Critic’s Notebook
Building a Better City
For the Next Mayor, a To-Do List
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Mayor Bloomberg speaks “fluent Wall Street,” which benefited the city, but his successor will need to address other demands. More Photos »
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: October 16, 2013
On Jan. 1, the next mayor — either Bill de Blasio, the Democratic
candidate, or Joe Lhota, the Republican — will face a fiscal cliff of
unpaid bills. Schools will need to be saved, union contracts negotiated —
the future of New York envisioned.
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In his 12-year tenure, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg built a gleaming Oz of
new parks and plazas, skyscrapers and bike lanes. This didn’t stop
plenty of terrible buildings from going up. But a focus on streets and
architecture redrew whole swaths of the city: Brownstone Brooklyn
boomed, the High Line opened, industrial wastelands became waterfront
playgrounds. Urban living became a cause, a public good. Design, down to
the curbside and the public bench, was no longer an afterthought,
although the city became increasingly unaffordable to many.
The next mayor can keep architecture and planning front and center or
risk taking the city backward. Courage, guile and not a little art will
be required to meet the obvious challenge: building on the good parts of
Mr. Bloomberg’s urban vision, but also doing some course correcting.
The social welfare of all cities is inextricable from their physical
fabric. A more equitable and livable city is ultimately smartly and
sustainably designed. New York’s competitive future depends on getting
this right.
Some moves are no-brainers: extending the bike lanes, bike shares, the
plaza program, rapid-bus service, the High Line and the No. 7 subway;
pushing forward with charging stations for electric vehicles,
preparations for the next Sandy-like storm, and PlaNYC 2030, Mayor Bloomberg’s guidelines for a greener future.
It would also be hard to find a cogent argument against extending the Bloomberg administration’s Design and Construction Excellence Program,
which raised the bar for public buildings like branch libraries, fire
stations and police precincts, spreading new work by gifted local
architects and by some stars, too, across the five boroughs.
At the same time, the billionaire mayor, unbeholden to special interests
and devoted to data, attracted competent and dynamic commissioners,
whom he let run departments as they saw fit. And he hired a powerful
deputy mayor, Daniel L. Doctoroff, who cooked up major renewal projects
across the city. The American Institute of Architects has floated the
notion that the next mayor should appoint a deputy for design and
planning. The city relies on zoning, a blunt instrument, to shape
communities, which leaves us with atrocities like Brooklyn’s Fourth
Avenue development.
A new deputy mayor could coordinate parks, schools, transportation,
landmarks, buildings and small-business development — now controlled by
agencies that have too often failed to work together — in ways that
might streamline construction, save tax dollars and foster
neighborhoods. A deputy mayor for design could also help rethink some
undercooked Bloomberg initiatives, like redeveloping Willets Point in
Queens as a shopping mall; rezoning 73 blocks of East Midtown; and
awarding $150 million in taxpayer money to redo the New York Public
Library building at 42nd Street before there was even a solid renovation
plan. (That plan may yet be forthcoming, as library officials promise,
but, meanwhile, branches across the city are starved for cash.)
Everything worth doing in New York comes down to money, of course: who
has it, how to get it. Building even one new PATH station ends up
costing billions of dollars. Cognizant that government can’t pay for
everything, Mayor Bloomberg trusted developers and the rich to share his
sense of public duty. That produced some innovative public-private
ventures, like Brooklyn Bridge Park. But it also fueled the mantra of
disgruntled New Yorkers that much of Manhattan was becoming a corporate
retreat, illustrated by the conversion of St. Vincent’s Hospital in
Greenwich Village into the site for yet another luxury condo complex,
and by One57, a 1,000-foot apartment tower for Russian oligarchs and
other zillionaires. Now rising across from Carnegie Hall, it is a blight
on the skyline.
By contrast, recent residences for the formerly homeless in Los Angeles
and San Francisco have been buildings of architectural distinction —
boons to their cities. One of the lessons of Via Verde,
a pioneering mixed-income development in the South Bronx, which has
thrived since opening last year (I drop in from time to time on the
gardening club), is that a modest premium for green design and
architectural excellence produces social and economic dividends. A new
mayor could encourage more exceptional designs like Via Verde for at
least a percentage of subsidized housing projects.
