Jane Moses & Robert Jacobs

Musings from a planner in Brooklyn.

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

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Robert Moses & Jane Jacobs from the WNYC archives. Some good history on New York & urban renewal

[thisiscitylab]

The Move NY plan remains in its formative stages and open to change, but some of the basics are in place. Its first goal will be to distribute bridge and tunnel traffic more evenly and dissuade bridge shopping on the East River. To that end, all the eastern crossings, including the currently free bridges, will cost the same price: $10.66 round-trip for E-Z Pass users, $15 cash. Those increases will be counter-balanced with toll reductions on the outer bridges of as much as 50 percent.

That takes care of commuters entering the island from everywhere but the west. (The outcome of Bridgegate aside, the plan does not involve the Port Authority bridges and tunnels that carry travelers from Jersey for various logistical reasons.) Next the plan takes aim at congestion in Manhattan itself. A toll cordon would be placed at 60th Street to charge drivers heading into the part of the city with the greatest demand: the midtown business district.

Those are the broad strokes; now for some of the finer details. Drivers will be encouraged to pay with a transponder (like E-Z Pass); those without one will be captured via license-plate cameras. Cars will pay the tolls each pass, but commercial vehicles will only have to pay once round-trip in a 24-hour period, to limit the burden on businesses. Yellow cabs will pay a surcharge south of 96th Street — the idea being that they contribute to congestion but in theirquasi-transit role shouldn’t pay the full cordon price every time.

All told the plan could generate up $1.5 billion in net revenue every year. The MTA would manage the money (under the terms of the plan, the agency would lease the four free East River bridges from the city, though the feds might have final say about that). Precisely where the money will go is what Schwartz and Move NY leaders hope to determine with public input awareness campaign. For now, most of it (roughly a billion) is earmarked for transit: maintaining current service and expanding into transit deserts, with anything extra stowed away for long-term capital projects. The rest would go toward the city’s roads and bridges, as well as subsidies for suburban buses or rail commuters.

The revenue number might attract local eyes, but it’s the traffic improvement that will get the attention of other cities. Schwartz and Move NY want traffic flows in the cordon area to improve by 20 percent. Right now the tolls are fixed, but Schwartz says they’ll be adjusted on a quarterly basis to make sure that mark is being met. If traffic is flowing above expectations, it could be lowered. If it’s still oozing like ooze, the tolls might go up.

[thisiscitylab]

-The Plan That Could Finally Free New York City From Traffic Congestion

[Map: Mark Byrnes]

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

I wish the Brooklyn Bridge would remain free, but we can feel free to change everything else.

[gardenersbox-deactivated2021021]

Singapore’s Impressive Urban Greenery.  (TreeHugger)

[lowlinenyc]

Awesome!

We have green envy- how about you?!

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

Fun things for planners to look at!

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

How NYC's Decade of Rezoning Changed the City of Industry

Michael Smart was working in his shop last spring when he found out that he had to move his business yet again. The owner of the building where the...

This is some serious food for thought. As urban dwellers, we want safe, interesting, welcoming spaces. But we also crave industrial creativity. In addition, we must also understand that we NEED industry to keep people employed and to export things--it is healthy for our economy. How as planners can we reconcile all of these differing values?

[itscolossal]

Toon Bombing: A Toronto Artist Turns Outdoor Objects into Googly-Eyed Faces

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

This could be so fun everywhere!

[theatlantic]

Why the Rent is Too Damn High — In 1 Graph

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

Reading and writing a lot about gentrification lately. In a free market economy, how do we try and halt the "highest and best use"? Is there a way? How do we make the case for affordability and quell crazy individual profits?

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

Bloomberg Drops Plan To Rezone East Side For Taller Buildings

Today is a good day. This upzoning should never happen the way it was planned out. Much too hasty. 

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

A Time to Pause

The city’s ambitious vision for Midtown East cannot be rushed.

Amen! Updating the city's infrastructure should be well thought out. 

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

via MAS, William H Whyte's Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

Street Sections

This is StreetMix! A cool tool for planners to quickly make up their own street sections, if you're looking to skip AutoCAD and Illustrator!

www.streetmix.net

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

China Should Learn from the US

I'm not very into international development. While I recognize that the world is very big, amazing, and fascinating, I've chosen to dedicate my time to domestic issues, mostly as local as I can get. But after growing up looking at the ashes of Urban Renewal (and growing up in a small urban enclave that was not), I can tell you that Urban Renewal DOES NOT WORK. It's been written about academically ad-infinitum. It's not only unattractive, it panders to odd imaginations that only visualize at the macroscale, ignoring human beings. It is social planning/engineering at its absolute worst, ripping people away from familiarity. I am not an expert about China. In fact, I don't know jack about it. But if they have THIS much money to spend on building cities, they should really take that cash and work on better infrastructure that already exists instead of building from scratch, keeping people in social situations that are already working for them.

You can read it about it here in the NYTimes:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/world/asia/new-china-cities-shoddy-homes-broken-hope.html

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

From the ABC's of City Planning. via Citizens Housing Planning Council

http://www.chpcny.org/2010/07/abc/

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

How much does a street cost? 

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

wonderful book

[thisiscitylab]

"It highlights one aspect of the bifurcation that de Blasio is talking about. While people are always buzzing about ‘soaring’ New York real estate prices, those prices are only on the rise in certain parts of town. With a few exceptions, it’s Manhattan and adjacent sections of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx that have seen assessments go up in the data from the New York Department of Finance that Walker mapped, which encompasses 958,000 properties. In many of the working-class neighborhoods of the outer boroughs, the value of real estate has actually fallen."

Read: Surprising Map of New York’s ‘Two Cities’

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

It is enough to say that a community needs a functional civic infrastructure in order to shape and sustain physical and economic development of any kind, whether implemented by nonprofits, private developers, or the public sector.

Bill Traynor, Communit Building: Limitations and Promises in The Community Development Reader

[janemosesandrobertjacobs]

This is under the BQE overpass in DUMBO. We should get more public art in other neighborhoods that aren't flooded with cash.