Pratt Center for Community Development

PlaNYC: Sustainability, Equity and Opportunity?
March 12, 2007

This winter, the Bloomberg administration embarked on a planning process for the future of New York City, called PlaNYC 2030. It sets goals for the city's development over the next 23 years, including new housing for an expanding population, a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, improved public transit, cleaner air, land and water, and better access to parks.

The Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability has met with community organizations around the city to present and discuss these goals. On March 12, ReDefining Economic Development NYC invited Director Rohit Aggarwala to a special forum at Greenwich Village's Judson Memorial Church.

Participants in "PlanNYC: Sustainability, Equity and Opportunity?" recommended that the Mayor's Office broaden its PlaNYC goals for 2030 to include the promotion of economic opportunity, so all New Yorkers can benefit from the city's future growth.

The more than 100 attendees represented a wide cross-section of New Yorkers concerned about barriers to economic opportunities New Yorkers face every day and the city's widening gap between the wealthy and everyone else. They included environmental advocates, religious leaders, community organizers, labor union staff, social workers, philanthropists, emergency food providers, advocates for small business, aides to elected officials, and housing developers.

Aggarwala presented the 10 goals of the city's effort, collected under three themes: OpeNYC, MaintaiNYC and GreeNYC. He painted the picture of New York City at a moment of opportunity to look to the future. Reversing a long period of population decline, Aggarwala noted, the city is now projecting a population increase of 200,000 by the year 2010 with total population expected to top 9 million by 2030. "We have an obligation--all of us--to leave our city to our children and grandchildren: cleaner, healthier and better," he declared.

"What kind of New York do you want to live in in 2030?" Aggarwala asked the forum. "And how do we get there?"

Three leaders of organizations involved in ReDefining Economic Development posed their own answers to that question, to set the stage for group discussions that followed on affordable housing, environmental justice and economic opportunity. Each group then suggested ways that PlaNYC and the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability can ensure that the New York City of 2030 will be a place where, as Pratt Center for Community Development Director Brad Lander put it in his introductory remarks, "the prosperity and the burdens that growth brings are shared more equally."

The three discussion groups emerged with a similar message: In the city of the future all New Yorkers, and not just the wealthy, must be able to enjoy a high quality of life.

Affordable Housing

Michelle de la Uz, Fifth Avenue Committee
"Despite the fact that this administration has an unprecedented plan to build 165,000 units of affordable housing, and despite many programs and incentives, without intentional intervention we will have neighborhoods that are less affordable and diverse in 2030.

"We cannot build ourselves out of this crisis. As we build, we lose. For every new affordable housing unit the city builds, we are losing more."

Ideas on affordable housing included:

• Preserve existing affordable housing.
• Strengthen rent regulations and repeal vacancy decontrol.
• Dave Mitchell-Lama, Section 8 and tax credit housing.
• Protect tenants against harassment and displacement.
• Create mixed-income communities.
• Require affordable housing in return for government actions benefiting developers.
• Make existing and new buildings greener.
• Increase resources for reusing brownfields for affordable housing.
• Include existing residents in transparent and accountable planning processes for their neighborhoods.

Environmental Justice

Alexie Torres-Fleming, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice
"I witnessed the destruction and burning of the South Bronx as a child in the 70s. It destroyed not just buildings but the spirit of the people who had no control over policies that affected their entire lives.

"The quality of life for the poorest and most vulnerable is the mark of our greatness and the success of our plan. We are excited that mayor has chosen to name sustainability as a goal, but it is not the only goal--it is an opportunity to work toward fairness."

Torres-Fleming showed a map of waste-transfer stations, which are overwhelmingly located communities of color.

Ideas on environmental justice included:

• Create a comprehensive inventory of environmental burdens, such as waste transfer stations and sewage treatment plants and other infrastructure burdens
• Establish goals and timetables for reducing burdens in low-income neighborhoods
• When choosing locations for new facilities, consider of the cumulative impact of all infrastructure burdens in a neighborhood.
• Retrofit buildings with energy efficient technologies and require all new buildings to meet green building codes.
• Reduce car and truck traffic by increasing use of rail and water for freight, capping emissions and implementing congestion pricing.
• Create living-wage jobs through the redevelopment of brownfields, greening projects and other initiatives improving the environment.
• Ensure that local residents are substantively included in decision-making affecting their communities.

Economic Opportunity

Mark Winston Griffith, Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project
"Two roads diverge in a gilded, urban wood. The first road leads to a city in the year 2030, a city touted as a metropolis reborn, a 21st century miracle, a shining example of brilliant planning, safe streets, efficient rapid transit and green space. Unfortunately this is a city cleaved into two, one affluent, the other poor or struggling. It's a road through which Manhattan-like urbanization comes to all the boroughs, accompanied by token patches of affordable housing and low wage-paying jobs. It's a road which celebrates and promotes economic development, without mentioning the alarming economic disparities in the city.

"There's another road that leads to this same city in the year 2030. But it's a higher road. It's a road that has integrated the Economic Development Corporation's plan, the mayor's 2030 plan and the mayor's Commission on Economic Opportunity, to create a city in which economic development and economic justice go hand in hand. It's a road that leads to a commitment to narrowing disparities in income, job opportunities, asset building opportunities and quality of life. It's a road that doesn't define development as large-scale landscape transformation, but as a process of building healthy, thriving, economically integrated neighborhoods. Where large-scale and infrastructure projects are welcomed by communities because they are required to generate living wage jobs and stimulate local hiring and workforce development. They are projects driven by the public, not just corporate interests, where residential development does not simultaneously put viable blue collar jobs at risk.

Ideas on economic opportunity included:

• Require businesses receiving financial incentives or other assistance from the city to provide living wage jobs and other community benefits.
• Track the number and quality of jobs created or retained in economic development projects, and use that information to ensure that economic development policy create living wage jobs.
• Channel growth to the people and places where opportunity is needed.
• Invest in job training and link training to the growth of targeted economic sectors.
• Make training accessible to immigrant groups and low-income New Yorkers.
• Integrate vocational education with quality K-12 education.
• Streamline the public benefits process for the working poor.
• Develop and maintain good jobs by supporting local businesses.
• Support the manufacturing sector to retain blue collar jobs.
• Support the development of environment-improving jobs and businesses.
• Increase New York City's minimum wage.
• Establish a code of conduct for all businesses contracting with the city.
• Ensure that financial services companies practice fair lending.
• Ensure that businesses' labor, environmental and other practices conform to the city's 2030 goals
• Expand communities' decision-making power related to economic development.

ReDefining Economic Development NYC is a collaborative project of dozens of community, civic, religious, business, and labor organizations, coordinated by the Pratt Center for Community Development, NY Jobs With Justice and the Brennan Center for Justice. To join or learn more, please contact: .