Tuesday, October 11, 2011

PlaNYC: Success or failure?


From Architectural Record:

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled PlaNYC in 2007, it was seen as a visionary proposal that would likely define his legacy. With the city’s population expected to rise from 8 million to 9 million by 2030, the catch-all initiative sought to make the city greener and more livable by increasing the number of mass-transit options, energy-efficient buildings, and parks, among other aspects. Many goals were designed to come to fruition long after Bloomberg left office in 2013, and in many ways, PlaNYC’s scope evoked Robert Moses, sans the emphasis on cars.

So how is PlaNYC faring four years after its launch? Opinions vary. Numerous aspects of the scheme, particularly its sustainability initiatives, are already visible across the city, in the form of new high-speed buses, stricter energy standards, and eco-friendly vehicles—and they score great reviews. But there also are critics who say changes have been slow to roll out and don’t improve the fortunes of all New Yorkers equally.

Tom Angotti, a professor of planning at Hunter College, takes issue with the general methodology of PlaNYC. It favors improving the lives of 1 million people who have yet to move to New York, he says, rather than the millions who are already here, many of whom are poor and need attention. Angotti notes that the plan was written by McKinsey and Company, a consulting firm that advises banks, pharmaceutical, and telecom companies, among others. “It’s an accountants’ approach to the city,” Angotti says, “not a planners’ approach.”

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

thank you Q.C
i commented on the A.D.,concerning the topic that i have been texting on for two years. i wonder what the other 266 of 290 playgrounds in PlaNYC look like now.

your readers surely should click on to this magazine article.sadly they did not tell us the taxpayer cost for the 266 playground to park conversions completed.

georgetheatheist said...

I've got the tar. Who's got the feathers?

Joe said...

Trying to make sense (or anything good) of this F_ assh*le crook is like taking a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Pull the flush chain on emm all !
-Joe

School of Hard knocks Urban Planner said...

It's more of a plot than a plan.

Bloomberg's real estate buddies are plotting to over-developing every remaining available square inch of NYC....then stuffing it with one million more residents....making additional fortunes off of this unsound idea.

Do we really need 1,000,000 additional New Yorkers (from China, etc.) to further overburden our infrastructure until it finally gives way?

I think not!

We aren't dealing with our inadequate status quo as it is.

It's basic common sense....and I don't need an advanced degree from Hunter College (or Pratt Institute) to come to that conclusion.

Anonymous said...

Here's a "plan": Tax the small businessman and private-sector middle class into oblivion by increasing the regulatory burden and the number of public-sector employees. Create packages of benefits that lure unemployable illegal immigrants that drain the budgets of schools and hospitals. Result: 1 million more residents without even 100,000 jobs.

ex.gov.a.schwarzenegger said...

Tjoe, I alvays haf a schleeping pill mit der lacksatif. It poomps you up! Bik time!! Und not vor girlymen. Hahr-hahr.

FlushingRepresenter said...

The protocols of the Mayor Of New York City is in effect.

Anonymous said...

I think a more productive efort would be an earnest, full-fledged efort to KEEP one million people FROM COMING INTO NYC in the next few decades, while pushing back the tide of illegal immigration, downgrading the building zone codes, eliminating the city's "sanctuary" status, and vastly improving our infrastructure.

Anonymous said...

When you look at the destruction that this has wrought on LIC, Dutch Kills, Flushing, Elmhurst and pretty much the rest of the city in that the points that make a strong community

- owner occupied housing, small scale human sized street scapes,

and thousand policies, from scanctuary city to threadbare infrastructure to lack of community preservation to underming the middle class long term stakeholders,

you would have to go back to the days of Robert Moses and the South Bronx to find a policy more damaging and wrong headed.

Plan2030 cares little for those outside of the wealthiest neighborhoods (and even there - as in the East Side crowding is now a problem.)

Money that could have been spent improving this city was systematically fleeced from the taxpayer to benefit those who didn't even live here yet (with a healthy cut for the developers)

The press was neutered as it was under Moses.

And the politicans? As in the time of Moses, the great betrayers of the people they are to serve.

Anonymous said...

266 conversions X $3,000,000. (estimate) per playground equals $798,000,000.

this is over three/quarters of a BILLION DOLLARS OF TAX PAYER MONEY WASTED BY THE DOOMSBERG "GREENIES".

which CM approved this waste of money,during a depression ?

georgetheatheist said...

And who are these kowtowing-to- Bloomberg politicians? All members of the Democratic Party. Here is an issue that the Republican Party could "run" with. But no-o-o-o, Ragusa and Ognibene have to engage in their juvenile pursuits.

Anonymous said...

Right-o Georgie!

Democrats have always imported their votes like they did during the Boss Tweed era...be it the newly arrived potato famine Irish of the 1840s....or the more current horde of Taiwanese and Fujianese immigrants we see in Flushing, Sunset Park, etc.

Home grown Republicans are far too wise to swallow the BS that Democratic politicians hand the ignorant immigrant public.

Now Phil and Tom are squaring off for a duel that will finish off their party and allow the Democratic dictatorship of Queens under the despotic Joe Crowley to destroy what's left of the borough's democracy!