 Welcome to have a panel from 1989, New York City Planning Commission. The title of this panel is called, How Does That Power? So I'm very excited to hear about that. And with that, I'm going to pass it to Wade King, who will be moderating our panel for a long time. Did you have an announcement last week? This is really quite an occasion to have all of them sit together. Anyway, I wanted to welcome you all. Many of you know some of the panelists and some of you don't, so I wanted to thank those of you who come along to join us today. So this idea was first talked around by Maxine and Ginny, and we thought it was great, right? So things have changed, things have not changed, right? Any place with history. And so we thought we'd use this to look at the work of this planning commission, which you will see later, quite tremendous. And also to reflect a little bit on the future of planning, perhaps at least in New York City, perhaps even in a larger context. And we'll conduct this more like a panel, so if you have a question, really feel free to raise as we go about asking the panelists. So first I'd like to introduce, first, all the way to my right is James, the JAO Design International Limited. I think it was great. Just, what would you call it, just JAO? Just the last thing you saw. Just the last thing you did. And then next to James is Professor Ginny Birch. We're very pleased to have you back. Ginny graduated from the PhD program here. A few years ago. And Ginny is also the Lawrence Mastore Professor of Urban Research at UPAN and co-director of Pan Institute for Urban Research. And it's been a really great leader of the planning academic field in addition to practice. And next to Ginny is Maxine. A lot of you know Maxine, Maxine Griffith. Who is a faculty here as well and has been the first Senior Vice President at Columbia and now Senior Advisor to the President of Columbia University. Before that, lots of other accomplishments and really a great avenue. And then we have Mr. and Professor Ron Schiffner, Professor of Urban Planning, Black Center for Planning at Pratt Institute. And also a very active activist in New York. I just learned a little bit earlier. And then we have Dr. Schoolward, a veteran of planning in New York City. And also a veteran of faculty of the program. So really wonderful to have all of them and I'm way people, the director of the master program here at Columbia. So maybe what we get started is that we've heard a lot about the accomplishment of the commission. And perhaps Ginny, you can help us to scope that and just set the scene in terms of what the commission has accomplished. And especially the key projects that we will move on to some other questions. Sure. Actually I wanted to talk a little bit and Ron's going to help me. What the world was like in 1989 and 90 when we all sat on the planning commission. And I think you have to realize that New York was large. It had 322 square miles which it still has. And in a much smaller population, 7.3 million. We're now much more than that. In terms of mobility, we had 3.3 million people coming into the city every day. Over just a few and the same, basically the way it's happening today. And we had 300,000 trucks coming in trying to bring in the goods and services that we had. Our CBD was basically, remember it's 1989. We had two CBDs basically in Manhattan. We had Lower Manhattan and we had Midtown Manhattan. Some 760,000 people were working in a very constrained area. We had 300,000 manufacturing jobs at that time. It was down for a million but we still had 300,000. I'm not sure how many people can help us with that happening we have today. We had 2.9 million dwelling units but costs were going up. Housing affordability was really an issue then. Our costs here in the city were going up much faster than in the nation. Homelessness was an issue. Many of the same issues were confronting today. And services, services, I mean just a miracle how New York works. Imagine right then, New York was delivering 1.5 million gallons of water a day. And countless garbage, countless other kinds of services. I mean it was a really incredible machine. And so there had been talk about the need to change the governance of New York City. At the time, prior to 1989, New York had a city government that was made up of something called a board of estimate. And the board of estimate were representatives from the boroughs. And some smart person went to the courts and said, hey, wait a minute. There's equal representation of every board, of every borough on the board of estimate. That's not fair because we have 1.2 million people living in Manhattan. We have half a million living in Staten Island and they all have the same representation. Can't do this. So that board of estimate was clear unconstitutional. And a charter commission started studying the situation and came up with a new form of government. And that we became part of that new form of government. Well actually I was part of the old form and the new form. Since I was the largest person for the borough president and wrote a brief against the change and then enjoyed the change. Good point, good point. At any rate, we did have borough presence. We did have the board of estimate. We did have a small city council. And what changed basically was the board of estimate was eliminated. The city council was grown, 51 representatives. And different kinds of rulings were created for different functions in the city. The land use functions were vastly changed. And the planning commission was made an agent of some of these changes. And it moved from having seven people all appointed by the mayor to 13 people appointed by borough presidents that had a city council and by the mayor. The mayor had the majority. And there were new functions that we had to engage in at that time. Not only were we in large but there were some basic mandated reports and rulings that we had to come up with. And I'll talk about that, the fair share criteria. Thinking about how public investments would be allocated throughout the city itself. Capital budget we had to look at. We had to think more about historic landmark preservation designations. The Euler process, which I hope these masters candidates know all about Euler, was given a time constraint before it was untimed. And a number of things such as that. Oh, and we also regarded, and I'm not sure