Photos by Chris Opfer

Tenants want the bank that foreclosed on this building on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope to start putting up money to make much-needed repairs.

The housing bubble may have burst a few years ago, but many New Yorkers -- and the buildings they live in -- can still feel the pain. An estimated 30,000 foreclosures are pending in courts in the five boroughs, with many cases lingering for years as owners and lenders abandon the properties and leave renters to cope with woeful and often dangerous conditions.

While much of the attention during the crisis has focused on owners of single-family dwellings who cannot meet their mortgage payments and end up losing their homes, thousands of renters whose landlords default also have their homes at risk. Recent litigation and a push for new legislation have combined to shine a light on this situation, but changes are not coming soon enough for residents whose homes are literally falling apart.

"It's a widespread problem in the city," said City Councilmember Brad Lander, who introduced legislation to tackle the issue last spring. "With foreclosures, you wind up with this long limbo period where the owner basically just stops taking care of the building. There are quite a few buildings where tenants have had to live without things like heat and hot water as a result."

Looking for Relief

Many of those tenants have turned to the courts to try to force banks to take responsibility for the properties on which they foreclose. Last month, residents of a 20-apartment building on Longfellow Avenue in the Bronx that is currently in the midst of foreclosure proceedings filed a motion seeking to compel New York Community Bank to put up the money necessary to carry out much needed repairs. The building fell into disrepair shortly after it was purchased in 2007 by a company identified as 1255 Longfellow LLC with a $1.1 million loan. Since then the city has issued the building 117 housing code violations including sporadic heat and hot water during winter months, widespread mold and caving ceilings.

In May, six elderly and or disabled tenants of a small rent-regulated apartment building in Brooklyn that is currently in foreclosure proceedings filed a similar motion. They claim that they have been forced to lived with deteriorating conditions, including intermittent heat and hot water, a leaking roof in danger of collapse and an unsecured front door, since the building's owner defaulted on a $1.85 million mortgage more than two years ago.

As in the Bronx, these tenants want the court to force the bank to put up the money necessary to make the building habitable. Both cases are bolstered by the precedent set last year when the Bronx Supreme Court ordered a bank in a foreclosure action to advance $2.5 million for the purposes of making repairs at 10 overleveraged and dilapidated apartment buildings.

The Brooklyn building sits smack dab in the heart of Fifth Avenue -– Park Slope's bustling main thoroughfare -– across the street from a hip Thai restaurant and around the corner from a new, white table-clothed steakhouse. Inside, it is worlds away from the brownstones, boutique shops and organic coffee houses that helped earn Park Slope the New York Magazine's "Most Livable Neighborhood in New York" titlelast year.

According to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the property currently has 109 outstanding housing code violations (up from 91 at the time the tenants filed their motion), ranging from inadequate lighting near the front entryway and crumbling plaster to mold, exposed electrical wire and mice infestation. That's not to mention the broken lights and windows as well as cracked floor tiles in individual apartments. In July, the former owner -- 294 5th Ave. Associates LLC -- was ranked second on Public Advocate Bill deBlasio's list of the city's worst landlords.

Residents of this Park Slope apartment building say the locks on both front doors remain broken.

More than four months have passed since the motion was filed and the building's front door remains unsecured, the locks on both the front and interior door broken. "That's always been a problem. They fix it and then all of a sudden it's damaged again," said Raymond Jimenez, a retired butcher who has lived in his fourth floor apartment for 48 years. Although a court-appointed receiver recently hired workers to resurface the building's roof, leaks continue.

Recipe for Disaster

The scenario leading up to such cases generally went as follows: A landlord obtained a mortgage and purchased an apartment building during the booming 1990s or early 2000s, often for more than the property was worth. In the Park Slope case, "the owner got a mortgage for $1.85 million. The most that the property could have supported was probably about $500,000," says Brent Meltzer, an attorney for South Brooklyn Legal Services who represents the tenants.

By 2008 or so, the housing market began to dive, and the property was no longer worth as much as the owner paid for it. Operating costs such as water and insurance also increased dramatically, making it difficult for landlords to cover their costs. In rent regulated buildings, the owners were limited in how much they could raise rent, and even in buildings that were not regulated, the market kept landlords from increasing rents. This left the landlords to choose between using rent proceeds to meet mortgage payments or for the building's maintenance and repair. The former inevitably won out, but many owners still could not pay the mortgage, and so the lending bank eventually foreclosed on the property.

A bank that forecloses on a property does not officially become the property owner -- with both the right and responsibility to enter the building and perform necessary maintenance and repairs -- until the legal process is completed. During the intervening months or years, the property and its tenant remains in a no man's land of sorts, according to Lander, whose district stretches from the Columbia Waterfront to Borough Park and includes Park Slope. "The bank brings the foreclosure, the owner essentially walks away and there's no one left to take care of the building," he said.

The court typically appoints a receiver to collect rent and use the money to perform limited maintenance, but not necessarily to make significant physical improvements. "The receiver is not there to fix up the building and make it better. Its role is basically to do general upkeep," Meltzer said.

In the Brooklyn case, the court didn't appoint a receiver until almost a year after the foreclosure suit began. A court order limits him from spending more than $2,000 on a single repair without the bank's consent.

Physical problems often occur in these rent regulated apartment buildings facing foreclosure both because the buildings are typically older and require substantial maintenance and because the relatively low rent income made it difficult for landlords to make major repairs.

Money for Maintenance

The foreclosure process, said Meltzer, is messy. "Everyone is trying to point the finger at someone else. Meanwhile, the tenants are just sort of stuck sitting there without repairs being done," he said.

In an effort to change that City Council is considering three bills. Intro 494, proposed by Lander, would require a bank seeking foreclosure to post a bond to cover the cost of any emergency repairs along with fees and fines for housing code violations. Housing committee chair Erik Dilan has two measures: Intro 500, which would make a bank seeking to foreclose on an apartment building responsible for maintaining the property, and Intro 501, which would require a bank bringing a foreclosure action to register with the city housing department within 10 days after it initiate the action.

The measures' supporters and tenants’ attorneys reason that banks should be responsible for the conditions at foreclosure properties because they helped create those conditions by providing "overleveraged" loans, mortgages with a monthly payment that cannot possibly be covered by rental income.

"The problem over the past five years has been the banks bankrolling this," Ian Davie, a Legal Services attorney representing the Bronx tenants, said. "It's very straight forward: The income from the building can't support the debt service on the mortgage."

New York Community Bank, the city’s largest multifamily lender, is also one of the largest overleveraged loan bankrollers, according to Davie. In June, city Housing Commissioner Matthew M. Wambua wrote a letter to the bank, imploring it to take action to improve the conditions at a number of distressed properties in the bank's portfolio. Noting that the bank's "holdings are some of the most distressed properties in New York," said the buildings cost the city money by lowering nearby property values (and tax revenue) and requiring increased police, fire and sanitation services. Wambusa went on to warn the bank, "It cannot be the responsibility of the City of New York to subsidize irresponsible property owners."

But not everyone agrees that a foreclosing bank should be responsible for building upkeep and maintenance. "If enacted, the legislation will discourage financial institutions from extending mortgages in the city, as they will then face monetary obligations that have become completely unpredictable and wholly disproportionate to their mortgage investment,” says Christopher H. Palmer of Cullen and Dykman, LLP, the law firm representing New York Community Bank in the Bronx litigation.

In an April hearing on the bills deputy housing Commissioner Ruthanne Visnauskas questioned the legality of requiring a bank that doesn’t technically own a building to enter it and make repairs. Visnauskas also expressed concern that "the obligations imposed by 494 and 500 may discourage lenders from providing mortgages" and "imposing financial requirements may deter lenders from foreclosing altogether."

