Livable Neighborhoods for a Livable City
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livable neighborhoods for a livable city: Policy Recommendations to Strengthen Community-Based Planning in New York City 2005 Prepared by the Municipal Art Society Planning Center on behalf of the Community-Based Planning Task Force 2323 Livable.indd 1 3/28/05 2:50:30 PM acknowledgements This report is the culmination of meetings, discussion, research, and draft documents created collaboratively among members of the Community-Based Planning Task Force since its inception in 2000. The report also includes recommendations generated at the November 2004 Community-Based Planning Summit. We would like to thank the following individuals who provided factual information, valuable insights, and suggestions during the drafting and editing of this report: Tom Angotti Hunter College Department of Urban Affairs & Planning Eddie Bautista New York Lawyers for the Public Interest Paula Crespo Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development Amanda Hiller The Municipal Art Society Tarry Hum Queens College Department of Urban Studies Georges Jacquemart Buckhurst Fish & Jacquemart, Inc. Bruce Lai City Council Committee on Technology in Government Julie Lawrence Brooklyn Community Board 1/Neighbors Against Garbage Holly Leicht New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development Timothy Logan OWN/Zero Waste Thomas Lowenhaupt Queens Community Board 3 Betty Mackintosh The Department of City Planning John Napolitano Bronx Community Board 5 Mercedes Narciso Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development Susan Stetzer Manhattan Community Board 3 Peter Sugar Offi ce of Management and Budget Doug Turetsky New York City Independent Budget Offi ce Barbara Weisberg The Department of City Planning Task Force Participants Bronx Community Board 2 The Point CDC Bronx Community Board 5 The Regional Plan Association Bronx Community Board 6 UPROSE Brooklyn Community Board 2 West Harlem Environmental Action Coalition Brooklyn Community Board 3 Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice Brooklyn Community Board 7 Planning Center Staff Brooklyn Community Board 9 Eve Baron Center for an Urban Future Micaéla Birmingham Citizens Union Eva Hanhardt Fifth Avenue Committee Gregory Studwell Friends of the Highline GWAPP Interns Jocelyn Chait Julie Lawrence Lower East Side Ecology Center Jesmarie Soto Manhattan Community Board 1 Dorothy Watkins Manhattan Community Board 2 Design Manhattan Community Board 3 Stephanie Borgese Myrtle Avenue Revitalization Project Neighbors Against Garbage Thank you to Hunter and Pratt Institute Graduate New York City Environmental Justice Alliance planning programs for providing workshop facilitators. New Yorkers for Parks New York Lawyers for the Public Interest Facilitators Nos Quedamos Beatrice Ammann Julie Lawrence Planners Network Janelle Bosek Christopher Lucas Pratt Institute Center for Community Nancy Campbell Susan Robinson and Environmental Development Alan Gentile Jesmarie Soto Queens Community Board 3 Marissa Gerkey Loren Talbot Sustainable South Bronx Eva Hanhardt Kate Zidar The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance Lisabeth Klau This report would not have been possible without the generous support of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. 22323323 Livable.inddLivable.indd 2 33/28/05/28/05 111:06:151:06:15 AAMM CONTENTS I. introduction 5 II. the goals of the task force 8 III. summit 2004: 100 community-based planning advocates share ideas 9 IV. the challenges 9 V. the solutions 14 A. Policy change recommendations by agency Community Assistance Unit (CAU) Department of City Planning (DCP) Department of Information Technology and Telecommunication (DOITT) Offi ce of Management and Budget (OMB) B. Policy Change by Elected Offi cials Borough Presidents (BP) City Council Actions/Legislation C. Mayoral Directive VI. creative partnerships 21 VII. conclusion 22 22323323 Livable.inddLivable.indd 3 33/28/05/28/05 111:06:161:06:16 AAMM preface At a time when New York is engaged in the most ambitious and widespread development planning in decades, the confl icting visions of city planners, developers and local neighborhoods have never been more apparent and the stakes have never been higher. The constant media attention and unparalleled public and private resources being devoted to examining and monitoring the city’s plans for the next 50 years indicates that New York’s current planning process is out of date, out of touch, and out of ideas. It is time to adopt new planning tools and methods that would allow for a truly participatory process that takes community-based planning seriously. Cities across the nation and the world as diverse as Seattle, Washington and Porto Allegro, Brazil have embraced community-based planning as the way to do business. Developers, planners, designers, communities, and municipal agencies in these cities agree that although the process is never easy, a true commitment to a planning process beginning with local visions results in faster, less costly, and more innovative planning and development. The concept of community-based planning was at the heart of why New York City’s community boards were created—a fi ne innovation of the 1960s. Four decades later, despite the tireless efforts of their members and staff, community boards and community-based organizations have few real opportunities to engage in proactive planning and even fewer opportunities to ensure that development suits neighborhood needs. It is time to rethink how we plan our city. An engine of innovation in countless ways, New York City falls short of this reputation when it comes to planning for the future of our own backyards. The Community-Based Planning Task Force offers Livable Neighborhoods for a Livable City as an invitation to begin a dialogue about using New York’s diversity to strengthen its planning process. 