico City, Berlin, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and Istanbul. One of these experts is Harvard Law Professor Gerald Frug, who shares with Omnibus readers his 2005 speech comparing the structures and powers of city government in London and New York. Five years later, the topic is even more relevant, with Bloomberg in his third term, the inefficiencies of Albany (and Washington) exacerbated by the financial crisis, New York’s PlaNYC in full effect and London’s replacing the London Plan with a brand new one.

Each week, Urban Omnibus presents an idea that, in some way or another, could make New York City a little bit better. But we’ve never asked what New York City itself, as embodied by its city government, can really do. Asking this question – and looking comparatively at precedents from outside our city and our country – must underlie how we design, plan and organize for urban change. – C.S.

Left: New York City by Flickr user Caruba; Right: London by Flickr user Jess J.

All city governments are dysfunctional. But each is dysfunctional in its own way.

Some people treat the city governments of London and New York as being a lot alike. After all, each has an elected Mayor and a separately elected city council or assembly; each is city with roughly 7-8 million people in a metropolitan area of roughly 18-20 million. If you compare the cities with this kind of similarity in mind, New York seems way ahead of London in terms of the authority it exercises. To give just a few examples, New York has the largest municipal hospital system in the country – with 11 hospitals and more than 100 community health clinics. It educates over 1 million children in primary and secondary schools, provides housing to 420,000 city residents, runs 29 job centers, has 60,000 children in child care programs, provides over 200 shelters for the homeless, operates 1,700 parks, manages the city’s water supply, admits 110,000 individuals to its prison facilities every year, and has more than 2,000 trucks picking up 12,000 tons of waste every day.

London’s city government – the Greater London Authority – does none of these things. None. All of these kinds of services are provided either by the national government or by the 33 local governments within London – London’s 32 boroughs and the its financial district, the City of London. New York City government is overwhelmingly a service government – it provides services of an incredible variety and scope to its residents. That’s not what London’s city-wide government is. New York City’s government in many ways is more comparable to London’s boroughs than it is to the Greater London Authority. In terms of service delivery, London’s city-wide government is very weak. From a service point of view, some people think that London should become more like New York.

I think that this is the wrong way to think about the comparison between the two cities. For our purposes, London’s city-wide government has a lot to teach New York. To think about issues such as work and home life, public space and private space, the neighborhoods and the region, cars and mass transit, immigrant businesses and high finance, policy making and urban design, the metropolitan region and the city block, New York and London both have to think about how and where they should grow. London has the capacity to do this, and New York City doesn’t.

Left: Cambridge Circus by Flickr user marttj; Right: 11th Avenue by Flickr user DavidMenting.

New York City lacks a vital ability: it doesn’t have the power to plan for, let alone determine, its own future. In 2004, the Greater London Authority published a document called the London Plan. It lays out a vision of the city in terms of transportation, economic development, housing, public space – along with the environment, social exclusion, tourism, culture, design and many other ingredients. The London Plan envisions London as connected to those around it – to its own Southeast Region in the UK, to northern Europe and the European Union more generally, and, finally, to the world. The London Plan examines both London as a whole and specific sites on specific blocks within the city. It seeks to understand how the different kinds of urban questions fit together – and what to do about them. It’s important to emphasize that the Greater London Authority didn’t just decide to write this plan. It was legally required to do so by an Act of Parliament. To an American reader, it presents the very kind of regional thinking urbanists long for – regional thinking that covers, and organizes, the work of 33 constituent municipal governments. True, the document focus only on Greater London, which itself is only part of the UK’s Southeast Region. And London is also only one actor among many focusing on these problems. It has to deal with boroughs, the private sector, other local governments – and above all, the national government. Still, because it comes with force of a statutory mandate, the London Plan is designed to be taken seriously.

For this kind of undertaking, New York City is completely dysfunctional. There is no document such as the London Plan for the City of New York – and no organization now exists with the authority to write one. There is also no government agency that is thinking about the future of the City of New York in terms of its connection even with the narrowest definition of its region – one that would include the parts of New Jersey right across the Hudson River. It’s not that no one is thinking systematically about New York City and its region. The Regional Plan Association has done absolutely terrific work over many decades thinking about our kinds of issues. They have a problem, however. It’s not merely that they are a non-profit organization, rather than a government agency. It’s that there’s no one they can talk to – the government authority in this region is so fractured that it’s hard to get any of the pieces to begin to fit together. Their problem is our problem. When we discuss ideas of transportation, labor, public space, and housing, we should keep in mind a fundamental question: who could possibly implement any of our ideas?

Left: NYC bus, by Flickr user Aqualung1981; Right: London buses by Flickr user TCDavis.

Like London, New York City can only exercise the power delegated to it by a central government. The Greater London Authority can only do things authorized by Parliament. New York City’s power does not come from the national government; the federal government in the United States plays a relatively minor and mostly destructive role in determining local power. Here, New York State exercises the kind of authority over New York City that Parliament exercises over London.  Don’t be fooled by the phrase home rule. Home rule gives New York City somewhat more leeway when confronted with its centralized government than London has. For example, it gives New York City the power to pass local regulatory ordinances, which the Greater London Authority cannot do. Still, notwithstanding home rule, New York State ultimately remains in control over such critical urban issues as housing, transportation, economic development, and the city’s finances.