Palmer says that lawmakers should instead focus on speeding up foreclosure proceedings and requiring that a receiver be appointed immediately after the proceedings are initiated. "We need to expedite and streamline the New York foreclosure process if we are going to return these distressed properties back to responsible ownership and better management," he said.

Perhaps the one thing that everyone agrees on is that the foreclosure process leaves tenants in a precarious situation.

Jimenez pays $152 a month for his apartment. While renters paying 10 times as much or more for their apartments may have a hard time empathizing with him, Meltzer said there are a host of reasons why they should be concerned about him and his neighbors. "No matter how much they're paying, no one should be living without heat or hot water, especially elderly and disabled tenants and especially in New York City," Meltzer said.

The Park Slope tenants, he said, have earned their homes. "Don’t forget, this was a different neighborhood 10 years ago. This wasn’t Park Slope, this was Gowanus. These are the people who stabilized the neighborhood when New York was falling apart. They lived there in the '70s and '80s when people who are living there now wouldn't dare to," he said.

So Meltzer, Lander, Davie and others plan to continue working on behalf of these and similar tenants. "This is a problem that's not going to go away anytime soon," Davie said. "We will certainly keep trying to fight to hold banks accountable."

From the morning that the planes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Gotham Gazette has been covering the efforts of New Yorkers to cope with the unthinkable, to rebuild their city and to adjust to a new, often frightening time. For three years, Gotham Gazette provided intensive coverage of the efforts to recover and then rebound in Rebuilding NYC, and though less intensive, our reporting on the myriad of issues raised by the attacks has continued.

Below we offer some selections from our 10 years of coverage – from Sept, 11, 2001 through today. We apologize for any formatting glitches in the older stories.

Photo by Brian Boyd

Twin Towers Account: An account from lower Manhattan of the first few awful hours after the attack. (Sept. 11, 2001)

Immigrants Under Attack: Sept. 11 have had a sharp impact on many Americans. But for immigrants and members of some minority groups, including Arab Americans and Muslims, the effects have been particularly dire. (Oct. 1, 2001).

Everybody Loves New York -- For Now: Almost as soon as the hijacked airliners hit the Twin Towers, Americans began reaching out to New York, feeling shock and horror, expressing support, trying somehow to help. The city that much of America once loved to hate was now the subject of sympathy, admiration and even affection. (Oct. 15, 2001)

Not Always as Sweet: Debbie Almontaser, an activist and educator, writes of life as a Muslim in New York before and after 9/11. (Fall 2001)

Living Near Ground Zero: Many of the people who live in Tribeca, the financial district and tucked into lofts hidden above store fronts around City Hall soon returned to their homes. Three months after they fled from the unimaginable, they have returned to live with the inescapable. (December 2001)

Photo by ocad 123

The Fire Department: The terrorist attacks had perhaps their most devastating impact on the fire department. The police department lost 23 and the Port Authority lost 37 uniformed officers. But 343 firefighters died. (Dec. 3, 2001)

The 'New" New York Skyline: Architecture critic Paul Goldberger discusses what New Yorkers feel and face as they struggle to make their city whole. (Jan. 25, 2002)

Art and Artists After September 11: Jon Stewart moderates a discussion with Karin Batten, Spalding Gray, Susan Sarandon and Wendy Wassertsein. (May 2002)

Rebuilding by Consensus: Nine months after the attacks, New Yorkers imagined what they wanted to see in lower Manhattan. (June 10, 2002)

A Conversation with Daniel Libeskind: The architect, whose design was then a finalist for the trade center site, discuses his plan and the ideas behind it. (Feb. 20, 2003)

Virtual Tour of the Chosen Design: An in-depth look at Daniel Libeskind's original design for the World Trade Center site. (March 2003)

A Year with Libeskind: The winning design for the trade center site evolves. (March 1, 2004)

Mapping Ground Zero: Dozens of ways of looking at lower Manhattan, past, present and future.

9/11 and Inappropriate Art: Harsh words and controversies flare over what can be displayed near Ground Zero. (Sept. 9, 2005)

Photo by Matt Morgan

The Heroes of 9/11 Are Getting Sick: Working at Ground Zero seems to have been even more dangerous than initially suspected, say health researchers as rescue workers die from illnesses that seem to be related to working on "the pile." But James Zadroga's death in particular has redirected attention to a problem that, experts say, will likely continue for decades. (Jan. 30, 2006)

The Price of Increased Surveillance: Eighty-two police cameras didn't thwart the 2010 Times Square bomb attempt. But in response, the mayor called for more cameras. Will technology keep us safe? Take away rights? Or both?

Photo by Matt Morgan

9/11 Memorial Nears Completion: On the 10-year anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the National September 11th Memorial will open to the public, marking the end of a complex, drawn-out and sometimes chaotic process. (July 14, 2011)

Letting History Speak for Itself: An interview with memorial designer Michael Arad. (July 15, 2011)

Improving the Zadroga Act: Those who rushed to the World Trade Center site right after the 9/11 attacks hope a new report will boost their demands to aid fellow responders who now suffer from cancer. (Sept. 6, 2011)

Progress on Fulton Street: After delays and cost overruns that threatened to all but destroy the project, parts of the Lower Manhattan transit hub have started to open. (Sept. 7, 2011)

Tallying the Losses: Some sense of the almost incalculable impact of 9/11 can be gained from then numbers. Andrew Beveridge offers a statistical portrait of our losses – personal and economic. (Sept. 8, 2011)

Photo by Leonem

Hunters Point is one of the developments the administration hopes will boost the supply of affordable housing in the city – but how convenient or affordable will it be?

Albany last month finally found a way to continue rent regulations in the city. But the new regulations barely address the bigger issues facing housing in the city -- long-term affordability for most tenants and homeowners.

The city's long-term sustainability plan, PlaNYC2030, does acknowledge that challenge. And in its update released earlier this year, the Bloomberg administration takes these efforts a bit further, acknowledging the importance of saving housing and the neighborhoods where people live. However, that too falls short because the mayor still puts the priority on zoning to promote new housing and gives short shrift to preserving our neighborhoods.

After the Bubble

On the bright side, New York City is doing better overall than many other cities, according to a recent report by NYU's Furman Center, though comparisons can prove difficult because New York's housing, with so many large rental buildings, differs from that of most other cities. Recent announcements of some major new luxury apartment and office deals seem to suggest New York is a long way from any catastrophic collapse.

Despite these hopeful signs, a raft of problems still afflicts housing in New York. Three years after the housing bubble burst, hundreds of construction sites around the city remain stalled. Developers face a shortage of cash, and banks are reluctant to finance purchases. Also, cuts to federal rent subsidies are hurting both tenants and building owners. Public housing is broke, and the city housing authority is looking for private partners to bail it out. Other staples of affordable housing in New York, such as the Mitchell-Lama program, have dwindled after decades of private sellouts.

In a flat economy with high unemployment, tenants and some homeowners in the city face big tax bites. Many homeowners grapple with mortgage debt, while housing values remain stagnant. There are some 40,000 homeless peopleliving in shelters, over 9,000 households currently affected by foreclosures, about 700 buildings vacated by city order and a record-high stock of what experts euphemistically call "distressed housing" -- homes that are poorly maintained, over-mortgaged and in deep trouble.. And the Rent Stabilization Association reports that last year over 13,000 apartments were decontrolled and thus less likely to remain affordable.

