BSA chair is now head of LPC

Photo from Pardon Me For Asking

From Wall Street Journal:

Mayor Bill de Blasio is set to nominate an urban planner to guide the Landmarks Preservation Commission, as the 49-year-old agency attempts to balance the mayor's pro-development agenda with its mandate of preserving New York's built history.

The mayor has chosen Meenakshi Srinivasan, who for the last decade has been chairwoman of the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals, an agency that makes often highly technical decisions about granting exemptions to zoning for individual lots, according to city officials. Ms. Srinivasan also spent 14 years at the Department of City Planning.

The nomination is set to be announced Friday. It still needs City Council approval.

The selection of Ms. Srinivasan signals a desire by the administration to have the commission be more in tune with planning concerns. That includes the mayor's pledge to promote new development around the city as a way to create both affordable housing and jobs.

Ms. Srinivasan, a native of India, is an architect.

Gruesome twosome may team up

Photo from SHoP

From Crains:

The city's transportation chief, Janette Sadik-Khan, and planning czar, Amanda Burden, are close friends who share a passion for creating vibrant, sustainable cities. They have been travel companions—to India, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Copenhagen—and even sat next to each other at a recent benefit gala honoring Ms. Sadik-Khan.

And when the Bloomberg administration draws to a close this year, the powerful pair could go into business together, spreading their brand of urban planning across the globe. Several former Bloomberg administration sources confirmed that the two have been in discussions about forming their own urban-planning policy institute, either as an offshoot of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's foundation or as a stand-alone entity. Another source said they were angling to open a global consulting firm.

"Those two have traveled together on their own time," a former administration official said. "They've done the urban-planning grand tour."

The pair are the latest administration all-stars planning their exodus as part of a transition that is as likely to transform the private sector as it is the face of government. Aides to Ed Koch, the last three-term mayor, turned their government experience into prominent careers. Some, like developer Bruce Ratner and transportation planner Sam Schwartz, continue to influence public policy. Top Bloomberg alumni may go even further.

There are some who think Bloomberg is a master urban planner

From WNYC:

Justin Davidson, New York magazine’s architecture critic, looks at the ways development has changed the city’s character during the Bloomberg years. We’ll take calls on how neighborhoods have changed through new zoning, historic districts, and new construction in the last decade.

Weigh in: Has New York become a city of generic glass towers? Does protecting historic buildings and neighborhoods preserve the city’s character or hamper development?

Listen to just a snippet of the interview and you'll quickly realize that Davidson is pretty clueless. Here's urban planner Michael D.D. White's analysis and response to his remarks:

Before the “Barclays” Center there was “no character” at that site?

The plan for Atlantic Yards mega-project “flows from” a “Gehry design” that developer/subsidy collector Forest City Ratner is “legally” obligated to follow?

Davidson is carelessly promulgating misinformation that’s in service to the Ratner narrative. He does so notwithstanding a level of scrutiny he gave to Manhattan’s comparable, but overall smaller, Hudson Yards only a week ago which level of scrutiny is entirely inconsistent with such ignorant assessments.

In describing the “Barclays” site as previously having “no character” Davidson describes it as a single block that was at the triangular intersection of two large trafficked avenues. That’s what it is now: It's not just a “block” but a newly created superblock created out of what were previously three blocks. Previously, it wasn’t just between two avenues: Previously, Fifth Avenue and Pacific Street flowed through that now superblock block to define those three individual, separate blocks.

And if Davidson is to consider his own point that preserving a neighborhood means paying attention to “the economics of it” and “the character” of a neighborhood (presumably with respect to its interwoveness with the rest of the city), then he should note that what was cleared away at the “Barclays” site just to make way for arena included, but was not limited to, Freddy’s, a neighborhood bar and music venue, and two large newly renovated condominium buildings. Freddy’s was an anchor and a gathering place generating neighborhood connection. The two condominium were also more important than just what they were themselves: They set the tone and example for development that was taking off in the neighborhood, something the Ratner organization elected to wipe out because it was competing with its own properties which Ratner wasn’t developing at the time.

Getting back to Queens, at about 14:40, Paul Graziano, the planner who designed most of the downzonings in Queens, weighs in on Davidson's assertion that Queens downzonings are a bad thing. He mentions the 1961 zoning maps that have been in place until recent years when the rezonings were completed. They based zoning pon the prediction of a buildout of 12-16M people. That type of density transposed on neighborhoods of 1 and 2 family homes were a recipe for disaster.

SHOCKING NEWS: Overdevelopment strains schools

From NY1:

New development in New York has soared over the last 10 to 15 years. While this may be good for the city’s economy and the overall health of the real estate market, a new study examines one major downside to new construction.