what's happened to this, the 197A plants were meant to be reviewed by us. And that was interesting because of the serious legal position they had. Well, this was the commission. We had a retreat. This was taken, the picture taken of all of us there. You can see James. You can see Ron. You can see Max. And you can see everybody's name here at the bottom where they came from and so forth. We don't know where they came from. Tony Jacobi came from Staten Island. Max, you came from the rural president. I came from, I was the mayor by the time. Ron, you were a mayor. Jim, you were a mayor. I was a mayor. Joel was Queens. Richard Schaefer was chair of the. Tony Jacobi was Staten Island. Yeah. Schaefer was the director of the department plus chair. Brenda LeVin was Manhattan rural president. Jacob Ward was Bronx. Victor Alicia was mayor. Ed Rogowski, Brooklyn. A man of the city council. And Deborah was mayor. Right? Okay. Okay. There we go. So those were the appointments. That's who they all are. And we'll look where they are later. Right. Just one thing about the Columbia connections. So two faculty members were involved in the appointment of the commission. And one was chair of the commission. So our former dean at GSAP, Richard Schaefer, was the chair of the city planning commission. And a former faculty member from SIPA, Mayor Dinkins was the mayor. Right. Exactly. And for Amanda was also a. Of course. And Amanda was a graduate of the program. That's right. Yeah. Just here. All right. So this is a similar situation. 59 community boards. The community boards were given much more power as for the federal presidents. And the city planning commission was given the power that if it turned something down, that was it. That was the end. Which was an extraordinary power to have at that time. And that did not exist before. We can talk about how that was avoided. But that was. And that's the title of the panel. Yes. Exactly. And so a number of the things that were instituted in that charter still exist today. Others don't. But the fair share criteria is still existent. They have been amended since the time we passed them. But they are amended and used. But capital strategy is still in place. 197 plans. I want you all to talk about what's happened in their place. But that's not. Discuss more about. 2009. And city-wide statement of needs is required. The mayor give that report. Or the planning deal with that report. And that would feed into the capital budget. And of course the zoning resolution was the center of much of our work as we were discussing before. I just wanted to quickly talk about some of the cases we had to deal with. Here was the national tennis center. We had a mayor who liked tennis. But the real question was, would this sport, which was known in New York as a world, think about what a world city has. Very unique things. One of them was the fact we had these tennis championships. And the question was, they needed to expand. How would this happen? And we went through many discussions. As to how this should happen. And also share the benefits of having such a center with the community. And so we came up with a number of ideas there. And also when it took up more land than a park, how are we going to replace that land? Park land. And we came up with a solution there. The area basin was a question of delivering city services. We wanted to create a police. Police and panel. Zone there. And this was pretty tricky in this particular area as well. Lots of negotiations about what kind of community benefits would occur by doing that. Riverside south. Boy. We could have stopped the fucker then. I think we're the only women in this room that have a kid from that guy right here. I know. And didn't your daughter answer the phone? And anyway, 23 acre site. This was really contentious. And we can talk more about that. And at the other end of the scale, we were dealing with how you dealt with homelessness. And this was a woman's shelter in the new province housing with the neighborhood thought of that. So we had many, many discussions. Many projects of full range in all the different boroughs, all the different scales of things. It was really an extraordinary time. And it was an extraordinary time for you, this group, on the board, because the discussions were really fantastic. And as we look at, when I reflected on this experience, I wrote an article in the APA journal, which I tell all doctoral students, you have an experience like this. You have to turn it into something. You can't just be a practitioner. You have to learn from it and try and put forward that. At any rate, the thesis of this was that democratic planning really did occur under the Charter of Revision. And I was looking at what happened in the Euler process with regard to how, whether citizens were able to change things or not. They never were able to stop a project, I would say, but they were able to shape a project. And that was very, very important, that shaping that happened at these various stages of the Euler activity. And it was always inclusive. All 49 boards were involved. And the citizen participation was demonstrative to all of the political leaders as you went along. And that was really important in terms of shaping decisions. So I think it was a pretty exciting time, and still is an exciting time to be involved in planning. So what happened to them? Where are they now? And so Victor Alessia, President Ruka, Amanda is from Fulveric Philanthropies. Tony was in New York Supreme Court Justice. He's since retired. Maxine is right here. James is here. Brenda is a land use consultant. I'd say Brenda probably knew the land use better than anybody in this business group. Joel Mealy died. Ed Rogowski died. Ron Schiffman is here. Not because they were on the planet. No. They had very distinguished careers. Joel went on to be head of the buildings department. And Ed was a faculty at Brooklyn College and a very important spokesman for this work. Ron is here. Robert Schaffer was the former president of Green Tree Foundation. Jacob Bourne, I don't know what happened to him. He was a good deal over the years. He was my age then. Yes, yes. Oh, he has passed. Okay. And Debra Wright is now managing director of the Rockefeller Foundation. So we've all kind of kept going. We're not in the screen yet. If I could. I think it's important to understand the context in