According to the Real Deal, "Home prices declined between the last quarter of 2010 and the first of 2011 in every borough except Queens where housing prices were flat but remain about one third lower than peak values in the fourth quarter of 2006 and mid-2007." And the Wall Street Journal reported that many condos and homes in the city have borrowed more than the current value of the property.

As both housing advocates and real estate investors are quick to point out, housing is not just about a roof over your head, it is about having a home in a decent living environment, or "location, location, location" to use the real estate industry phrase. And affordable neighborhoods are in trouble.

During the real estate bubble, many tenants and homeowners in affordable apartments and homes that were subsidized with public money either took cash incentives to move or were pushed out of their homes. This fractured their connections to friends and neighborhood, a prime element in the city's lively communities. A mix of long-time residents was replaced by a homogeny of young singles seeking the "authentic" neighborhoods that are no more. The remaining affordable neighborhoods are looking at the possibility of more overcrowding, less money for building maintenance and more vacant buildings.

Gaps in the Plan

Looking at the city's long-term housing plan, you would never know there had been a bubble or that we cannot simply build our way out of any crisis. The PlaNYC2030 four-year update, released on Earth Day this year, is all about building hope and enabling new apartment construction. With its penchant for numerical targets, the plan focuses on how many homes the city plans to create and preserve by stimulating growth through zoning changes.

One of the plan's goals is to have completed 165,000 affordable units by 2014. Almost two thirds of these will be renovations of existing units, and only one third will be the result of new construction. All accounts suggest that numerical goal will be met, though it's not clear what is expected to happen after that – almost certainly under the next mayor, who may very well ignore this administration’s plan altogether.

As commendable as the accomplishments may be, meeting the 2014 target will not solve the city's more deep-rooted affordable housing problems. The city’s housing plan is all about increasing supply, mostly by encouraging market-rate development, yet the real crisis has been the loss of existing affordable units. If the past is prelude to the future then the city may end up losing more affordable housing than it is able to create. The mayor has on many occasions claimed that attracting more people with higher incomes is a sign of a successful city, yet more upscale housing is likely to increase rents and house values in existing affordable neighborhoods.

The emphasis on encouraging new construction flows from the prediction that almost a million more people will live in New York by 2030. The 2010 census refuted the city's optimistic population projection -- although the city charges that the census undercounted in many neighborhoods. However, the jury is still out, and the optimistic estimate of growth looks more like a goal to be attained than a challenge to be met. (See my 2007 analysis, which cited PlaNYC2030's departure from standard projection methods).

To house these additional New Yorkers, the administration hopes to build more housing near transit stops and on cleaned-up industrial land. It claims that this "transit-oriented development" (defined in the plan as projects within a half mile of mass transit, which covers 70 percent of the city) and "brownfields reclamation" (cleaning up and building on abandoned industrial sites) will help achieve the mayor’s goal of a "greener, greater New York."

However, Brian Paul and Melissa Checker, both writing in Gotham Gazette, have questioned how effective these strategies will be. As evidence of what they hope to accomplish, the city's planners point to large-scale projects for new development such as Hunters Point and Willets Point in Queens. It is a bit of stretch to call either of them transit-oriented when they are expected to include substantial parking and will have to rely on the declining fortunes of bus transit in the outer boroughs.

Then there is the issue of who will be able to afford to live there. Some projects , including Hunters Point, define affordable by using the official area median income, which is almost twice as high as the median in New York City. Thus, most people with low incomes will not be able to afford these homes. Another large project slated for affordable housing, Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, has yielded only a basketball arena after some eight years of planning.

The most telling map in the 2030 plan update housing section shows the concentration of "affordable" homes created under the mayor's New Housing Marketplace plan since 2004. They are concentrated in the neighborhoods in central Brooklyn and upper Manhattan that have experienced intense gentrification and where many more affordable units have been lost. The map only shows the number of new units added, not those that have been lost, ignoring the fact that some of these neighborhoods now have fewer moderately priced homes than they did in 2004.

The new version of the 2030 plan does acknowledge the significant erosion of affordability guarantees (like those provided by the Mitchell-Lama program), and at one point proposes extension of these guarantees. It remains to be seen whether efforts to do this will gain any traction in years to come.

A Nod to Neighborhoods

One of the admirable changes to the mayor's long-term plan is that the housing section is now called Housing and Neighborhoods. Missing in the earlier version was any idea that housing is only one aspect of the quality of life in the hundreds of diverse city neighborhoods.

As welcome as this change may be, when you dig into the plan's content, it's hard to find any major role for neighborhoods. The mayor remains focused on bringing in new housing -- not on a set of neighborhood plans for improving housing, or a plan in which both City Hall and communities participate. There is no clear role for community-based organizations, civic groups or community boards. The city’s 59 community boards, though poorly funded and lacking official power, are the only official institutions at the neighborhood level.

Although the 2030 update proposes a Greener Greater Communities initiative and mentions a particular example involving community groups in East New York, this focuses on energy conservation, open space and other environmental improvements without necessarily addressing the big question of affordability in a neighborhood that has very high levels of foreclosures. The plan's contribution to community involvement is summed up in the proposal to create a web site, Change By Us, that would encourage people to organize to solve problems by providing them with information. To the thousands of dedicated housing activists around the city who are already organizing and whose real problem is not information but more support from public agencies, this could sound a bit patronizing. Perhaps what is needed is a better way advocates for affordable housing can help shape city housing policy so that it truly strengthens neighborhoods.

In the 2030 plan update, zoning remains the main tool for promoting new housing development as it has been in the last decade. The City Planning Department boasts of having completed a record 100 rezoning plans in that time period.

The plan does not address, even briefly, concerns that zoning changes may have contributed to the wave of gentrification and displacement or fueled the real estate frenzy, as strongly hinted in another report by NYU's Furman Center. That study showed how zoning changes protected many white, middle class neighborhoods by reducing options for new development, while concentrating growth in lower-income communities of color, the very neighborhoods where large numbers of people are being priced out of their apartments. The city's inclusionary zoning policy, which gives developers bonuses for building affordable housing, has produced less than 2,000 units over the last decade while more than 200,000 affordable units were lost.

Of the 11 initiatives listed in the Housing and Neighborhoods section of the updated PlaNYC2030, the last two are the most important because they focus on preservation and not new development. The first, initiative 10, sets a goal to "preserve and upgrade existing housing," and identifies new and beefed-up programs to finance building rehabilitation; it proposes strengthening existing affordability guarantees so that they last longer. Also, the Small Owner Repair Program and other initiatives would help preserve 34,000 housing units through 2014.

Initiative 11 is potentially the more path-breaking because it aims to "proactively protect the quality of neighborhoods and housing." The plan commits the city to the important task of identifying distressed properties. Its goal is to evaluate 1,000 at-risk buildings in three years, most likely only a fraction of the total.

The two short paragraphs dedicated to this item provide little sense of where this is going. Overall, these two initiatives could represent a welcome change in focus by the Bloomberg administration. It remains to be seen, however, whether they are an afterthought or a genuine move to strike out in a new direction, away from a focus on new development and toward greater emphasis on preservation.

Tom Angotti is director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning & Development and co-editor of Progressive Planning Magazine.

Photo by Green Jobs Now

Members of Sustainable South Bronx and Sarah Lawrence College students install a green roof on a dormitory.

In his scathing critique of the 1929 Regional Plan for New York and Its Environs, Lewis Mumford warned that it should be finally judged not "by its separate details, but by its drift." This holds true of PlaNYC as well.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg's sustainability agenda is chock full of urgent and unassailable proposals for "greening" the city, but is ultimately flawed by a narrow conception of sustainability, insufficient treatment of the economic potential of environmental policy, and a failure to lay out a program for insuring that future growth is equitably distributed. Its glaring omission of "green collar jobs," along with a land use agenda dominated by real estate and its timid proposals for reforming procurement policy all mar its lofty goals. PlaNYC reflects the Bloomberg administration's resistance to innovative approaches that would provide a modicum of social sustainability in terms of jobs, income and neighborhood stability.