In setting up New York City, New York State has denied it control over many of the most important ingredients of urban life. New York State has fractured government authority in the region by giving power not to the city but to state-controlled public authorities (or quangos, as the British call them). Much of the important development in the city is controlled not by the city but by the Empire State Development Corporation – an agency, appointed by the Governor not the Mayor, that, directly or through subsidiaries, dominates major projects ranging from Ground Zero to Battery Park City to Times Square. The two most important actors on transportation issues are the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is appointed by New York State’s Governor, with only 4 of its 17 members recommended by the city; the Port Authority is appointed by two Governors, without any city input. Public space is divided up into more than 50 business improvement districts governed by property owners and not city residents. For example, the Union Square Partnership – the oldest business improvement district in New York – manages the streets on a day-to-day basis.  Given all this fragmentation, New York City lacks a vital ability: it doesn’t have the power to plan for, let alone determine, its own future.

Left: New York City subway by Flickr user Ed Coyle Photography; Right: London tube by Ana Travas & Sergej Skrjanec (Flickr user ComplementaryDuo).

Consider mobility and transport. The Greater London Authority has responsibility for transportation in London – largely through an organization called Transport for London, whose board is completely appointed by the Mayor. And transportation is very widely defined: it includes the buses and the underground, highways and car traffic, cabs and mini-cabs, walking and cycling. The Mayor and Transport for London have the statutory obligation to make sense of how cars and mass-transit, along with cabs and bicycles, create a city-wide transportation system. Sure, the Mayor of London doesn’t control everything – the railroads, the airports, and major highways are in the hands of the national government (or the private sector) and local streets in the hands of the boroughs. But if the Mayor is energetic and proactive, he can be the key guy on the issue.

New York State has given New York City a heart, but no brain. Parliament has given London a brain, but no muscle. New York is miles behind London in thinking about transportation. The state has divided authority over transport in a way that no one could conceivably defend. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority runs New York City’s subways and buses, along with the Long Island Railroad; the Port Authority runs the airports, PATH trains to New Jersey, and the Air Train at JFK; New Jersey Transit, appointed by New Jersey’s governor, runs its own trains and buses into New York. The Transportation Authority operates nine bridges and tunnels; the Port Authority controls other bridges and tunnels, including the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge; the New York City’s Department of Transportation controls still other bridges and tunnels, such as the 59^th Street Bridge. The highways are run by the New York and New Jersey State Departments of Transportation. And the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission licenses the city’s taxis. Transportation, you should know, is the area for which the federal government is most insistent on metropolitan planning. The problem for New York is that there are many metropolitan transportation planning bodies in the area, not just one. One deals with New York City and a few nearby New York suburbs; another deals with New Jersey; yet another deals with Connecticut. No one, starting from scratch, would devise a transport and mobility structure like this one. To declare this set up a scandal would be a waste of time. Everyone knows it’s a scandal; it’s been a scandal for decades.

Left to Right: Brooklyn, Manhattan, Tower, Queensboro and Chelsea Bridges.

The basic difference between New York and London can be summarized very simply. New York State has given New York City a heart, but no brain. Parliament has given London a brain, but no muscle. And a brain is what a city needs at this moment on the kinds of issues we are addressing. By saying this I mean no disrespect whatsoever to the officials of either city – New York has many very smart people working on the city’s future and London has many who are physically strong. It’s the city government, not its employees, that I’m referring to here: it’s the New York City government that has been denied the ability to think about, let alone take control of, its own future.

London shows that this is not necessary. The State of New York could authorize the Mayor to work with others – public and private, regional and neighborhood – to prepare something like the London Plan. And it can give him the power to bring the multiple public authorities into compliance with his plan. If a more regional organization is thought better, the states of New York and New Jersey can together create a democratically accountable organization – democratically organized like the Greater London Authority – empowered to write such a plan. This could be done today if the political leadership took seriously the importance of nurturing New York as a global city. That’s the vision of London that animates the London Plan. Many people will call this idea utopian, but it’s only utopian because the state has set up the city – and the region – in a way that makes it so hard to do. Changing this requires the kind of political muscle that in 1986 abolished the London-wide government and that, now, has created a new one to help guide its future. We could use the exercise of that kind of muscle here in New York.


This text is adapted from a speech delivered at the Urban Age conference, February 2005.

As with all opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Gerald Frug is the Louis D. Brandeis Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard Law School, he worked as a Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in Washington, DC, and as Health Services Administrator of the City of New York. In 1974 he began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, before joining the Harvard law faculty in 1981. Jerry’s specialty is local government law. He has published dozens of articles on the topic and is the author, among other works, of City Making: Building Communities without Building Walls (1999), and City Bound: How States Stifle Urban Innovation (with David Barron, 2008).