which we took over. Because 1989, we saw the fall of the iron curtain in Eastern Europe. And so the wall in Berlin came down. In 1990, we saw Nelson Mandela being released in South Africa. And as a result, we saw the emergence of a new South Africa. We came out in New York out of a period of time where we were thinking about planned shrinkage as the future for the city. Because planners tend to sometimes look at data and project it in a straight line into the future, never understanding there can be an inflection and a change in the direction that goes. So we were, there were people advocating that we abandoned certain parts of the city. We protect other parts of the city and we invest in only some limited areas. That whole idea of planned shrinkage fell to the wayside. We began as was mentioned, we saw a great deal of deindustrialization in the city, but we were coming down to the bare bones, that we needed to have some form of manufacturing in order to protect some of our vital industries, our vital functions. We needed people to frame the artwork going into the museums. We needed to do set design for some of the new industries that were coming up in the city of New York. The film industry is basically a building industry within the filming industry itself. So we began to see a lot of those things emerge. 1987, two years before our commission, the UN released the Bruntland report and we began understanding right around that time about the whole issue of sustainable development and the impact of climate change. 1992 was a year in which the UN began to argue that we needed to really address climate change. We were making those decisions about the future of the city within that context. New York City was also emerging, as I mentioned just briefly before, from this planned shrinkage period, but we were shrinking as a city. We were in the late 60s and into the 70s losing between 30 to 36,000 units a year. That's about a five-family building, about three or four or five-family buildings a day being abandoned in the city. By abandonment we meant people were leaving behind their ownership of those buildings. Some were occupied. So we were suffering from a period of economic withdrawal. The banks weren't investing in the city and the victims of that lack of investment, of disinvestment were poor people. Today, what many of you are confronting is I think the success of our period and the problems of your period which is displacement and overinvestment were the great deal of people now being displaced because of overinvestment. So we've seen a complete change, but that was the framework. When you hear what we talk about, understanding was a different time and a different set of challenges. That's an extraordinary rendition. I can remember as staff to these guys at City Planning during the 90s just being overwhelmed by the number of things we were doing. We were doing new plans for Long Island City, for waterfront zoning. We had started to work on something called Unified Bulk which was a way of getting all of the buildings in the city to actually function through zoning the way we thought they should. There are too many kinds of rules in the city as it is. And also there was an enormous growth in the zoning resolution itself. So one of the things that I wanted to ask and I've been meaning to ask this for years is what was the view on the commission of the often repeated suggestion that the zoning resolution be completely revamped? It was done in 1916, as those of you who've taken Pernama and my course on zoning know, 1916, 1961 were sort of the major events in 1975 as well in terms of the zoning resolution. But why have we not been able to shorten it or to revamp it? EIS. EIS, but also there are a lot of vested interests. Their whole firms whose work is nothing but dealing with the code as it is, they would go out of business if it were to completely revamp. Land use attorneys. Land use attorneys, even some urban planners working in the private sector, believe it or not, folks who work on EISs. But also I'd like to shift the question a little bit. Do talk about the EIS because that really was the block. Yes, I will. But I also want to go to what I think is the real underlying question, which is planning through zoning instead of planning through planning. So my personal feeling when I was on the commission is it would be nice to actually have a planning commission that looked at things comprehensively with zoning only as a tool. So to me, simply revamping the zoning text and map would have been somewhat disingenuous because it seems to me the real goal should have been developing a comprehensive planning protocol the same way it is in every other major city in the U.S. I just want to bring James into it for a minute. Some of you know I do some work in China. I do some work in China because of this gentleman. We met on the planning commission and he invited me to do some work with him. But the reason I like working in China is in China you actually plan. And the planner is involved from the inception through to the end of the project and the end of the project actually looks like a thoughtful comprehensive plan. Now you may argue with the political structure you know a lot. But still the U.S. it seems to me is one of the few countries in the world where planners even though we've got more power from 89 to 90 less power than most planners around the world. Interesting. And also you should know too that the planning commission one of the changes that happened was that the planning commission was increased from seven members appointed by the mayor to 13 members that were appointed by the mayor still in the majority but then also by the borough presidents and the city council the public advocate. So I mean there are significant changes happening at this time on the commission that made it more broad based. Now but it's interesting that you all were mayoral appointments but very different sort of ideologically. How did that work? How do these appointments come about? It would be interesting to know I think. Magic. Magic. Okay. One thing that did happen I think you notice if you go through the list before and after 89 is that more actual planners were on the planning commission including academic. And architect. Well there was always. I was the only architect. Maybe the first architect. There was always an architect. Yeah but