To be sure, Bloomberg understands that public and private efforts to foster a healthy environment have significant implications for the local economy. In a 2008 speech, he lamented, "For far too long, environmentalism has gotten pitted against economic development." He went on to declare that clean energy would "be the oil gusher of the 21st century" and that "going green is the best -- indeed the only -- pro-growth strategy."

Yet conspicuously missing from the original PlaNYC report was a discussion of green collar jobs and industries, or for that matter, any explicit strategy for green growth. The recent update includes a token two-page section on "Economic Opportunity," but the overarching framework remains the same.

Instead of promoting development from within, PlaNYC is preoccupied with how to solicit outside investment by "attracting companies and talent:" and "new people" who "bring new ideas and innovation." Bloomberg continues to emphasize large-scale redevelopment projects, characterized as "smart growth" despite their spotty track record in terms of yielding fiscal and economic benefits, and their failure to generate trickle-down benefits to distressed neighborhoods.

The report also offers no roadmap for how the city could augment local production efforts to meet the changing needs of a green economy, including those encompassed by PlaNYC initiatives. Finally, because the administration's notion of "sustainability" does not consider social equity, the plan offers no discussion of the level, distribution and stability of income for current New York City residents, and makes no effort to address disparities in economic opportunity such as those in London's sustainability plan. As far as we can tell from the PlaNYC report, the people of New York City will be as unequal in 2030 as they are today, and low-wage jobs will continue to drive the city's job growth.

Green Collar Jobs and Industries

The PlaNYC programs have already helped stimulate investment in the retrofitting of buildings, installation of solar panels and improvements to the city’s infrastructure and mass transit, to give a few examples. This should provide local economic development officials with the opportunity to affect how such investments ripple through the local economy, the types of jobs they create, and in some cases, even their wage and benefit levels. However, while PlaNYC emphasizes the many jobs that would be created in construction, maintenance, forestry and engineering, it does not chart a plan for how these investments could create a green industrial sector.

A study commissioned by the mayors of Minneapolis and Saint Paul on green economic development concluded, "Jobs aimed at retrofitting and renewable energy installation, while critical to meet environmental goals … have a short-term focus. Unless these programs are tied to local manufacturing, they will have a limited impact on the long-term development of the region."

The transition to a green economy can afford New York an opportunity to reclaim some manufacturing jobs by identifying niches where local manufacturers have a competitive advantage and strengthening the supply chains to provide the materials and goods for projects stimulated by PlaNYC expenditures. This local production also would decrease greenhouse gas emissions by reducing the distance between manufactured goods and their final destination.

Other cities have attempted to do this. They have built local capacity through cluster initiatives aimed at connecting core businesses with suppliers and new technologies, and fostered the creation of green business incubators to provide logistical support and financing for startup companies.

PlaNYC, however, fails to appreciate the extent to which growth can be achieved by augmenting local production efforts that meet local needs. Instead, PlaNYC's "Transforming to a Green Economy" focuses more on promoting economic opportunities in New York to national and international companies.

Addressing this failure to support fledgling local businesses would require the city's Industrial Development Agency to reallocate its resources. Currently, about 70 percent of the agency's assistance goes to large commercial projects such as office buildings and large retail complexes. Instead the IDA should target subsidies as part of a strategic plan for promoting green industry while strengthening the market for green products by mandating sustainable business practices as a condition for receiving a subsidy.

Power of the Purchase

PlaNYC initiatives will require the city to buy new goods and services, creating a larger market for green products. The city can put this purchase power to good use.

Progressive municipal administrations across the country have long recognized that government's purchasing and contracting can generate jobs and shape local labor markets. Many experts agree that it is entirely justifiable to give local bidders an advantage over outsiders because of the spin-off benefits a local contractor provides.

The updated PlaNYC report discusses the current administration's policy of "environmentally preferable purchasing," which requires agencies to consider the human health and environmental impacts in procurement decisions. New York City procured almost $17 billion worth of supplies, services and construction last year, more than any other city in the country, making it a potentially powerful customer.

Despite this, Bloomberg administration does not seem to have a local purchasing policy. The recent decision to award Nissan a 10-year exclusive contract to provide a new taxi fleet is a case in point. The city rejected a rival proposal by Karsan that would have manufactured its taxis in Brooklyn, generating hundreds of stable, high-paying jobs.

Land Grab

Adam Friedman, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, has argued, "It is pointless to invest in green jobs if they have no place to go." Indeed, a study by the Center for Community Innovation at UC-Berkeley contends, "Cities that preserve land already zoned as industrial will place themselves at a competitive advantage for attracting green businesses."

Numerous studies have demonstrated that space is the primary challenge facing New York City's manufacturing businesses. Rather than addressing this issue as part of a green jobs initiative, PlaNYC exacerbates these pressures through its real estate-led development approach that privileges the "highest and best" use of land. This means, for example, that housing almost always takes precedence over manufacturing.

With the exception of the Industrial Business Zones created in select areas, this continues the administration policies of the last 10 years. It has already rezoned approximately 20 percent of the city's industrial land and continues to allow big box stores, hotels and other nonindustrial uses in manufacturing zones.

The resulting real estate speculation is only fueled by the PlaNYC report. It, for example, proposes the rezoning of many manufacturing zoned areas -- especially in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island -- as the solution to future housing needs. PlaNYC also assumes that "underutilized waterfronts" and any site within a 10-minute walk to a subway should be reserved for housing, thereby cutting off industrial activities from mass transit and the waterfront. This is not inconsequential from an environmental perspective since every large barge that brings material into the city replaces as many as 60 trucks.

The Quality of Work

Karen Chapple, a planning professor at UC-Berkeley, reminds us, "Despite the rallying cry for green jobs as pathways out of poverty, a green economy does not necessarily mean well-paying, green-collar jobs unless local job standards and training programs are in place." Indeed, a sizable number of potential green-collar jobs entail redeploying workers in industries that tend to pay low wages. For this reason, another Center for Community Innovation reportlists living wage and benefits ordinances as its first recommendation to policymakers.

This is especially relevant to New York City, which has seen a sharp rise in the working poor and an unprecedented level of income inequality. New York City ranks worst with respect to inequality of household income among the 50 largest cities in the U.S., with the top 1 percent of the population receiving 44 percent of income in 2007, according to a report published by the Fiscal Policy Institute. A recent study by the Drum Major Institute further details the extent to which the city's lowest-paid industries dominate new job growth.

Despite these trends, PlaNYC does not incorporate wage or local hiring requirements in its projects. In fact, the Bloomberg administration is fighting a City Council bill that would require the recipients of economic development subsidies for large projects to pay their employees a living wage of $10 an hour with medical benefits or $11.50 without. Meanwhile, the city has subsidized the creation of poverty wage jobs through its awarding of grants, tax incentives, and land use changes to stadiums and shopping complexes. In order for the city to achieve equitable and sustainable long-term economic growth, public investment in green industries must be tied to a living wage.

In the absence of leadership from the Bloomberg administration, the task of coordinating the city's economic development activities with its sustainability plan has largely been left to non-governmental organizations such as Urban Agenda (now the Alliance for a Greater New York), the Pratt Center for Community Development, NYC Apollo Alliance, and grassroots efforts such as Green Worker Cooperatives. In 2009 Urban Agenda and the Center for American Progress published the New York City Green-Collar Jobs Roadmap, a detailed overview of workforce development resources and needs, a breakdown of potential growth industries for a high-road green economy, and a host of essential policy recommendations to be incorporated into PlaNYC.

