Streetsblog New York City

Sources say...

Janette Sadik-Khan is a front-runner to take over as DOT Commissioner after Iris Weinshall leaves the job on April 13. "It's her job. She just has to decide whether she wants it."

Joan McDonald, senior vice president at the Economic Development Corporation, has been ruled out. She will not get the job.

Dan Doctoroff's headhunters are soliciting resumes from the Land of Congestion Charging. One name that comes up is Jay Walder (right) who just resigned after six years as Transport for London's Managing Director for Finance and Planning to take a job at McKinsey. The well-liked New Yorker worked at the MTA with Bob Kiley and joined Kiley at TfL back in 2001 to help get London's congestion charging system up and running.

New York Magazine talks to Majora Carter:

Janelle Nanos: Part of Moses's legacy is the idea that to get anything done in the city, it needs to be done by fiat. Do you see that happening again now?

Majora Carter: Absolutely. Partially, it's a coliseum mentality, that it has to be big or it doesn't matter. The problem with the big projects of Moses and now Doctoroff is that they don't think about what the long-term impacts are of exercising that much power on people who have none. It's the idea that people are in the way.

Nanos: It's interesting that you group Doctoroff and Moses together. Do you think the deputy mayor sees himself as the new Moses?

Carter: Oh, God, yeah. Completely. He thinks he's the man.

I don't think that any comparison between the period that Moses was active and today is really that relevant. The biggest difference is the need for community input.

With very few exceptions, we have really made an effort to reach out to local communities and understand their needs. Moses was a believer that it was experts who were able to divine what was best for the community or the city on the whole.

Sources say that Janette Sadik-Khan (left) is a top candidate to replace Iris Weinshall when she resigns on April 13. Sadik-Khan met with Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff this week to talk about the job.

A senior vice president at Parsons Brinckerhoff and former Director of the Mayor's Office of Transportation for New York City during the Dinkins Administration, Sadik-Khan would be an ideal candidate for the job, though, to be successful in the post it is clear that she would need a strong reform mandate from the Mayor and the political cover to shake things up.

Sources are also saying that Judith Bergtraum (right), DOT First Deputy Commissioner and a key Weinshall aide (she's also the daughter of local education legends Murry and Edith), has been ruled out as a possible replacement for Weinshall.

Emil Choski (formerly Kozerawski -- he and his wife Haeri Cho combined last names) has given his Car-Free Bedford Avenue project a serious face lift. The 22-year-old freelance graphic designer and community organizer's new web site includes a three dimensional "flyby" visualization accompanied by some very un-Williamsburgy classical music. With apologies to the Meatpacking District and Ninth Avenue, Emil's project has to be my favorite grassroots livable streets initiative going right now. When is Dan Doctoroff going to wake up and give this kid a job at the Economic Development Corporation?! Choski writes:

The plan calls for the complete banning of automobiles on the stretch of Bedford Ave starting at Metropolitan Avenue and passing through and ending at McCarren park. The cross streets would be left open to cars and trucks in order to allow for necessary deliveries. The current traffic as well as the B61 bus will be rerouted to parallel avenues including Driggs Ave and Berry St. Emergency vehicles will continue to have access to Bedford Ave.

What will replace the cars is a thriving pedestrian community, more outdoor seating for restaurants, islands of greenery, public sculpture, and anything else that makes the community more alive and beautiful.

I just caught up with this article in the Times on Saturday about a competition for engineers and architects to envision New York City in 2106. Check out one of the winning design concepts:

After the judges' hasty deliberations, Daniel L. Doctoroff, the city's deputy mayor for economic development, presented the prizes. He said his office was preoccupied by many of the same concerns as the contestants - "parks and open space and pedestrianization and transportation" - though it might not be looking quite as far ahead.

"It's so exciting for me to see this group of architects and designers think so creatively about the future," he said.

Mr. Marvel's team won the honorary mention for technological advancement. The Terreform group won the mention for best presentation, with a proposal that involved eliminating privately owned cars in Manhattan; it predicted that 60 percent of the city's population would be walking to work by 2038.

Over all, the proposals conveyed a confidence that amid energy shortages, population increases and global warming, New York's urban problems could be addressed and even solved.

Photo: Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

As we reported this morning, Mayor Bloomberg is in California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a major policy announcement on a major, long-term, environmental sustainability initiative. The key components of the Mayor's plan include:

• The creation of the Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.
• The undertaking of a major greenhouse gas inventory for City government and the City overall.
• The appointment of a Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the City on environmentally sound policies and practices.
• The creation of a new partnership with the Earth Institute of Columbia University to provide the City with scientific research and advice on environmental and climate change-related issues.

Here are some of the more interesting snippets from the City's press release:

The announcement took place during a visit with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to Bloom Energy in Sunnyvale, California, where the Mayor and Governor talked about the State of California's groundbreaking sustainability initiatives.