there was always an architect. But I think the individual decisions made by the appointing entities. I think they decided this is the first time out. This is going to be important. We're going to make a lot of rules and regulations as a planning commission. Why not bring on planners and that was not the case up to then. It was mostly attorneys or community activists. I want to go back to the zoning resolution. Because I was appointed as the first patient American also the architect. And I do a lot of zoning practice. At the time my father said queens were the specialized in zoning. So I think it was very difficult. We did talk about zoning in Reband Bay. It's very difficult. Like Maxine said it would be cutting away a lot of special interest groups who really drive on the zoning. Plus the other side of the issue is it's always better to deal with the devil. Because when you try to change for example the tax code there's even more problems. I think zoning in the U.S. City of Zoning is fine the way it is. People can always find a way to increase their FAO. I want to say serving the planning commission was a big life changer for me. And I was the architect. Actually I get the endorsement of the Architecture Association. I think we have collected about 3,000 architects. Because I was actually running an office doing a lot of new buildings in Queens. So if you go back to the Dutch report back in 1988-89, 30% of new buildings in Queens were built by James Charles Associates. The other thing was being the first Asian American was the second youngest member next to Debbie. Debbie was six months younger than I was. That's right. I think the representation of Asian was very important. I was able to with the assistance for Ginny and with the Chinatown study. Not with the city budget but Chinatown has always been in clay where people just ignore the planning for the area. That's why you have a lot of dirty streets. It's difficult to serve. So I was fortunate that when Ginny was teaching at the counters we were able to mobilize a lot of graduate students. And we did the semester study. And we actually published with the Chinatown study guide. An APA prize. Yeah. APA prize. I did all that. It was great. We should talk about the power dynamics of this newly-enlarged commission. I think it would be interesting because we had seven mayoral people and then six from different places because they were appointed. And there was a great desire on the commission not to have a split vote because we wanted the city council to adhere to our decisions. And so we did a lot of negotiation behind the scenes to come up with the compromises. So I don't think we ever had a vote, maybe one or two that was split. That was a dissenting. Yeah. But not enough to get the city council out of. No. And to your point, to your point, I don't ever remember the conversation splitting around, oh, I'm a mayoral appointee, you're a board president appointee. I think we glumped more into left-right center, perhaps, in our approach. There are a couple of times when Tony Giacobi, who sat next to me because I was a G and he was a G. He sat alphabetically. He sat alphabetically. And there was a Staten Island matter. He was from Staten Island. He would lean over and say, I need this. Maxine, I think you need to vote for this one. I don't know what that meant. And often it was said in jest. But that was the kind of conversation. But we didn't, when we came together, say, well, Queens wants it this way. Another thing that happened that first year is we went around and actually had meetings in the boroughs. And we tried to do that on an ongoing basis. Didn't quite work. But I really didn't know anything about Staten Island. And very little about Queens. We went, these were open meetings. And we also had dinner afterwards. The commissioner from that borough would choose a place to eat. And we would eat and talk about the borough issues. Something like eating together. And drinking together. Well, the reason we were going to the boroughs was to deal with the fair share criteria. And as you remember, every borough said, we have too much of this. We don't need any of this. We have more than our fair share. And so we had to negotiate how to think about what fair share meant. And we were really tied by the law that wouldn't let us think across categories. And we wanted to think of a fair share for homeless shelters, a fair share for sewage treatment plants, and so forth. Which was quite annoying that the law allowed us into these streets. But Jeannie kept us on track. No, seriously. No, thank you. We want to bring Bill, who is recognized in the audience, who is the council and the planning commission. Bill is our chief council. And he really advised us which lined up. Stand up and re-recognize him. And Pernima, since you're sitting there, you stand. I think also the staff, the planning commission at the time was one of the probably the best people we have worked with. They were very able to come out with the criteria. So we would have a very candid open discussion, not needing to a white side. So everybody was looking at the issue by the fact itself, rather than any kind of politician coming through to his arms. I remember Vivi Donald Trump was the president of the Trump world power. That was ten-stage sound. Yeah. No, he also came in for the powers. Riverside sound. Yeah. We all remember that. I do want to go back to your question, though. I do think there was a major push to try to get things that were as of right. So because the city was really worried about how we create development, not obstacles to development. A lot of the zoning, once it was agreed upon, you could begin to get an as of right procedure and process underway. I think I fully agree with, you know, the idea of that the commission is now and then focused primarily on zoning and that we really need to go back to planning. And that was really a fundamental flaw at that time. It continues to be a flaw today. We use the environmental impact analysis as an excuse not to go there. I think we can do it with or without the environmental analyses. They should be coming and they should be part of the process and they should be at the end, at the beginning of the pipe, not at the end of the pipe. Because what we do is we develop a plan. We do the entire development scheme and then at the end we evaluate its environmental