Despite such initiatives, the Mayor's Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability still has not engaged in a meaningful discussion of green collar jobs and industries. To be sure, PlaNYC's reports contain an implicit strategy for economic development, assuming that becoming greener will make New York ripe for outside investment. The reports also explicitly recognize that many of its initiatives will result in job creation if workers are adequately trained. However, the lack of a specific plan for green collar jobs cannot be dismissed as an oversight given the cacophony of voices that called on the city to address this shortcoming after the release of the first report.

Perhaps the problem stems from two conflicting agendas within this administration. Economic development officials have been charged with pursuing growth at any cost while the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and other agencies seek to mitigate the harmful effects of growth. If economic development officials considered growth as more a strategy than goal, more a means than an end, then PlaNYC might have focused on harnessing the emerging green economy to achieve a more just and sustainable city.

Dan Steinberg is a doctoral student in Urban Planning at Columbia University.

Photo by bitchcakesny

Critics complain street fairs like this one in Manhattan cost the city money, clog traffic and are too monotonous. But people come out for them all the same.

New Yorkers will have fewer sausage and lemonade stands to frequent this spring and summer.

The Bloomberg administration is limiting the hours that street fairs can operate and restricting how far they spread out. Citing budget constraints the city is cutting the number of police officers available to provide security at the events. And it also plans to discontinue some long-standing street fairs.

The new policy will please New Yorkers who are bothered by the traffic disruptions the fairs cause and the monotony of many of them. But those who enjoy the events will have fewer chances to browse costume jewelry racks while eating funnel cake. Vendors, production companies and the organization sponsoring the fairs all face a loss of profit. And while the city's new rules may save money, experts on the fairs says the chance will do little to nothing to address the dreary sameness affecting many of the al fresco bazaars.

New This Season

The number of street fairs citywide faces a roughly 25 percent reduction this year, and large events cannot be held on the same strip within subsequent weeks. A street festival, to use the city's term, is defined as "a street activity requiring a multi-day and/or a multi-block street closure," by to the Office of Citywide Event Coordination and Management's website.

Last year city streets hosted 321 fairs that generated $1.6 million in revenue for the city. But the city also paid police $4 million in overtime to watch over the festivities. Under Bloomberg's proposed cuts there would be roughly 240 fairs this year.

To cut back further, the city is denying permits to traditional street fairs seeking new sponsorship in an effort to limit how many will operate this year. Long-running fairs in Brooklyn on Cortelyou Road and Ditmas Avenue and a Church Avenue Street Fair has been canceled because the original director, Rabbi Zvi Florence, passed away in March, and the city would not transfer the permit to a new official.

"For anyone to call this a 'new fair activity' rather than an extension of the previous 25 years has never been to our Church Avenue Fair," Larry Jayson, president of the Abermarle Neighborhood Association, told city officials in a letter in late April. "This is the same fair, same location, same event, just new sponsorship."

Feeling the Effects

As street fair season begins, operators are trying to adjust to the new rules.

Clearview Festival Productions, which organizes street fairs, has chosen to consolidate events in order to avoid reducing operating hours.

"In some cases some of those events were not practical," said Robert Ashe, on-site manager for Clearview. "For the vendors, operating from 12 to 5 instead of 11 to 6 drastically affects their business."

Clearview will host 17 fewer fairs this spring and summer than last year, when it organized about 100 fairs. The company held its first 2011 street fair on March 19.

Robin Redmond, executive director of the Flatbush Development Corp., which coordinates the Flatbush Frolic, an annual seven-block street fair in September, worries that ending the fair at 5 p.m., an hour earlier than last year, could reduce profits and deter businesses and artists from participating.

"Vendors will receive a better return toward the end of the day," Redmond said.

The economics of street fairs in New York involve production companies, like Clearview, that receive a commission based on the vendors they attract. Sponsors, such as Flatbush Development, cover vendors' operational costs. In return, vendors pay a fee for the space they rent. They make profit based on how much money they generate in sales.

Redmond is requesting a special permit from the city to extend the fair an extra hour, but then vendors would not be able to arrive at their stations as early as in past years to set up their stands. Redmond believes the new rule may turn away potential new vendors but longtime partners will continue to take part in the Flatbush Frolic.

"We think our vendors will still be happy," Redmond said.

Tube Socks Galore

While the mayor's policy will save the city money, it does little to promote more diverse fairs. Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, a public policy organization focused on improving the city, believes New Yorkers seek a shift away from the ubiquitous mozzarepa, sausage and lemonade stands that he calls "more or less the same."

Just scaling back on street fairs is missing the larger point," Bowles, the coauthor of a study on street fairs, said. "The answer is a little more complicated."

City Councilmember Daniel Garodnick, who chairs of the Committee on Consumer Affairs, is drafting bills to encourage local businesses to participate in street fairs more and to promote communication between community boards and vendors.

"There's mainly soulless, corporate enterprises made up of socks and sausages," Garodnick said. "The city is granting permits to the same groups year after year. It should allow new groups to participate."

He suggested that production companies require vendors to submit requests to encourage a wider variety of vendors to apply for booths. Bowles believes new vendors should be offered discounts on renting their spaces as an incentive for them to sell their merchandise in street fairs.

Street fair production companies have "had a long time to improve what they do and have had little incentive to change the system. Some competition might be a good thing," Bowles said.

The Bloomberg administration's policy that prevents street fairs from obtaining new sponsorship may make the current situation worse, according to Bowles. "The unintended consequence is that it stifles innovation by not opening them up to new sponsoring organizations that want to be more unique," he said.

Traffic Alert

Garodnick also is proposing legislation that would require street fairs to post their location on a city website at least one week prior to the event.

His constituents have complained about the traffic changes made by street fairs. Streets are closed off as long as the fair is set up on that day.

"It will allow people to find them if they wish or avoid them if they don't," Garodnick said.

Photo by 350.org

The city's push for sustainability has helped spur New Yorkers to get involved in activities such as planting trees and improving the energy efficiency of their homes.

In just four years, PlaNYC has proved itself a remarkably valuable planning tool for New Yorkers, with unprecedentedly broad reach. In accessible language, it presents a unifying vision linking hundreds of components that go into New York City's environmental sustainability, from stormwater management to brownfields remediation to energy efficiency retrofits. Updated last month, PlaNYC provides a vision and guide to anyone seeking to do their part to improve the city's environment and reduce its carbon footprint.

In short, PlaNYC provides an overarching vision for New York City’s growth. While much of the plan -- both the original and the update -- addresses actions to be taken by government agencies, numerous objectives require mobilizing the rest of New York City – especially businesses, community-based organizations, labor unions and other groups that can advance PlaNYC’s goals. This knowledge is empowering. It enables the community-based organizations and businesses that the Pratt Center works with to orient their efforts to work toward specific sustainability goals, whether by planting trees, investing in energy efficiency upgrades, developing affordable housing, or through a host of other activities.

Yet while PlaNYC provides important guidance for neighborhood-level sustainability projects, it does not involve New Yorkers in creating the PlaNYC vision itself, or holding PlaNYC's creators accountable to achieving their commitments. What’s more, PlaNYC takes an end-run around the governing document of New York City, the City Charter, and the democratic process.