"Now, we intend to make New York City a national leader in meeting the challenge of making ours an environmentally sustainable city. To make New York a truly sustainable city, we need a bold plan to use our land in the smartest way possible," Bloomberg said (Editor: Clearly the Mayor here is referring to this morning's Park(ing) Squat in Midtown).

The Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability is led by Director Rohit T. Aggarwala the Office's mission is three-fold: to help develop a plan for the City's long-term growth and development, to integrate sustainability goals and practices into every aspect of that plan; and to make New York City government a "green" organization.

The Mayor announced the launch of an unprecedented effort to measure the entire carbon emissions of New York City. This much broader effort, with a target completion date within six months, will give us the first picture of the total carbon impact of everyone who lives in, works in, or visits New York City.

The Sustainability Advisory Board will be chaired by Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding Daniel L. Doctoroff, and its kick-off meeting will take place on Wednesday, September 27th.

Members of the Sustainability Advisory Board include:

• Christine Quinn, Speaker of the New York City Council
• James F. Gennaro, Council Member and Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection
• Carlton Brown, COO and Founder, Full Spectrum
• Marcia Bystryn, Executive Director, New York League of Conservation Voters
• Robert Fox, Partner, Cook + Fox Architects
• Ester Fuchs, Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
• Peter Goldmark, Program Director of NYC Office, Environmental Defense
• Ashok Gupta, Program Director of Air and Energy, Natural Resources Defense Council
• Michael Northrop, Program Officer of Sustainable Development, Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Ed Ott, Executive Director, NYC Central Labor Council
• Elizabeth Girardi Schoen, Senior Director of Environmental Affairs, Pfizer, Inc.
• Peggy Sheppard, Executive and Co-Founder, West Harlem Environmental Action Coalition (WE ACT)
• Daniel Tishman, Chairman and CEO, Tishman Construction Corporation
• Kathryn Wylde, President and CEO, Partnership for New York City
• Robert Yaro, President, Regional Plan Association
• Elizabeth Yeampierre, Executive Director, UPROSE

In California With Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

We knew that a major policy announcement on long-term planning and environmental sustainability was imminent when we heard last week that Mayor Bloomberg had asked City Council to push back their sustainability hearing from September 18^th to the 26^th. A New York City Mayor likes nothing less than City Council trumping him on a major policy initiative.

Now Streetsblog has learned that Mayor Bloomberg will make a major announcement on New York City sustainability policy today at 3:00 pm EST. Here's the catch: He'll be making that announcement in Sunnyvale, California with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. They'll be appearing at the offices of Bloom Energy, formerly known as Ion America, a high-tech start-up company that apparently specializes in fuel cell technology. We do not know what the details of the announcement will be -- "long-term planning and sustainability" covers a lot of ground -- but based on a couple of recent hires in Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff's new shop, we surmise that the mayor may be touching on economic development, transportation, energy and greenhouse gas emissions in today's talk.

Streetsblog has learned that Mayor Bloomberg's newly established office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability has hired Dr. Rachel Weinberger, an Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in land use and transportation planning. Dr. Weinberger now works at City Hall as the "Senior Policy Advisor for Transportation." On paper, she looks to be an ideal candidate for the job.

According to her bio, Weinberger "has worked on a wide range of transportation planning projects including transportation master plans, parking policy studies, mobility and access plans, ground-side access to airports, adapting strategies of travelers in the New York Metropolitan region after 9/11, and econometric analyses of transportation investment on property value." And at Penn she was on the same faculty as Streetsblog hero Vukan Vuchic, author of "Transportation for Livable Cities." Weinberger is no stranger to New York City. She earned her Masters degree in Urban Planning from Hunter College. And she has been helping DOT deal with street management issues in Lower Manhattan during the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site.

Weinberger's supervisor is Rohit Thomas Aggarwala, also somewhat newly appointed as the Director of the Long-term Planning and Sustainability office, which is housed within the Mayor's Office of Operations and overseen by Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff. Word has it that Doctoroff is pushing Aggarwala hard to get a long-term plan finished within the next three months. The aim is for the Mayor to deliver a speech in January.

Dr. Aggarwala, who provides us with an extraordinarily Googlable name, earned four degrees at Columbia University -- a BA in '93, MA in '98, MBA in '00 and then a Ph.D in history with the legendary Kenneth T. Jackson in 2002. Aggarwala's dissertation, Seat of Empire: New York, Philadelphia, and the Emergence of an American Metropolis, 1776-1837 argues that New York City's "rise to pre-eminence among American cities was neither inevitable nor predictable." And that the story of New York City's success "has significant implications for the future of cities in a globalizing economy" in which "some cities may gain or lose relative stature."

After Columbia, Rit, as he is known to his friends and colleagues, took a job at the New Jersey office of McKinsey & Co., the global management and consulting firm. At McKinsey, Aggarwala worked on light rail and intercity passenger rail systems -- or so we have heard. Streetsblog would have asked him directly but he doesn't want to do a Q&A just yet.