impact rather than using environment as a fundamental way of writing the program for the plan. Right, and not for as a right development. That means there are slightly different versions. And it was to David Duncan's credit, and I think we really need to, he appointed to the commission a variety of commissioners who had different backgrounds. While we all were physical working with a different political slant, he appointed me and I think I got the one-year appointment first because you weren't going to make sure. I got five. You got five because he knew her. And I was re-appointed. But the issue was that he came to me and said, you've always been arguing against the city or fighting on behalf of neighborhoods. I was an advocate. I come from the theory of violence, but Paul Davidoff. And basically the idea that there are certain people in this city that are never represented by planners. The people who don't have the resources who have been excluded and we decided that we would provide our expertise to low and moderate income groups so their voice could be heard in the planning process. Let me just finish the board. Can I talk about how you snuck in something as a planner? Let me tell you, one of the things that we had to do with the Department of Real Property, whatever it's called now, would come in with stacks of property and want us to approve their sale. And they'd be totally unrelated. They'd be a little stacks as high as lots. And Ron, to his credit, said, hey, we're going to stop this. We are not going to approve any more of these sales unless you come back with lots of assemblages and turn these into plans. So you work within the structure to bring planning. And your argument was how often poor people bought these pieces of land and they ended up in the auction block again and again. So I think that, you know... But I always work within the system. No, no, no. What I'm trying to say is that there were, even though you're saying there's no planning done, I think with the right kind of intelligence which Ron had, you can insert planning within a structure that's not very favorable to it. One point I wanted to make is that what David did tell me, he said, I don't care how you vote, but never surprise me. Never surprise me. So when I felt I had to oppose something, I would let Schaefer know, or someone in City Hall understand that I could not live with that vote and I would vote against it. And he never held that against me. And it was really, I think to his credit, that he was of that kind of diversity. Well, I could say a story about that. I don't know if you remember this, but I don't remember the issue. But I was about to vote against something and I told Richard, I told the chair. And he said, no, no, I don't want you to vote against it. He said the mayor doesn't want you to vote against this. So, of course, I worked with the mayor for four years. I picked up the phone and he said, no, do what you want to do. So I came time to vote and I thought I had a pretty well done statement. And I didn't mention the mayor. And Richard got up and said, Commissioner Griffith is swatting her relationship with the mayor of the city. Well, of course, after that, everybody wanted to talk to me. Because, because they felt. Because you got an appointment at Columbia later. Oh, yeah. That was that was it. But also, basically, you know, talking about what you mentioned with regard to poor people. One of the things you have to understand about that era is the city owned about 65% of Harlem. So at that point, we were giving away, HPD was giving away buildings for a dollar. We were begging for people to come into the city. As Ron said, you guys are dealing with the success of that situation. And I know because we met some of the PhD students are working on issues of gentrification. The person who comes up with the formula about how to have appropriate development without tipping over into gentrification is going to get every prize possible. Because everybody wants to be able to drink their vanilla latte at the Starbucks. Everybody wants their snows cloud. Everybody wants the amenities that come with development. But nobody wants to be pushed out of their home. And is there a way of calculating, of developing an algorithm that planets can follow to get to that point, that would be fantastic. We are perhaps on slightly different ends of the spectrum. But I think that's But I think that objective, that mission, is one that we both share. You know, the 197A plan that had a lot of impact was I think the first one that we approved. And that was for the South Bronx. I think it was Community Board 4. Because that was done by a group. It was led by Harry DiRienzo and Banana Kelly in the Bronx. And it came forward and for the first time it challenged the city's policy of suburbanizing urban areas. They said the density being proposed by the city was too low. And that in a way set the framework of one of the issues that we have to confront today is that for a period of time we were building one and two family houses. Where we should have been building at a higher density. And it actually looked at the future in a way. How do you look at a community? What is its infrastructure? What's the carrying capacity of that infrastructure and planned around that? And what would be our goal? And I think that 197A plan till today has had its repercussions. That was another example. Again, you have a lot of leadership in this in calling that. It wasn't just the 197A plan. There were different zoning of things that we had to do up there. And you would boat them down. You would say it's not dense enough. And you would convince the rest of us that yes. So just a point of information. 