As promised, here's a continuation of City planning pulling a fast one:The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) is proud to launch the NYC Plaza Program. The new initiative will create or enhance an existing neighborhood plaza in every community in the City by transforming underused streets into compelling, accessible public spaces and walkable destinations. The Plaza Program is a key element of the City’s effort to ensure that all New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of quality open space.
Didn't this start out as all New Yorkers will have a public park within a 10-minute walk? And we already know what the city considers open space to be...
Through this innovative, new program, eligible nonprofit groups will apply to DOT to request a new public plaza. DOT will select the best proposals and will design and construct new plazas each year.
These Management Partners will eventually take on daily operation and management of the permanent public plazas, once they are built.
What they mean is: "The City is too cheap and lazy to do this, so we hope someone else will."
In addition to keeping the site clean, safe, and in good repair, the Partner will also be required to maintain insurance on the plaza...
Private organizations will be forced to insure public plazas designed by the City?
Well, I can't imagine what not-for-profit wouldn't want this responsibility!
16 comments:
Yeah....
like Flushing's Lippman Plaza is such a success for the DOT!
Walk through it one day and witness
various "vendors" (without licenses) selling anything from $5 watches, cell phone covers,counterfeit goods to unsanitary fruit and vegetables
(grown who knows where, using who knows what kind of fertilizer).
Then there are those who just sit there upon the shallow walls of the planting beds around the trees....killing the flowers and discarding their luncheon chicken and rib bones in the same!
Very picturesque, vibrant, bustling and diverse!
I've chosen to opt for a monthly
LIRR ticket so I can wave goodbye
to this "turd world" mecca as my railroad carriage whizzes by onto its next stop in Woodside!
It's all aboard the #7 international express for the rest of you slobs!
Definitely sounds like John Young thunk this one up.
Very genius.
FROM DICTIONARY.COM:
plaza
noun
1. a public square with room for pedestrians; "they met at Elm Plaza"; "Grosvenor Place"
2. mercantile establishment consisting of a carefully landscaped complex of shops representing leading merchandisers; usually includes restaurants and a convenient parking area; a modern version of the traditional marketplace; "a good plaza should have a movie house"; "they spent their weekends at the local malls"
The Commissar has definition # 2 in mind since there are commercial and developer interests involved, so kickbacks for all. Can't forget the various "inspectors" (Health, Buidings, Liquor, Sales tax) who need income once the "plaza" is complete.
WOW! I can't believe that photo is an actual cover from a NYC publication!
Get it here:
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/
pdf/NYC_Plaza_Prog_Guidelines.pdf
That guy looks like he just got out of a strip club, and picked up one of the dancers!!!
I wonder how she looks from the front????
Hey Wade Nichols:
"That guy looks like he just got out of a strip club, and picked up one of the dancers!!!"
Just because she's wearing a short skirt and has great legs doesn't make her a stripper. Have you seen what women are wearing these days? The guy looks like a regular guy.
And she probably looks great from the front as well.
Just because she's wearing a short skirt and has great legs doesn't make her a stripper. Have you seen what women are wearing these days?
And I suppose just because you see a guy walking towards you on a lonely street at 3AM with a "doo-rag" on his head, his pants hanging down exposing his boxer shorts, gold plated teeth, and a "gangsta swagger" doesn't mean you should cross the street, right? After all, that would be "too judgemental"????
The guy looks like a regular guy.
What, are you trying to say that regular guys don't go to strip clubs? Are you a judgemental elitist? Only guys from Wall Street or hedge funds are entitled to go to strip clubs?
Hey, I think that guy looks pretty hot and built too. Maybe SHE just picked HIM up.
wait till the economy really tanks and these business districts don't feel like dishing out the money for the maintenance of these plazas.
wade nichols:
I'm not a judgemental elitist, I promise you that. You made a remark about her outfit. Just because she dresses sexy, doesn't mean she's a STRIPPER!!!!! Look around, tons of sexy women out there.
You would never catch me walking around at 3am. I'm dead asleep at that time. Anyway I work in East New York. "Gangsta swagger" doesn't intimidate me at all.
"Only guys from Wall Street or hedge funds are entitled to go to strip clubs?"
And in my view, no one is entitled to go to strip clubs.
It's all I'm sayin'.
The city is privatizing our public spaces. Initially, neighborhood street fairs were created to benefit community organizations, but today's fairs are run by huge vending corporations that sell the same stinking cannoli in every street fair. Expect the same with public plazas- bland uniformity.
and those stinking cannolis give me diarrhea every damn time
The woman in the left of the photo is smoking! How did this get circulated into the public!?
I hope that each of these plazas are equipped with a private police force with M16s, devoted to the task of vaporizing any smokers on sight! God, am I sick of them contaminating my air!!
I wonder if the DOT spent hours thinking about whether or not a cigarette would be appropriate for the image or if the woman's dress was too tight...come on.
Gotta give em credit, this at least appears to be forward thinking...we'll see...
This is a very inappropriate photo for a city publication.
Shame on you bloomie!
It's his fault.
Everything is his fault.
Didn't this start out as all New Yorkers will have a public park within a 10-minute walk? And we already know what the city considers open space to be...
If you read PLANYC (specifically the Open Space Initiatives) you’ll see that public plazas are part of the plan ( Initiative #6) but are not the WHOLE plan. There’s nothing in this post that indicates that the rest of the plan has been abandoned.
Public-private partnerships are pretty standard in this country. As long as there are safeguards for the rights of the people, I don’t have any problem with them.
This absolutely started out as 10-minute walk to a park (see the 2nd page), also this... They must have realized they couldn't possibly create real parks that accomplished this because there is no land left on which to do it, so they changed it to "open space". The original public plaza mention said the city would create one in each community board district, as if there are not individual communities within each board and that one would be sufficient. Now it's whoever applies, pays for insurance and the cost of maintenance, gets it. Total horseshit.
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