The Public and Planning

For much of the 20th century, the City Charter included a mandate for a master plan, but it proved unworkable. More recently, New Yorkers amended the charter to foster public participation in city planning. Section 197-a of the charter enables community boards and other groups to propose community-based plans for their neighborhoods' future development, and gives those plans official stature as part of the city’s land use resolution.

The City Planning Commission has approved 11 of those plans. The very drafting of them serves as vehicle for building neighborhood-wide consensus around planning priorities and for advancing them through the political and budget processes.

Yet in its own planning the city has largely ignored 197-a plans. In Williamsburg and Greenpoint, the city's rezoning fundamentally contradicted the neighborhoods' 197-a plans.

The complexity of implementation across city agencies has contributed to the plans' gaining so little traction. Another problem is that community boards must devise their visions in the dark, without knowledge of the city's own strategic priorities for the very same geography. If the city finds the plans unworkable, it is to some degree a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The charter also promotes public participation in planning through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure, or ULURP. Community boards get an advisory vote on proposed land use changes, all of them site-specific.

ULURP too, however, has suffered from a lack of a transparent and enforceable framework for planning in New York City. Needs that are inherently neighborhood, borough or citywide in scope -- notably for affordable housing and school capacity -- end up being addressed through individual land use decisions, often project by project. The result has been uneven and often highly inequitable distribution of both the benefits and burdens of development.

As its name indicates, ULURP focuses exclusively on land use decisions, reflecting the early 20th century view of planning as strictly a matter of building height, bulk and type of use. PlaNYC vividly reminds us that the development of a sustainable city involves many other dimensions and an obligation to update public participation to reflect the realities of planning today.

Portland's Example

The mayor’s new director of long term planning and sustainability, David Bragdon, should be well prepared to lead the way to a meaningfully public PlaNYC. As president of Portland, Oregon's Metro Council, Bragdon oversaw the Portland Plan, a visioning process that engaged 17,000 residents and provided direct input into the city's comprehensive plan, which is now going through a public review.

New York City is the only large city in the nation that does not have a comprehensive plan. The size and complexity of our metropolis make such planning challenging, but not impossible -- and in fact, imperative. A public review process of the kind that Portland used offers an important opportunity to get New Yorkers engaged and invested in planning for neighborhood growth -- and sustainability.

PlaNYC suffered a serious blow early on precisely because it lacked such engagement. As introduced on Earth Day 2007, PlaNYC called for charging people to drive into Manhattan’s business districts. Loud opposition immediately drowned out he congestion pricing plan, and efforts by the Bloomberg administration to rally popular support came too late. While the mayor and his staff had consulted planners and environmental groups, they had not pursued a community-engagement strategy ahead of the plan’s release. The administration had to abandon congestion pricing.

To its credit, the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability has learned from that mistake and begun to take meaningful steps toward community engagement. This time around, it held a series of sessions with leaders of community-based organizations.

Some of the ideas from these sessions are highlighted in the most recent edition of PlaNYC, such as this statement from Ana Dioguardi of Queens Community House: “I think that low-cost housing for families earning $40,000 or less is the number one thing many neighborhoods in the city need." Notably, though, the Queens initiatives highlighted in the plan itself, Hunters Point South and Willets Point, will provide relatively little housing for low-income households.

In addition, this month the city will launch its Change By Us social media site, which will help grassroots environmental projects working in support of PlaNYC’s goals to connect with neighbors, volunteers and other activists.

All of this activity represents a step forward. But it does not disguise the fact that PlaNYC is a document that is both top-down in its origins and accountable only on the terms its creators set. That needs to change. PlaNYC needs to be more than a public relations document; ultimately, it must be something that the city as a whole can meaningfully contribute to, and that is more than a shadow planning process.

Encouraging Involvement

For this to happen, the City Charter needs updating to make New Yorkers part of the process not just on individual land use decisions, but on more comprehensive strategic planning about the future of New York City. Last year's charter revisions made only minimal adjustments to existing land use provisions; a future Charter Revision Commission can and should do much more.

One step would be to transform PlaNYC from a project of the mayor's office to a charter-sanctioned civic body akin to the City Planning Commission, with representation that includes appointees from not only the mayor but other city- and borough-wide elected officials, as well as community board review.

PlaNYC could also assign each community board to identify its preferred measures to advance specific PlaNYC goals within its district boundaries. Routine participation in key decisions across all neighborhoods would help build a culture of local responsibility around planning and sustainability. That, in turn, would redirect energies away from NIMBY and into more constructive directions. It also would help reduce the unfair advantage wealthy communities now have over poorer ones in their ability to get their needs addressed through the planning process.

Finally, PlaNYC could build sustainability on the foundation of the City Charter's fair share provision. This requires that siting decisions for city-sponsored facilities, including power plants and waste transfer facilities, consider whether neighborhoods are already disproportionately burdened. PlaNYC could identify metrics -- from park access to air pollution levels -- that would allow the city to set targets for reducing the environmental burdens that growth places on our most vulnerable communities.

Such community engagement will require investment. Community boards need the expertise of planners, and the boards themselves need to become more reflective of the communities they represent -- both things beyond the ability of PlaNYC itself to change.

But PlaNYC won't be complete until it goes through an actual public process that shapes implementation. Public participation cannot be just a media project. The administration must now fulfill the opportunity it has created by giving New Yorkers a meaningful stake in PlaNYC’s direction and execution.

Alyssa Katz and Eve Baron are senior fellows at the Pratt Center for Community Development. Baron coordinated the Campaign for Community-Based Planning.

Photo by Shelley S.

Vision 2020, New York City's plan for its waterfront, seems to offer something for every New Yorker: promenades along the shore, bucolic wetlands with lots of fish and wildlife, ferries and kayaks, industrial jobs, and new condos with waterfront views.

Looming behind the plan's picturesque images of clear skies and kayakers, however, are the waterfront views from prime real estate locations. Behind the frothy rhetoric designed to garner public support, Vision 2020 is really a business plan.

Overall the plan envisions parks and natural habitats. It also anticipates creating infrastructure that would allow industrial areas -- smaller than they once were -- to thrive. And it calls for new housing "for people of diverse income levels."

Public access, natural restoration, industrial and commercial development – all reflect the interests of those who own land on and near the waterfront. Public promenades and parks on the waterfront will be valuable amenities for luxury towers, as will the "panoramic water views of great beauty."

The few natural areas in the plan are to be in locations that are not prime targets for large-scale development such as Jamaica Bay and along the Arthur Kill on Staten Island. They will be preserved as museum-like exceptions along the 578-mile coastline that is being masterfully engineered for the fun and profit of humans. The industry and public utilities on the waterfront will be allowed to stay where they are, although the plan does not address the negative environmental impacts of these industrial areas on surrounding communities.

In short, the city’s long-term plan for the waterfront, a revised version of the original 1992 plan, continues the trend toward conversion of the coastline from a working waterfront to prime real estate. It is perhaps fitting that the main feature in The New York Times about the city’s waterfront plan appeared in the Real Estate section.

Even with construction stalled by the recession, the article said, "The groundwork is being laid for the next great phase of waterfront development in the city." Casting a covetous eye at the Queens and Brooklyn waterfront, Jeffrey Levine of Levine Builders told the Times, "It is a great opportunity to buy land and warehouse it for development."

The Mayor’s Team Dives In

The plan has won praise from many civic groups, who have essentially entrusted the future of the waterfront to city hall. In November, to promote and celebrate the 2020 plan, the non-profit Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance held a conference that outlined the future as seen by the city's leading policymakers. Alliance board chairman John Watts praised Mayor Michael Bloomberg as "the waterfront mayor."

