Good development entails the transportation, energy, water, and sewage systems -- not to mention schools, parks, and other municipal services -- required to support it. And it's not just a matter of installing such systems at the time of development, but also maintaining them over the long term and expanding them for new uses and new growth.
Contrary to concerns about "overdevelopment," dense urban areas such as New York City are the most environmentally efficient places for people to live and work. New York's small living spaces and reliance on public transportation combine to yield the lowest carbon footprint per capita in the United States.
Forum to examine the current model for financing transportation projects in New York State and develop a new paradigm for funding these projects.
8am-1pm, Friday, December 2, 2011 @ McGraw-Hill Conference Center
Program description: http://www.navigatingopportunities.com/money/program.php
Register: http://www.navigatingopportunities.com/money/register.php
In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., Julia Vitullo-Martin complains, law enforcement and city planners have installed jersey barriers, concrete planters and other "ugly measures that evoke fear rather than safety." In her op-ed for USA Today she calls it "militarized urbanism."
Hulking and obsolete, the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center may not look like a well-stuffed piggy bank.
But it is. Or could be.
At a recent meeting of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Regional Economic Development Council for New York City, Regional Plan Association President Robert Yaro proposed selling Javits for redevelopment--netting the state $4 billion.
New York was once a pioneer in building ambitious public works to knit a far-flung state together, from the Erie Canal to the Brooklyn Bridge to the country's first subway system.
These days, the state is struggling just to maintain and replace aging infrastructure--from roads and bridges to water and sewer systems to dams and power lines--let alone launch 21st-century projects like high-speed trains to meet the needs of a growing population.
"Hey, that's really Michael Bloomberg himself, in person, so this must be important," said the young tourist next to me, raising her camera high as the mayor congratulated his top aides for designing and completing the East River Waterfront Esplanade.
Running a mere 600 feet between Wall Street and Maiden Lane, the esplanade that was officially opened yesterday is of outsized importance. When completed, it will be the last link in the pedestrian waterfront loop between the East River and the Hudson, one more critical piece of real estate in the ancient dream of a fully accessible New York waterfront. Of the city's 520 miles of shoreline, much of it once industrialized and polluted, relatively few spots allow human beings actual contact with the water itself - but this is one of them.
