Thoughts on Innovation
Innovation and the American Metropolis: Introducing The Regional Assembly
New Tools for Civic Engagement: A Regional Assembly Preview
October 6, 2009
Whether it's democracy emerging out of ancient Athens, or algebra emerging out of ninth century Baghdad, cities have been fountains of innovation and creativity since the first city arose in Mesopotamia some five thousand years ago.
Next year, RPA will convene its annual Regional Assembly to discuss Innovation and the American Metropolis. For this, our twentieth assembly, we will as usual bring the nation's foremost civic, business and public leaders together to discuss how the region can innovate rapidly, successfully, and equitably. For more information, visit regionalassembly.org, sign up for updates and join us on April 16, 2010.Cities not only produce innovation, they innovate themselves and how they function. Streetcars, water and sewer systems, gas and electric supply, elevators, steel-frame construction--all emerged from cities as they attempted to manage themselves better. American cities were particularly spectacular in their pace of innovation and change. The history of American cities is the story of innovation in how we travel, how money is made, the arts, the buildings we inhabit, and the products and ideas we make, sell, and buy.
But that trajectory of innovation has not been universally beneficial or sustainable. We have a mixed record of solving problems equitably and comprehensively, particularly in a timely fashion. New Yorkers, for example, suffered with an inadequate and leaky private water system for half a century until leaders and citizens generated the political will to build a public water system that opened in 1842.
In more contemporary times, we have watched and coped as residential development moved out into the fringes, urban cores collapsed, industry faded. As always, the target keeps moving. The ecosystem we share is out of balance, locally and globally. The latest tall buildings going up are not here. Much of the nation's extensive rail infrastructure is no longer in use, and what remains is slow compared to other nations. For a fast, easily available internet connection--the infrastructure successor to last century's gas and electricity networks--look elsewhere. Those million-strong cities in China are only getting bigger. As international fortunes change, other countries jostle upwards in the indices of manufacturing, finance, and creative output. We are still grappling with how to grow well, and how to grow fairly.
There is great possibility in the abundant technological choices that lie practically at our feet. Whether it's universal wireless access, or sewers that electronically send messages of leaks, the possibilities of producing what might be called the "intelligent metropolis" are endless. What is needed is some grappling with these possibilities, and a movement forward to action. We're in a new chapter of American cities, a time of rebound, regrowth, and new beginnings.
A Good Idea Needs Many Hands
January 12, 2010
Cities have long been centers for innovation because ideas travel quickly through a crowd. Although the image of the lone inventor working in solitude in a laboratory or office endures as the symbol of innovation, in fact, great gadgets and greater ideas usually have many parents. New schemes and new thoughts need to be exposed to many eyes, to be checked over and scrutinized. Collaboration and observation are part of a recipe for coming up with successful new ways of doing things.
As great believers in the social and economic progress that can accompany innovation, RPA is hosting a day-long discussion of innovation at our 20th Annual Regional Assembly on Friday April 16th at the Waldorf-Astoria. "Innovation and the American Metropolis" will cover many of the topics you've come to know and rely upon from RPA, but with the addition of a few new ones that we feel are important. Along with transportation, economy, community development, open space, energy and housing, we will look at communications, design, technology, and collaboration as tools to improve regions.
More of the schedule details will be revealed over the next three months, but we'd love to set you up to watch it develop. First, please visit the site at www.regionalassembly.org. That is where we will be updating all relevant information, including the program, cost and some background reading about the topics. We will also be speaking out on twitter @regionalplan, and you can find us on Facebook as well.
We hope you will join us on April 16 and be part of the conversation. The discussion can't go very far without the crowd, and we're excited to see the results. We hope to see you there.
Radical Housing: A Regional Assembly 2010 Preview
February 22, 2010
New York is in a growth mode, but are New Yorkers prepared to accommodate that growth? Clearly, increased density has to be embraced, both as an economic goal and a social good, but are New Yorkers ready to accept more people? Residents of the city (and region) often react reflexively against the idea of more people in their neighborhoods - at the same time that they protest the rising costs of living here.
Far too frequently, development has gone forward without the upgrades to infrastructure and services it demands. Thus many New Yorkers doubt that the city has the transit, roads, water, schools, and power in place to handle its projected one-million-people increase in population - and end up opposing virtually any new project proposed.
Meanwhile, the city has for decades suffered from a shortage of affordable housing that has barely been eased by the tens of thousands of new units built since 2001. The key to reducing the cost of housing is increasing its supply. But how do we do that in an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable manner?
The Radical Housing panel discussion at RPA's 2010 Regional Assembly will break through the clichés and familiar arguments to highlight new solutions to a seemingly permanent housing crisis. RPA Senior Fellow and Center for Urban Innovation Director Julia Vitullo-Martin will moderate the discussion among five leading innovators in housing policy and production.
Jerilyn Perine, former City Housing Commissioner and currently Executive Director of the Citizens Housing & Planning Council, contends that land throughout the region should be leveraged to accommodate the coming population growth. At the moment, though, the opposite seems to be happening. The policy impulse of New York's City Planning Commission for the last few years has been towards downzoning residential neighborhoods - precisely the ones that could house more families if density were encouraged. She cites research under way by NYU's Furman Center that indicates that downzonings have outweighed upzonings, reducing housing capacity in vast swaths of the city.
Perine and Rosanne Haggerty, founder and President of Common Ground (which has consistently provided excellent housing for homeless people that is so neighborhood-oriented its developments fit seamlessly into their blocks), have been spearheading a campaign to re-examine the housing unit and advocate for changes in regulations that relate to housing and space standards, so as to meet the needs of a 21st century population in a 21st century city. They have found that some of the best solutions to the housing affordability quandary are illegal - forbidden by building codes, wage regulations, housing standards, environmental restrictions, and so on.