The 2020 plan has one important new element –- the plan to literally dive in the water. At the waterfront alliance gala, Deputy Mayor for Economic Development Robert Steel introduced this new element by calling for development not just on land but in the water. Steel said, "The waterfront is the sixth borough" -- just as important as the other boroughs. City Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden chimed in, saying, "The water is the heart of the city," a new territory to be explored. "Now is the time," she said, "to go from the water's edge into the water."

The plan envisions the waters surrounding the city to be so clean that people can swim, fish and boat in them. And it claims that more ferries and boat traffic are both possible and necessary.

Developers have sought for decades, to build out into the water using deep pilings and new buildings on piers. That also could be what going "into the water" means.

A recent show at the Museum of Modern Art proposed alternatives to address seal level rise that included salvaging waterfront real estate by essentially making it "waterproof." Is the waterfront plan helping to encourage such dubious and expensive?

The plan does not address such possibilities. Nor does it confront global climate change, which could cause the sea level to rise and dramatically alter the waterfront -- both on the water and along its edge. David Bragdon, director of the Mayor's Long-term Planning and Sustainability Office, suggested at the conference that there may need to be changes in zoning to either "harden" or "soften" sections of the shoreline -- presumably make them more resistant to sea level rise or return them to their natural state. But no one echoed his concerns.

While the prospect of future building in the water may be much too risky even for the most aggressive speculators, some citizen activists think more safeguards are needed to protect the shoreline. Marcy Benstock of the New York Clean Air Campaign believes the waterfront plan "is an invitation to catastrophic storm damage" and wants the city to "stop subsidizing development in, on or near the water." Benstock sees a connection between the plan's call for streamlining permitting on the waterfront and the stated interest by developers in lowering environmental standards.

Another cautionary voice comes from environmental justice advocates. The NYC Environmental Justice Alliance claims that the 2020 plan does nothing to address a major problem with the 1992 plan: the polluting facilities that are part of much of the working waterfront and tend to be in and adjacent to low-income communities of color. The 2020 plan has minimal requirements for public access and amenities and offers no guarantee that environmental and public health issues will be addressed.

While Burden acknowledged environmental justice concerns in her speech at the November conference, these have yet to translate into more rigorous regulations governing industrial uses on the waterfront or anything other than token amenities for residential communities.

Making WAVES

In the current financial climate as many upland real estate deals dry up, the lure of waterfront views may very well grow in importance. With a goodly stock of vacant condos sitting on the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts, however, the city's economic gurus may find it hard to entice even more development to the shore.

The leading role of the city's Economic Development Corp. in waterfront planning suggests the focus will be on business generators. EDC is a non-profit corporation controlled by the mayor's office. The business-friendly entity was set up to run like a corporation and negotiates major development deals.

Photo by Joseph A

Views, like this one of Manhattan from Long Island City's waterfront, could be particularly valuable in today's tough real estate market.

Vision 2020, developed by the city planning department, is actually but one piece of the city’s waterfront plan. Vision 2020 falls under the larger umbrella of the city's WAVES (Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy). Few details about WAVES, launched in April 2009, are available on its web site. The other major component of WAVES is the Waterfront Management Advisory Board, a body made up of 12 mayoral appointees that claims to be responsible for implementation. Little is known about the functioning of that board.

Economic Development Commission Executive Director Seth Pinksy focused his comments at the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance conference on developing the industrial and maritime waterfront and reforming the regulatory regime. From its founding by the Dutch up until the 1970s the most active parts of the city’s waterfront were those used for commerce and industry. Many stretches of water, especially outside the busy ports in Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, were quiet places for rest and relaxation for residents living within reach. There also were, and still are, many public utilities including sewage treatment plants, power generators, and waste transfer stations dotting the waterfront. Some sections were inaccessible to the public, blocked off by highways and other barriers.

In the 1970s, as shipping containers replaced the old system of unloading bulk cargo using cranes, ports need large amounts of land to store the containers. The city's port facilities moved to New Jersey, where the land was a lot cheaper. This change opened up new territory for the city's residential real estate industry, especially along the stretches of the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront where "waterfront vus" of the iconic Manhattan skyline promised high rents, sales prices and investor windfalls.

While developers scrambled to buy up derelict waterfront properties, city government dallied, failing to develop any comprehensive plan for the waterfront until 1992 when the City Planning Commission approved the first Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. One year later, the commission approved waterfront zoning, which codified a new system for private waterfront development. Waterfront zoning requires that developers of new residential and commercial facilities provide public access along the water's edge and keep public corridors open so that people from the surrounding communities can see and get to the waterfront. This zoning mechanism was based on the idea of creating public open space through public-private partnerships instead of publicly funded park development.

After almost two decades of experience with the city’s waterfront zoning, it would appear that it has made it far easier to rezone the industrial waterfront for upscale high-rises in neighborhoods, even when there is intense opposition by waterfront communities. According to Burden, over 1,000 acres of waterfront land has been rezoned since 2002. In her comments, he did not mention, however, the fierce zoning fights in strategic locations like Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.

Over the years more parks, promenades, bicycle paths and other public benefits have been built on the waterfront. While all New Yorkers and visitors use them, they have come at a price. These amenities could have been much larger and served many more people if they did not depend on having new high-rise development that hems in the public waterfront and uses it for its own front yard.

Water Fights?

Vision 2020 does not address huge differences among planners, community residents, and other New Yorkers over what to do with the city’s waterfront. All but one of the speakers at the waterfront alliance conference ignored the sharp conflicts between visions, and the even more serious problems implementing the visions.

Chris Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, recognized the problems as he ticked off several "conflicting priorities." For example, both the 1992 and 2010 waterfront plans called for full reactivation of the 65th Street rail yard and old Long Island Rail Road line in south Brooklyn. Opposition from surrounding communities and other obstacles continue to stand in the way, yet that is still part of the plan. There are conflicts between the future vision for Governors Island as a haven for open space and recreation, on one hand, and proposals for more intensified use of the nearby Red Hook Container Terminal on the other.

Ward seemed to suggest that time would better be spent recognizing and trying to resolve the conflicts instead of hoping they could be resolved by another plan. Since Vision 2020 leaves large gaps when it comes to big issues like environmental justice, high-rise development on the waterfront and in the water, sea level rise and the limitations of public-private partnerships, many in city government and the civic community continue to look beyond the plan.

Tom Angotti is Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College, City University of NY, editor of Progressive Planning Magazine, and a member of the Task Force on Community-based Planning.

Photo by Chris Ptacek

The city’s Economic Development Corp. has little to do with Yankee pitcher C.C. Sabathia's won loss record, but it did play a major role at in creating his team's new home. Here, Sabathia pitches on opening day 2009 at the new stadium.

This article has been corrected. Please see details at the end of the article.

Name just about any big and controversial development project in New York City -- the new Yankee Stadium, Bronx Terminal Market, Willets Point, Coney Island, Metrotech -- and behind them stands a single powerful dealmaker that makes them possible, the New York City Economic Development Corp. or EDC.

When business owners at Willets Point in Queens denounced Mayor Michael Bloomberg for proposing to take their property to build a hotel, convention center and new residential community, EDC, which planned and negotiated the project, stood in the shadows.

When the mayor's office, working with a local, non-profit development corporation, proposed a plan for Coney Island, EDC stood in the shadows behind a local subsidiary that it backed, the Coney Island Development Corp.

And when the mayor's office announced PlaNYC2030, the city’s Long-term Sustainability Plan, EDC stood in the shadows even though it had commissioned the study that preceded the plan and contracted with the management-consulting firm responsible for putting it together.

