I have just contracted with Rutgers University Press for the publication of Learning from Bryant Park: Placemaking in Bryant Park. Revitalizing Cities, Towns and Public Spaces in the Spring of 2019. I am so fortunate to be working with the experienced publishing professionals Peter Mikulas and Micah Kleit on this project.
The recent release of the Regional Plan Association’s (“RPA”) Fourth Regional Plan (http://fourthplan.org/; the executive summary is at: http://library.rpa.org/pdf/RPA-4RP-Executive-Summary.pdf) (the “Plan”) got me to thinking about the relationship between placemaking and area planning. Places and pedestrians are well-integrated into the Plan: its recommendation 23 (of 61 states): “On city streets, prioritize people over cars.” Arguably recommendations number 57 (“Remake underutilized auto-dependent landscapes”) and 61 (“Expand and improve public space in the urban core.”) also have placemaking casts to them. There is even a page on the Plan’s website for “Places” (http://fourthplan.org/places). This is an a signal of how much placemaking practice has worked its way into planning culture, and there is no doubt that this is a very good thing.
But the nature of regional planning is decidedly top-down and large-scale – particularly when it comes to talking about expanding and/or upgrading the tri-sate transportation infrastructure – and it puzzled me as to how people-oriented thinking about urban revitalization fits in to creating a big scale, long-term vision for the area. Continue reading
The Moda development on Parsons Blvd in Jamaica. A model of mixed-income housing — with a 50/30/20 affordable housing mix. 20% of the units are low-income and 30 % are market rate.
The New York Times recently reported that the Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC) has promoted rather than reduced the racial and economic segregation of housing. (http://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/us/federal-housing-assistance-urban-racial-divides.html.) This should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the program’s requirements. There are programs and incentives that increase diversity– but the LIHTC does the opposite by design! It subsidizes only housing for very low-income people, and incentivizes the construction of housing in low-income areas. The LIHTC program by its structure produces economic and racial segregation.
The idea behind the program is to spur housing production for the most economically distressed by requiring that the income requirements for residents be set at a very low cap on family income. In order to provide a preference to low-income people, it also gives increased benefits for housing built in neighborhoods that already house low-income families. This produces the effect of segregating those with the lowest incomes both by building and by neighborhood. Continue reading
Bill Briggs
Bill Briggs founded and ran a program in southeast Queens called Youth and Tennis. For decades the program has taught young people in the public schools to play tennis and provided lessons to community kids for low or no fee. Bill was quiet and hardworking – dedicated to his kids and his sport. He didn’t draw a lot of attention to himself. He ran the program with very minimal resources – but had a tremendous impact on the lives of the community’s young people. Bill and I became very close friends over the years. Last year, when I found myself with plenty of time on my hands, I drove out to Roy Wilkins Park in St. Albans, Queens every few weeks to hit with Bill. He worked me HARD. We’d hit for a couple of hours and then go for drink or a meal. I called him after our last workout last spring and didn’t get a return call. I emailed him. I texted him. I didn’t hear anything back. I reached out to some mutual friends over the summer to try to find out what was up – and was told that Bill wasn’t well, and didn’t want to see anybody. I asked after him every couple of months and the situation didn’t change. I learned over the weekend from another wonderful community leader, my good friend Archie Spigner, that Bill passed away on last Sunday. Continue reading
The Borough Office Building, formerly occupied by a title company, and now owned by Greater Jamaica Development Corporation.
An important, but underutilized, tool in the economic development kit is being the buyer of last resort for distressed property. This strategy isn’t frequently used because it requires equity capital (which many/most NGO’s don’t have) and carries the risks inherent in carrying debt and managing property. But it can be incredibly powerful. By purchasing (or long-term leasing), improving and repositioning an abandoned or derelict real asset, not only are the negative externalities associated with that parcel removed from the neighborhood and the market, but the purchaser now has an ownership stake in the community it is working to improve and will have the potential to reap some economic benefit from the success of its efforts. In addition, ownership of key sites gives the local development entity the power to influence what gets developed on the site. In my experience, this is one of the more potent forms of “nudge” to the local market that a not-for-profit can exercise in advocating for neighborhood improvement.
Community development organizations tend to shy away from the risks associated with property ownership. I’m not aware of any business improvement districts, for example, that actually own any property. But I would argue that this is a form of downtown revitalization that ought to be seriously be considered by more of the professionals who are working on downtown improvement. Continue reading
Jamaica Transit Center Master Plan Rendering: Fox & Fowle — what’s not going to happen
In the last week, I’ve had a couple of occasions to visit Jamaica and was delighted to see progress on a number of fronts. What was most interesting to me was while there is not much happening on the sites we at Greater Jamaica Development Corporation (GJDC) assembled over fifteen years and sold in 2015, there is significant activity on other projects. The conclusion that I draw from this is that what we did to improve the perception of the Downtown through placemaking had more of an impact on its revitalization than our site development projects.