197A plans. They don't know. Some of them do. Some of them don't. 197A is a section of the city charter that allows communities to offer a plan for their neighborhoods which then are reviewed by city planning. And if adopted, it can become law. 197C is what we call Euler. But the successful plans are the ones that again worked within the framework that the only tool we really have to help you out is zoning. I think what 197As did is it brought communities together including the one where we sit to talk about how many trees do you want? Which should the school be? Which should the park be? But then when they went to city planning, there was very little they could do to effectuate anything but the zoning. So none have been done for 12 years. Why is that? I think because they've been ineffective. Because it sounds like you can do a plan but you can't really do a plan because you can't at city planning, you can't adopt a plan and hold other agencies to it. DOT is not going to care. EDC is not going to care. Again, it may be a tool for advocacy but you can't move a plan through and have the force of law unless it's zoning. And what ends up happening is communities are sort of trained to zone. And to zone, you don't need a 197. It's advisory. I mean never was. Where it worked well is where it gave the community a sense of what its vision was and how they could begin to fight for it. In Sunset Park, the community has put together now an alternative to industry cities plan. And it is now mobilizing the community and what will be a fight tomorrow I guess before the city planning commission on this grid plan which is a green resiliency industrial development strategy versus what industry city wants which is to primarily continue its trend towards, and he has my bias, towards retail as opposed to towards jobs that benefit the folks who live in the adjoining area. So the grid plan is not a 197A plan but it has been put together by a women's collective working with the community that really started looking at what is the potential for this area, what is really the challenges given climate change and sea level rise, how do you take an area that we know in 15 years will be 26% will be underwater and joins a highway that needs to be reconstructed, how do you take that area and turn it away from functioning as a manufacturing industrial zone. And so those issues I think will come to the fore but it's because people are now not filing the 197A process but they're using that local initiative effort to organize. And a little closer to home West Harlem did a 197A and one of the first things that was done by the planners who came forward to New Manhattanville is take a look at that 197A and say we're not going to do anything that does violence to it. We're going to support the park in front, we're going to support the idea through the streets. So that 197A because it was a developer that wasn't going to go anywhere, we were going to be here so we just will not make enemies. That 197A was a blueprint for what the community wanted. I don't think it was the city plan. The Mitch Silver was the first sources to do this and places like London, your master's studios could be doing 197A head to Brazil. Well we had the urban technical assistance program which was part of GSAP, part of the urban planning program that actually sponsored community groups to do 197A plans. It's still doing it? No. What happened? It lost its funding. It's all about money. What sort of accomplishments that this planning commission did? What were your biggest regrets about the time on planning? What projects did you push or want to have pushed that didn't actually succeed? And have they succeeded since? Well there were details of big projects that we wanted. Let's take Riverside SAP. That was 23 acres or whatever and one of the things that we wanted to happen was the highway that we suppressed underground to make this giant park. Unfortunately at the time this project came forward the state invested in the elevated highway and it's still there. I think we all thought well maybe 40 years it will come down looking at that underground highway and that park could then be done. So I think that there were things like that. I actually would like to talk a little bit about big infrastructure projects like the third water tunnel. None of us knew too much about that. We sure learned about it very quickly. It's built beginning to be built. Is there a question up there? The third water tunnel. I came into I moved from architecture to planning to do a plan for Harlem. That was my that was my mission and when I joined the city planning department and then when I went to work for the president who was an African American president and then when I went on the commission there was a sense that I was born here we didn't know where the community was going and not that I could have foreseen where we are now where I go into a restaurant and I'm the only one that looks like me in the restaurant. I knew that it wasn't it wasn't directed towards a future that would benefit everyone in the community and one of my disappointments and again one of the reasons I work in other places is that there didn't seem to be a vehicle in city government to do that. That the mission was scattered over many agencies that the career term of any of our president or mayor was too short to effectuate that kind of thing and so it's a generalized disappointment that there still isn't that kind of vehicle in city. I'd like to add on the one who regret this is I have never discussed with these people because one of the we have it is the great friendship with each other and I was appointed by mayor as the Asian representative and so I was able to bring in the issue of Chinatown's collection but I think one of the regret was the 197th planning was basically for very mature well established community board for the immigrants who came in they were not able to use the resources so I wish at the time that the city planning department has its own or internal planning units who can assist such as blushing which I understand is that since 11 New York City and 11 New York City 25 years ago so but by the time that you know we were looking at the college point industrial area to see that can be put into new use but it would have been one of the separate budget we saw was the blushing wastewater treatment plan which now is a beautiful structure at the park but had we had more resources within the city planning department to guide these new immigrants coming into New York City I think would be better serve in the community because whenever I come back to the blushing now even I change a lot of its own needs but I really fail chaotic and I feel like coming back from now I come back from China to blushing it's like coming back to the third world country which is amazing how slow the whole thing in fact I come back to New York I see the whole New York is backwards all that other day while the planning has failed I was able to you know build I came to China for the first time in 1991 and he was