Aggarwala is "a really practical... no-nonsense guy," one student told the Columbia Spectator for an article in 2001. "He knows people well; he can read people's characters very well." Another student said, "Rit is a natural leader, a brilliant speaker, and a charismatic politician. He has an amazing ability to remain objective no matter what his personal views are on a subject."

If Aggarwala is involved in implementing the Mayor's long-term sustainability plan in addition to writing it, then he is going to have the opportunity to put those political skills to good use. Pushing ambitious and challenging ideas through the City's entrenched agency bureaucracy and change-averse Community Boards and City Councilmembers will be no small task. Aggarwala has a big job ahead of him and Mayor Bloomberg hasn't left him much time to get it done -- unless, of course, he gets to continue doing it during a Doctoroff Administration.

As reported in today's Observer a team working under Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff has, for the last year or so, been secretly developing a sweeping, new urban planning vision for New York City. In its scope and ambition, the Observer compares the plan to the 1811 layout of Manhattan's street grid system and the 1929 Regional Plan that gave us many of today's highways and parks.

A significant piece of the plan was developed by Alex Garvin & Associates, a consulting firm specializing in the planning and development of the urban public realm. Garvin is best known to many New Yorkers as the lead planner for the NYC 2012 Olympics bid.

The aim of the Garvin Report, as it is referred to by some insiders, is to provide strategies and opportunities for increasing New York City's housing supply in a way that improves, rather than degrades, New York City's quality of life. Expecting the city's population to increase by as much as one million by 2030, the Report says, "The city must invest in its public realm to prevent unplanned growth from undermining its competitive advantage."

Towards this end, the Garvin Report presents specific opportunities to build up to 325,000 new housing units with virtually no "residential displacement." All of this housing would be constructed on platforms built over railyards and highways, on underused waterfronts, and by investing in surface transit "to stimulate development in areas without nearby subway service."

The Garvin Report, published May 26, 2006, also recommends a set of strategies for improving New York City's public spaces and surface transit systems. As described in the executive summary:

The city's streets, sidewalks, parks and plazas can become a "mixed-use" public realm that balances pedestrians and cyclists with motor vehicles and mass transit. Greening boulevards, protected bike lanes, Sunday closings, and pedestrian reclamations are four strategies to create this balance on streets throughout all five boroughs.

The Garvin Report takes care to note that it is not "city policy." Rather it is an "Opportunity Analysis" suggesting the "most physically, financially and politically feasible" ways for New York City to manage growth and maintain its competitive edge in the coming decades. As of yet, it is not known whether the Garvin Report has influenced any city policy. It may just be yet another study gathering dust on a shelf in City Hall.

Streetsblog was given a copy of the Garvin Report by a City Hall insider in June. Not wanting to jeopardize the potential for this innovative plan to move forward, we held off on writing about it. But with the Mayor's long-awaited speech on land use and transportation four months late and postponed indefinitely, with transportation and public space issues nowhere near the top of the Bloomberg Administration's second term agenda, and with the story out in today's Observer, there doesn't seem to be any point in continuing to hold this.

As such, we are releasing Garvin & Associates' Visions for New York City: Housing and the Public Realm in its entirety via Streetsblog. Below, you can download the document as a PDF file:

Full Report (6.45 MB)

Or download the report piece by piece:

Introduction (0.6 MB)

Part I: Increasing the Housing Supply

Ch.1: Platform Opportunities (1.0 MB)

Ch. 2: Waterfront Opportunities (1.1 MB)

Ch. 3: Transit-Oriented Development Opportunities (1.4 MB)

Part II: Improving the Public Realm

Ch. 4: Public Realm Opportunities (2.1 MB)

Next Steps (0.4 MB)

Note: These PDF files were made by scanning a photocopied paper document, so the image quality is poor.

In today's New York Sun Bradley Hope scoops up the first follow-up interview with former DOT Bicycle Program Director Andrew Vesselenovitch after his controversial resignation letter. Vesselenovitch has a big story to tell and I have a feeling that this isn't the last we've heard of it:

Mr. Vesselinovitch relinquished his job as director of the bicycle program at the Department of City Planning to get to what he thought was a position that had some power, he said. Having done similar work in San Francisco, he said he knew there was potential for change once the ball got rolling.

Things weren't what they seemed, he said, and earlier this month he quit his position at the Department of Transportation after five years to pursue a degree in architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology. His decision was based mainly on disenchantment with his boss, Commissioner Iris Weinshall, he said in his first interview since leaving the department.

"The city certainly hasn't done everything that it can do to make it safer, or to really use bicycles," Mr. Vesselinovitch said. "My goal was to see bicycling as an easy way to get around town. Right now there are a lot of obstacles that the city can improve and in recent years has even created."

"I want streets to be living places," he said, "places more dedicated to social activities, rather than just conduits for motor vehicles."