Also, I recently became aware of twenty-minute film about the changes in Jamaica over the last fifty years which can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJP0BzmG90I&feature=youtu.be. The film is a nostalgic look at the businesses that were lost from the Downtown from the 60’s through the ‘80’s and the deteriorated conditions Downtown. A good deal of effort was put into this video and I enjoyed watching it. It contains lots of material that was new to me. The film was apparently made by a community member. In the end it raises concerns about possible gentrification brought on by the more recent changes in Jamaica. Continue reading
Perhaps the most egregious awnings on 34th Street. Maybe the bottom one has some utility — but the other two?
Recently, I gave a tour of downtown Jamaica to a major retail developer. It was his initial close look at the downtown while walking. We met in a restaurant, and when we walked out on the sidewalk, the first words out of his mouth were, “The streets looks awful. The signs are terrible.” Nothing is more of an obstacle to downtown revitalization then poor storefront presentation – and nothing is more difficult to fix. Nope, not even street vending is as hard as trying to improve as retail signs, storefronts and the merchandising visible from the street.
Malls are able to have high quality signs and retail presentation because of their unitary ownership. Leases give mall owners review rights for retail presentation and have a long list of rules regarding their signs, storefronts and displays – and mall owners tend to enforce those rules. Downtowns have multiple owners, and even more individual retail tenants. There is little incentive for any landlord to enforce the sign provisions in their lease, since the woman next door isn’t enforcing hers and all you really want is your monthly rent check. Why alienate a high rent-paying tenant, who pays every month, over a trivial issue like how his store looks? Continue reading
What’s Possible
Despite the doom and gloom of my last post, the possibility of improving the regulation of vending does exist. In the most recent session of the City Council, Intro. 1301-2016 was proposed (http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=2858236&GUID=EFEAD05C-4A4E-47E3-ACDA-ADEAA0FB3F2A&Options=ID%7cText%7c&Search=vending), a report was issued and a hearing was held. The Council’s press release summarized the bill’s provisions and the Council’s objectives in proposing it (http://labs.council.nyc/press/2016/10/11/124/). The upshot of the legislation is to double the number of food vendor permits. No action has yet been taken by the Council on the bill. The precatory language of the bill, and the language of the press release reflect the substantial interest on the part of Council members in promoting vending and the limited recognition of or interest in the negative impact vending has on downtown revitalization efforts. Continue reading
When I went to work for Grand Central Partnership among my first assignments from Dan Biederman was to figure out how to deal with sidewalk issues: vending, newsracks, newsstands, payphones and making public toilets more available. In dense urban centers sidewalks, while public space, are highly contested territory, and the regulation of activity on them in New York City is arcane and labyrinthine. Not only pedestrians care about sidewalks. Adjacent property owners not only have responsibility for cleaning and maintaining their sidewalks, but they care about what happens in front of their multi-million dollar investments; particularly with its impact on ground floor retail. In midtown Manhattan, many buildings have vaults under the sidewalks that expand their basement space – and so are concerned about how much weight is put on them and whether anyone is punching holes in them.
A range of people have traditionally engaged in commercial activity on the New York City sidewalks – and these uses are heavily, if often ineffectually, regulated. There are separate governing schemes for four kinds of sidewalk venders: general merchandise, food, veterans and first amendment vendors. The Department of Parks and Recreation has its own scheme for concessioning venders within city parks as well as on adjacent sidewalks, and even sidewalks across the street from a park! The City permits individuals to erect newsstands at any sidewalk location that meets certain siting criteria – with no discretion by the City with respect to the location. If the proposed structure fits – the applicant is entitled to a permit. The Department of Transportation manages the enforcement of some (but not all) of these rules and is ultimately responsible for the physical condition of the sidewalks and with seeing to it that sidewalk uses don’t interfere with transportation (bus stops) or public safety (fire hydrants). Continue reading
Pink Granite
If your organization has unlimited resources and wants to spend tens of millions of dollars on surface treatments, go ahead and make my (and your contractor’s) day! But in my experience just about the least effective, most expensive thing you can spend your public space improvement/downtown revitalization money on is distinctive sidewalks, signature corners, curb cuts, crosswalks and inset plaques. Nobody notices them. Nobody looks down. And this was true even before people’s’ eyeballs became glued to their phones. These fancy capital improvements create unnecessary maintenance issues. For some reason a lot of groups think they haven’t done anything unless they’ve spent tons of money on hardscape. But that’s not what makes space users perceive public places as great. Here’s another example of where programming and maintenance are more important than design and construction. That money is better spent on a fully blown-out horticulture program – which people WILL notice and which DOES improve the perception of public space. Continue reading