the one who said I would come back he never did I did I went back permanently and my parents never thought I was going to be migrating back to China it took my father a long time to get out of China but we're driving and I think what we have learned is take part I also translate the whole U-Learning to Chinese and I was able to teach what to avoid and I think we do very well James can we get a copy of that the Chinese copy yes I also wrote a Chinese I think we should talk about a street talk about Chinese planning which was published I wrote that with Jenna Strong unfortunately we were read on the copies I think I was able to bring my copy James one of my colleagues the successor to me at the Pratt Center actually worked with the Asian community out in Flushing and recently made headway with basement departments that was later that was later I would say at the time I would just say this had we had that time because we had such great staff they were so accommodating and I think also the new charter it's a brand new chapter so there was no any kind of pre-existing individuals who hold seniority over the other people so we were able to discuss a lot of issues grown up without pre-tax so we got to do this we've worked on this for years so we were able to establish that base and I think one of the things I missed the most is the chemistry between the 13 commissioners we're very very I mean we had a lot of fun we often joke we have more than laugh than any other community hearing we never mentioned the sex theorems and that was one of the things I just sent it on I was for the sex theorems it was the on the sex zone, yeah Edward Gasky and I just sent it everybody wants to hear about that maybe they have questions yeah maybe this is a good time actually to ask if there are questions for our panelists here so we'll open it up to the floor Pernum was executive director of the department of city planning just so you know a couple of you were here in the planning profession when we had the board of estimate and then went on to the commission as well one of the things that we heard about the change in the 1989 charter was that the planning process prior to that was highly politicized and that it could be held up by like a single person from a single part and my experience since I've been sort of here with the planning commission particularly has been that the commission has always been a very thoughtful and a very professional body and not that people did represent their sort of the people who appointed them but as some of you have alluded to there was sort of and a process that was perceived as being sort of political and going with the wind whichever way the wind would go and I wonder if that in fact there's truth to that what do you guys think about that and then I would add the question to that which is that ultimately the process does end at a very political place well that was going to be my answer it's just flipped it used to be that the politics came at the beginning so that if you had a Borough president that had a good planning staff was able to negotiate with the developer was really open to the community you probably got as good a deal as you are going to get the planning commission at the time was sort of irrelevant they we looked to their opinions to make sure we weren't too far in one direction or another to make sure we weren't going to get sued to understand the zoning but that was where the deals were struck and the Borough president of what say Brooklyn if that person he or she liked a development moving forward the other Borough presidents with some exceptions would go along now that's the case at the end of the process with the council council also has that gentle persons agreement so if a council councilwoman from a certain district doesn't like the de Blasio plan for XYZ the other council members in a political and not a sort of nefarious political politics the way we run the country we'll say okay we'll go along with you again except for a few exceptions so you're not going to ring in my view politics out of the system I think the difference was and you know being self-aggrandizing a little bit was the quality of the commission of the commissioners and the fact that for the first time commissioners could stop a project and because we had the power to stop it we didn't have to stop it because developers would then come and say we already have a lot of money in this project how can we shape it or there'd be a public hearing and we'd say look the people don't like it what are you going to do but even more importantly we were able to discuss it we were able to ask questions we debated as a group in front of a public audience as opposed to what I think has taken place in subsequent years where it is much more rigidly controlled by the chair what Maxine referred to actually has a name in planning it's called Aldermanic Privilege so it's a common thing to have happen on planning committee and I've worked in maybe 10 cities and it's you know whether it's an Alderman or whether it's a council or whether it's a group of people in somebody's living room I've never seen a process without it but to Ron's point I think my question really was was the splitting of the sort of the political deal making leading to better plans and better projects on the initiative yes but I disagree a little bit I think I mean discussing was important but I think it was I really believe in the title of the panel I think it was the fact that we had power we had power to stop something I don't disagree particularly as we knew the game too every step of the way they had to give something so at the community board they'd give something the president's office had to give something the planning commission and this power being to stop it was terrific and then as a commission we really did work hard to get consensus on the decision so that the city council would go around with it but one of the things that hampered the planning staff is that unlike what James wanted you didn't have that amount of manpower or women power the number of planners in New York City for the population of New York City is dismally low and we need to expand the belief in community planning by really putting out community planners you can actually work by community boards unlike certain cities in the United States you could actually generate much more planning work we