In the last eight years the EDC has sponsored over 500 projects, including some of the largest new developments in the five boroughs and citywide. With this portfolio, EDC probably has more to do with planning the city -- where, how and when new development happens -- than all the city agencies that are entrusted with doing so. Despite that, the agency receives little scrutiny or even attention.

Perhaps it was only in the final stages of the recent and failed Kingsbridge Armory Project in the Bronx, which would have handed over the vacant property to the Related Corp. for development of a mall, that EDC's role as intermediary between developers and the mayor's office emerged clearly into the sunshine. EDC had spent years brokering the deal only to find that the community/labor coalition it had engaged would not back down on the issue of a living wage for workers at the proposed mall.

Public or Private?

What is this city entity that is sometimes called quasi-governmental, a city agency or an arm of the mayor's office? Despite its name it is not a private corporation or financial institution, nor is it an independent public authority like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority or the Port Authority, entities Robert Moses helped invent to protect decision-makers from public oversight.

EDC is a non-profit that is wholly owned and financed by the city. The mayor appoints its board of directors, and most of its budget of over three quarters of a billion dollars comes from the city.

EDC's stated mission is "fostering economic growth." It does this by responding to private-sector proposals and helps to pave the way for their success. With New York advertising itself as the "Real Estate Capital of the World," major real estate deals including malls, condos and business centers, get special attention from EDC. Since an uncontested doctrine links the city’s economic health to its ability to keep the cement mixers going, growth is usually assumed to be good.

A Corporation Inside City Government

Though entirely under the mayor's control, EDC is set up to work more like a private corporation than a city agency. The mayor appoints its directors without having to worry about incidentals such as unions and civil service regulations. EDC boasts that it promotes "public service with a private sector culture," and has an "operational flexibility" that leaves it free from many of the agency rules and procedures that often hold back innovation and change. This preference for the private model is clear when you go from the city's public website with a dot.gov address to EDC's website with a dot.com address.

Since taking office, City Comptroller John Liu has repeatedly faulted the EDC for the way it operates. Last spring, his office released an audit charging the EDC had failed to turn over $125 million to the city, and more recently he criticized EDC officials for spending too lavishly on international trips. Overall, Liu has said, the agency's operations lack transparency. “It has become a powerhouse agency, but we have very little understanding of what comes in and out of it,” he said. “You cannot see anything that is going on.”

Last month, the Industrial development Agency, a part of the EDC, issued new rules designed, officials said, to increase transparency and accessibility but denied they had anything to do with Liu's criticisms.

A key to EDC's "flexibility" is its internal structure, more like that of a private corporation than a city agency. Its current executive director, Seth Pinsky, like previous chiefs, comes from the world of finance and real estate. Under him are 13 vice presidents, a chief operating officer and chief financial officer -- no bothersome departments and directors that can't be moved around or kicked out by the CEO.

Below the executives is a legion of mostly young professionals who enter and exit through EDC's revolving doors as they learn the ropes and discover that the real power and money is with the companies with whom the agency is supposed be a partner.

Like its staff, EDC itself is young. It was born in 1991 out of a merger of two previous non-profits, the Public Development Corp. and Financial Services Corp. The Public Development Corp., founded in 1966, turned out to be a useful vehicle for the negotiation of tax benefits and subsidies that purportedly prevent the flight of jobs and capital from the city, and these functions continued and grew.

After the merger EDC began to manage the city's Industrial Development Agency, which produces bonds to finance commercial and industrial projects. (For an in-depth look at the Industrial Development Agency, see Gotham Gazette's Subsidies in the City: Part I and Part II.)

EDC also has ended up running some projects that haven't been able to find a home anywhere else in the city government. For example, it is in charge of four city markets, including the innovative and successful Essex Market on the Lower East Side and La Marqueta in East Harlem, which has yet to prove sustainable.

These potentially vital neighborhood markets, however, are dwarfed by the multiple mall and supermarket projects fostered and financed by the group, including what could become the city’s first Walmart. More small-scale local markets could help bring healthy, fresh food to every neighborhood, especially at a time of food-related epidemics such as obesity and diabetes. In short, EDC's approach to economic development seems to mirror the preferences of the larger businesses in the private sector and direct public funds in their direction.

Hidden Power

Despite having one foot squarely in the private sector, EDC is considered the "lead agency" on just about every major development proposal. Even though it's not a city agency, it has become, in effect, the city’s most significant entity for land use planning.

While the New York City Planning Department boasts of having done more than 100 rezonings since 2002, these only change regulations, while EDC actually negotiates the deals with major developers that determine what gets built. EDC's planning is always limited to the individual project and does not necessarily extend to neighborhoods or the city as a whole. But neighborhood-level and citywide planning rarely occurs in this city. Unlike other major U.S. cities, New York has never had a comprehensive master plan except for a 1969 draft that never even received a hearing at the City Planning Commission. Although there have been some 100 community-based plans, only ten have been officially supported and adopted.

When it comes to buying and selling land for development, EDC plays a critical role, even though it often has to work through other city agencies. EDC tells the mayor’s office what land and other forms of subsidy the private corporations say they need, and the mayor can then direct appropriate city agencies to act. This means that EDC is in the pilot's seat when it comes to long-term planning.

Because of the corporation's unique commitment to "public-private partnerships," its plans tend to support those of private developers whereas the presumption is that city agencies should operate in the public interest. For example, EDC issued a Request for Expressions of Interest for the Willets Point project in Queens. The responses, submitted by private developers, shaped the physical plan and zoning that were finalized by city agencies and approved by City Council.

EDC's general procedure of following the lead of private developers has recently taken over one area that it was previously excluded from -- affordable housing in urban renewal areas. These were normally under the jurisdiction of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the city’s housing agency.

EDC is now, however, the "lead agency" responsible for developing a plan for the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area in the Lower East Side. For years, many community groups have insisted that the vacant land there be redeveloped for low-income housing, since the tenants who were displaced by the government’s “slum clearance” program were low-income and the city promised low-income housing would be built. EDC's emergence as the lead player, particularly in the last decade when just about every new large-scale luxury residential project has a small component -- usually 20 percent -- of "affordable housing," suggests that "public-private partnerships" driven by market-rate development are supplanting initiatives in which the public sector takes the lead.

One of EDC's most impressive powers is its ability to contract out studies and planning without having to go through competitive bidding or rely on the city's experienced professional staff. EDC was the conduit for important public documents such as the city’s 2007 Long-term Sustainability Plan, PlaNYC2030. Its citywide Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy (WAVES) promises to set the pace for waterfront development in the decades to come and go far beyond the Department of City Planning's Comprehensive Waterfront Plan proposal.

Whether EDC does better planning and development because of its special position and powers is an open question that we might all disagree on. But EDC has assumed critical government planning powers that the City Charter and local law give to city agencies. By negotiating and making decisions in the shadows, EDC can avoid the sunlight that helps citizens understand what is getting developed and decide whether they want it or not. We may know what EDC's executives say to the public through their public relations office but little is know what is said in their exclusive discussions with developers.

Tom Angotti is professor of urban affairs a planning at Hunter College (CUNY) and director of the Hunter College Center for Community Planning.

CORRECTIONS: This article originally reported the EDC has seven vice presidents. It has 13, including executive vice presidents. In addition, a spokesperson for the agency said it can acquire and dispose of property. Due to an editing error, this article originally said that the EDC issued new rules to increase transparency. The rules were issued by the Industrial Development Agency, which is part of EDC -- not by the EDC itself. The copy has been edited to reflect these changes.

Finally, due to the editor's oversight, the article did not mention - but should have -- that Tom Angotti was a member of City Comptroller John Liu's task force on community based agreements.