Dedicated to preventing homelessness among known vulnerable groups as well as eliminating chronic homelessness, Common Ground recently created a partnership with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) and top social-services organizations to serve four major public housing projects in Brownsville, Brooklyn.
Brooklyn is the epicenter of innovation at NYCHA, as its new General Manager, Michael Kelly, embarks on the agency's first-ever demolition of an entire high-rise complex, Prospect Plaza. Other cities throughout the nation have replaced similar projects with smaller buildings designed to fit into their neighborhood context, but until now, New York has always chosen to renovate at great expense rather than to rebuild from scratch. Prospect Plaza may be a sign that New York is finally ready to rethink and remake its underfunded public housing - finding ways to move from segregating low-income families in forbidding, isolated towers to designing economically sustainable mixed-income communities.
In this era of climate change and energy consciousness, the green of economic sustainability goes hand in hand with the green of environmental sustainability - the focus of Jonathan Rose, president of the Jonathan Rose Companies, a leader in creating socially, economically, and environmentally responsible development and vibrant, healthy communities. The firm recently received the first Green Retrofit Program loan awarded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development from funds made available by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka the federal economic stimulus package). The loan will finance $3.6 million of a $7.4 million project to increase energy efficiency, reduce utility costs, and improve indoor air quality at the West 135th Street Apartments, 198 units of Section 8 assisted housing located in 10 contiguous six-story, elevator buildings in central Harlem. The great challenge for developers like Rose is figuring out how to systematically transform aging housing stock, as has been done elsewhere, particularly Germany. Can a replicable model be developed from individual green projects?
The problem of scaling up all kinds of successful local innovations to have widespread - national or even global - impact is of fundamental interest to Darren Walker, the Rockefeller Foundation's Vice President for Foundation Initiatives. As the former CEO of the groundbreaking Abyssinian Development Corp., he is especially interested in housing issues and solutions and will highlight key innovations across the country.
Beyond presenting their own pioneering initiatives, Radical Housing panelists will discuss an array of zoning, financing, and building techniques that should be used to produce homes affordably. The group will take on questions such as: What proportion of housing should be market-rate and what proportion subsidized? If subsidized, by whom? What governmentally imposed barriers to building will impede development? How can we redesign the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure to tie infrastructure review to development, as cities using comprehensive land use planning already do? How can we exploit the opportunities that come with downturns - lower financing and labor costs - to repurpose orphaned new construction for below-market residents? And what better context than the Regional Assembly to consider what options the suburbs offer for supplementing the housing stock - and helping the region compete for talent with other world metropolises?
March 22, 2010
By Robert Lane, Senior Fellow
As someone who was originally trained as an architect and morphed his career to urban design and then to planning, I have become acutely aware of the power of drawing during the community planning process. The power comes from the iterative process by which ideas as are continually re-inscribed, and the way that that shapes the discussion and ultimately the outcome going forward. This is, of course what responsible planners recognize as the difference between "drawing a map" - the pretty picture - and "mapping."
The late Kevin Lynch, author of The Image of the City and other books who created the foundation for an entire discipline by synthesizing maps that emerged from his interviews with citizens, was acutely aware of this. He also lamented the static nature and geographic limitations of his methodology. One can only imagine how his research would be conducted today if he had access to the variety of new media both widely available - cell phones, Google maps, pervasive gaming software, locative media, digital story-telling, even humble e-mail - and the less accessible and technically sophisticated modeling softwares - so called Planning Support Systems such as Sleuth, INDEX and CommunityViz.
While Lynch no doubt would have been thrilled to have such tools, most current planning professionals are still struggling to adopt them. As someone who does a great deal of community-based planned and design in the New York metro area, I'm aware of how little such interactive media have been used, beyond a few exotic experiments. Participants in planning sessions have used various technologies to share information, but have not been encouraged or shown how to use them in the planning and decision-making itself.
Recently, I have been discussing these issues at gatherings and with colleagues, including Damon Rich, founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy, and Nick Grossman, Director of Civic Works at The Open Planning Project. We have been thinking about ways to re-shape the planning process in this age of new media. Some of the concepts that are emerging from these discussions include "just-in-time city planning," "getting the city to design itself," and "deliberative complexity." We grapple with how new technologies can make planning more open, more participatory, and simply better in its outcomes.
There is considerable discussion about what the role of the planner should be in such a process. Is it to help the community figure out what questions to ask? To help the community articulate the principles that would guide the process? To create the right kind of room in which people interact? To find new ways to reposition data to reveal new perspectives? Peter Hall, Senior Lecturer in Design at the University of Texas at Austin, authored a paper on this topic called Weapons of Mass Participation: Collaborative Planning with Loaded Tools and Wicked Problems. His suggestion? The role of the planner is to make planning fun.
I agree with all of these perspectives and suggestions: We need as big a toolbox as possible. When I think of where planning may go, it grounds me to remember one of my favorite quotes from Kevin Lynch's classic, The Image of the City:
"In the development of the image, education in seeing will be quite as important as the reshaping of what is seen. Indeed, they together form a circular, or hopefully a spiral, process: visual education impelling the citizen to act upon his visual world, and this action causing him to see even more acutely. A highly developed art of urban design is linked to the creation of a critical and attentive audience. If art and audience grow together, then our cities will be a source of daily enjoyment to millions of their inhabitants."
@RegionalPlan