2323 Livable.indd 4 3/28/05 11:06:17 AM I. introduction New York City is gradually but perceptibly being reshaped, one neighborhood, sometimes even one block, at a time. New York City residents are joining forces with each other and like-minded organizations to fi nd creative solutions to local problems. Nos Quedamos, a group in the South Bronx, for example, worked for many years and succeeded in altering an urban renewal plan to suit the existing neighborhood’s needs, and has now constructed nearly 700 residential units and 30,000 square feet of commercial space. The Organization of Waterfront Neighborhoods convinced the city of a better way to manage solid waste removal and to phase out inland, truck-based waste facilities. A community in Bushwick, Brooklyn, joined forces with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and a local housing developer to plan collectively for a long-vacant brownfi eld site and use it to help achieve a community vision for housing, commerical and recreational development. The 170-unit residential complex is nearly completed. Neighborhood residents are seizing opportunities and devising plans that refl ect their vision. Many communities have done this—some through the offi cially-established process called 197-a planning;1 some outside of this process yet equally devoted to the concept of consensus-driven planning— resulting in a blueprint for the neighborhood created by the people who live and work there. On paper, New York City government has what appears to be strong support for community-based planning. The city Charter’s original intent was to fold 197-a plans into the city’s planning and policy decisions. In practice, these plans often go through the public review process, are adopted by the City Planning Commission and the City Council, but ultimately have little impact on what actually gets developed in the neighborhood. Although the current administration2 has demonstrated a commitment to public participation that far exceeds previous administrations; there is no offi cial provision for funding the recommendations made in 197-a plans. Follow-up actions are rarely more than Department of City Planning rezoning actions. Despite the existence of adopted 197-a plans as well as other neighborhood-based plans, market forces continue to spur much of the city’s large-scale development. For example: 1 The 1975 Charter introduced the possibility of offi cially-recognized community-initiated local planning under Section 197-a, denoting a signifi cant departure from the comprehensive citywide master planning previously required under the Charter. Section 197-a provided a way for communities to create plans and apply policy to land use decisions, as opposed to always being in the position of merely responding to public and private development proposals. 2 At the time of writing, the fi nal year of Michael Bloomberg’s 2001-2005 term. livable neighborhoods for a livable city 5 2323 Livable.indd 5 3/28/05 11:06:18 AM • In Red Hook, Brooklyn, a 346,000 square foot waterfront IKEA store and 1,400-space parking lot has been approved for a site explicitly designated in the community’s 197-a plan (approved in 1996) for maritime and industrial use. Three buildings are presently being demolished despite their eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places and Photos: Lisa Kersavage the opinion of the Landmarks Preservation Commission that retention of these buildings “was considered as a way of recalling the maritime and commercial history of the project site.”3 With few of the plan’s objectives achieved, the community has been left with little alternative and voted in New York Harbor’s only dry dock capable of accepting large tall ships favor of this unplanned-for is located on a site recommended for industrial maritime use in the Red Hook 197a plan. but job generating big box A thriving ship repair outfi t will be displaced by a parking lot for IKEA. development. Graving Dock 2, an active maritime industrial use on the site (supporting 100 jobs), will be displaced, and there is no permanent provision for water transport. • In the low-rise, mixed-use waterfront neighborhoods of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in northern Brooklyn, the community board voted against the city’s proposed 180-block rezoning despite a nearly two-year-long effort by the Brooklyn Offi ce of City Planning to shape the rezoning with the participation of the community.