And he could also work with Shaun Donovan, the secretary of housing and
urban development, which helps oversee the New York City Housing
Authority, whose residents account for nearly 5 percent of the city’s
population. The authority houses many of New York’s poorest citizens in
often bleak and marooned projects. Understandably wary of politicians
after decades of broken promises, residents view with suspicion any talk
about repurposing parking lots for schools or retail. There was a backlash,
including from the mayoral candidates, after the Bloomberg
administration proposed leasing some public housing land for market-rate
development. But these ideas are still worth exploring, if focused on
improving and diversifying neighborhoods and knitting them into the
fabric of the city — and if done in collaboration with, and to benefit,
residents.
The new mayor ought to try to tackle another housing challenge, posed by
the city’s changing demographic: there are more single households,
thanks to the young urban migration and the silver tsunami, that
gathering wave of urban-minded retirees. The city’s current housing
stock doesn’t come close to meeting growing needs. Outmoded regulations
and onerous state requirements get in the way of addressing this issue,
like scores of others. The city’s brick-and-mortar costs are twice as
high as Chicago’s. In some parts of town, developers must still add
parking for every new housing unit and retail space. It’s time to redo
the books and take a hatchet to rules that only make it harder to live
here.
Living in the city is one challenge; getting out of it is another. A
direct train to and from LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports has long
been dreamed about. Other cities around the world have been investing
heavily in transportation. London has boomed where it has recently
renovated its trains and hubs. All the hoopla about developing East
Midtown and Hudson Yards to attract global business assumes a smooth and
swift shuttle to the airports.
That’s a joke today. The Shanghai Metro began operations in 1995 and has
a network of 300 miles, with more than 300 stations. New York City
pondered the Second Avenue subway for decades, poured billions of
dollars into constructing the first measly miles, and is still years
away from a single functioning station.
The one-seat airport train ride would at least take the city a step into
the 21st century, and there happen to be ideas out there about how to
get this done and paid for. Like all big, complicated transit projects
here, this one would require the new mayor to get the Port Authority,
the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York state and
federal governments on board, which is where courage and guile come in,
along with the bully pulpit.
Like pushing for a one-seat ride, fixing Pennsylvania Station means
getting the responsible parties — Madison Square Garden, the railroads,
city and state agencies, private developers, and, above all, the
governor — to sit down at the same table and negotiate, because the
mayor’s authority is limited. The governor should have plenty to gain,
since the stakes could hardly be higher for the region or the upside
greater. It’s the mayor’s role to drive that point home.
One more thing, for the moment. We’ve had a technocrat as mayor who speaks fluent Wall Street. We could use a bard.
I mean someone in tune with what makes the city hum at street level.
Brooklyn’s renaissance hasn’t just been about cheaper housing costs.
Areas like Williamsburg and Park Slope are every bit as unaffordable to
most New Yorkers as SoHo or Chelsea. Brooklyn’s attraction — to
residents and start-ups — has to do with its neighborhood feel,
characterful architecture, intimate scale and diversity.
Yes, the city benefits from attracting more rich people, but economic
diversity is not just a campaign slogan. A big part of what keeps the
city competitive has to do with its pedestrian-friendly streets; lively,
inspired public spaces; and eclectic neighborhoods and populations.
The threat now is not just that longtime African-American residents are
quitting historic areas from Harlem to Fort Greene because New York no
longer feels as if it were still their home. It’s also what an executive
at a giant bank in Lower Manhattan said after Hurricane Sandy:
companies like his weather floods because they’ve got insurance. But the
shopkeepers and small businesses, which supply downtown with its
lifeblood, struggle to afford the city even when there’s no disaster. If
they leave, he told me, the major employers will follow, because the
neighborhood will no longer be worth staying in.
So a new administration must protect and promote local merchants, along
with residents, in areas where they’re being priced out. New York’s
neighborhoods need to remain magnets for young entrepreneurs, workers,
artists and dreamers.
That generation moves to the music of the streets.
The next mayor should, too.
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