"The report goes through all the new construction in a number of neighborhoods and it shows how many seats the city should have planned for based on the new housing units built. The city should have been building schools all along," says Barbara Denham, the chief economist of Eastern Consolidated.

Unfortunately, it has not. According to Denham's report, the city has not followed its own formula for how many new school seats should be created based on the number of new housing units added.

Her report evaluated the Upper West Side, Midtown West and Lower Manhattan and found the more construction, the more the public schools are being squeezed.

Eggheads endorse overdevelopment

From Streetsblog:

Each of the panelists endorsed a move toward what moderator Vicki Been, a professor at the NYU Law School, called the “Vegas principle” of zoning: “What happens in the building, stays in the building.” Zoning, they argued, should be more concerned with how buildings meet the public realm or impact public infrastructure than what people choose to do inside their property. “There’s nothing unsafe about having a business on the same floor as an apartment, if the people in the building agree to it,” said Michael Kwartler, a national expert on planning who helped write the zoning laws for midtown Manhattan.

When asked what she would change in the city’s zoning code, Jerilyn Perine, the head of the Citizens Housing and Planning Council and a former city housing commissioner, said “the word ‘family’ should be eradicated from the zoning resolution.” The definition of ‘family’ currently used in the zoning code limits the number of unrelated individuals who can legally share a single unit. The code “dictates not only how many people but who lives in places,” said Perine.

Kwartler and Perine, too, warned against over-regulating urban form, and especially against the current planning vogue for “contextual zoning,” which has been a hallmark of the Department of City Planning under Amanda Burden. “I hate this idea of contextual, this idea that what’s there should dictate what could be there in the future,” said Perine. Kwartler added that the Empire State Building is out of context with its surroundings, to the benefit of the entire city.

A renowned urban planner not on the above mentioned panel had this to say:

"So let's see: if I'm not mistaken, the thrust of the argument is deregulate (because that's worked so well in the past, particularly in the building industry); remove limits on the number of families or persons that can live in a particular space, so we can create more opportunities for greedy landlords to create hazardous conditions; create mixed uses anywhere to ensure a deterioration of our quality of life; and for God's sake, don't ever try to protect the character of a community through contextual zoning, because that's over-regulating the developers...errrr, over-regulating 'urban form.'

What a crock of shit."

For a different perspective on these issues, see this video of an Urban Planning panel at the New School which was taped earlier this month. (It's long but worth it if you're interested in urban planning):

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.”

City even messes up Manhattan historic districts

From the Gotham Gazette:

The seaport area, home to some of Manhattan's oldest architecture, has been the focus for development and revitalization projects dating as far back as the 1970s. Yet after 40 years of development, the neighborhood is far from successful.

In the 1980s, the development of the mall by the Rouse Co. was seen as a way to draw visitors to the area and help the museum's finances. Despite the commercialization of the area, the Seaport Museum of New York still faces financial trouble, taking out numerous loans over the past five years to cover its increasing debts.

The museum must deal with few visitors, on top of what founding president Peter Stanford has called mismanagement by museum chair Frank Sciame and president Mary Pelzer. As a result, the museum has closed its landside galleries, placed 32 staff members on unpaid furloughs and is in talks to remove the neglected historic boats from Pier 17.

The mall, opened in 1985 as a "festival marketplace," akin to Harborplace in Baltimore and Faneuil Hall in Boston, has also had its problems. Residents have blamed the mall for distorting the area's historic atmosphere and driving up property values, forcing out local residents and businesses.

How much do you want to bet that they'll mess it up again?

By the city, for the city

Does your neighborhood need a facelift?

Does that empty lot on the street corner need some fresh design attention?

What sites in your borough have unrealized potential or need a thorough re-imagining?

Want to give your input and help to create a better New York?

Well, you can. From now through April 30, the Institute for Urban Design (IfUD) will turn to the New Yorkers to reframe the debate about the future of the cityʼs public spaces. By the City / For the City (BtCFtC) is an innovative two-part open call for ideas that asks New Yorkers where they see potential for improvement in the cityʼs physical fabric. Nominate an untapped opportunity somewhere in the five boroughs today.

Then IfUD will ask the international design community to respond to the challenges set forth by the public. Together, ideas from citizens and designers alike will represent an atlas of possibility for the cityʼs future, which will provide the foundation for the first-ever Urban Design Week from September 15–20.

We'd like to get a wide range of ideas submitted, spread out in every neighborhood across the five boroughs.

For more information, contact Brendan Crain at IfUD at 212-366-0780 or crain@ifud.org.

Ok folks, I asked whether this applied to private spaces as well as public spaces, and I was told both. So, send them your thoughts or leave your suggestions below and I will submit them to the organizers. Abandoned lots that could become community gardens or parks, strips of concrete that should be prettied up, etc. You know your neighborhoods best.