worked with one of your students Jocelyn Chate who led the planning effort in Williamsburg for the 197A we did it in the Green Point area we worked jointly together but because Williamsburg and Green Point didn't talk to each other we separated out the planning within that community board and came forth with a very good 197A plan unfortunately it was distorted later on by the zoning and you've gotten some of the over development there but I must say it's still better than not having had a plan and so some of the areas were preserved the industrial zone along the the creek, Newtown Creek is now being studied and is thriving and so there are some elements of that plan that have survived and there's really been too large scale development and so sometimes we over develop as well as under develop and we have to make sure we've come to a reasonable balance that's exactly right, Evan do you have a question I kind of wondered with the most recent developments in the Land X Terrace rezoning if the ability for community or the ZIN council the plan you should have influenced to be able to stop the project then is the new Land X Terrace a success of that change or something that we need to rethink about in some ways so from the Land X Terrace example there's not political pressure to stop the project from going forward in the rezoning the councilman's against it isn't the councilman against it is the councilman from the district against it so I'm saying that now the default is that the Azur Bright project was forwarded by the community that were kind of in this middle ground that's the zoning ordinance I think that is the answer that's the zoning ordinance burn is that just a quick note access to the waterfront I think rules of the dean and ways of decisions and relationships I think starting everybody on the same page is a very important process like they said the old man and the town I think the moment we entered we were able to talk equally there's nobody there to say I know this issue more than the other people we were able to discuss the issue really evaluate the marriage and give people a decision yes or no on the decision I hardly have any well only years we never had a contentious vote well we were just whispering we were like just we were very that's really important that's public realm we despite what you hear about slightly different points of view we really had a pretty similar baseline view you know we wanted view quarters we wanted waterfront accessed by the public to waterfront a lot of the liberal progressive lefty planning stuff there was no argument we just sort of looked at each other and said well of course we're going to protect the public realm and that form the basis I think of the yes I do remember the curve though I lost on the fire trucks that was the one I dissented on we were criticized because we spent a good deal of time saying certain brown stones could not have curve cuts and the reason was that all these curve cuts were being petitioned for interruption in sidewalk I mean if you want to walk this is what I mean by the protection of the value it was the protection of the public realm and what is the public realm it's your sidewalks, it's your streets, it's your waterfront it's the spaces that are given through zoning mariances it gives special permits and so forth and so we spent a lot of time making sure that the public realm was really public when a commission worked on something you should understand too that the staff is then given the task of writing a 50 page report whatever they have passed down to us you could have done it in one page thank you so much for this panel it was really cool and interesting to see you all in front on practice and to actually have the time to look back and see how the students have really impacted the city I really enjoyed it it's sort of inspired by professor Schiffnitz reflection on the context so first of all what do you all think about the fact that New York City now operates instead of an in and apparent in an apparent straight line that's not always the case there could be operations and changes to that my other question is about the kind of the event that we heard for dollars so we've seen TDRs take on sort of tremendous power among private developers in the city and I'm struck by now a movement at the Craft Center now to talk about how we can actually use them for public benefit I was in a meeting with someone in real estate development at the Hollywood authority last week and they were saying we'd love to view TDRs which are much more politically palatable that would be sort of as a bright or male right option of infill constituents would like it more tenants would like it more they'd bring in more money for us but the existing zoning code it's not legal to zone for dollars and I was so struck by that because I see that as not zoning for dollars but zoning for public benefit so whereas private developers can find these workarounds to save money because public housing is always lost that are not necessarily connected anyway so all this to say is what do you think of zoning for dollars versus zoning for public extraction and also should we consistently plan against imperative or should we think about other ways here's where I really differ even if it's the Pratt Center and that is we shouldn't be looking at zoning but we should be looking at that development and that plan for that area and see what are the best tools to apply to that particular area I could take you to public housing that has land that could be built on but that land is better used to manage water that will be coming into those communities so that in that case I would not want to see that zoning change for dollars there are other places where it may very well make sense and in that context you then develop and look at the tools you want to implement the plan but what we have is zoning and we look at it and try to apply it to a fixed situation and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't and I think we have to be very careful and begin to look at what do you really want to achieve in that development rather than come in with the tool kit before you know which tools to use the other point that I have to make is that we have an existential crisis in New York City and that is that there are waterfront communities I'm talking about the Rockaways parts of Red Hook, parts of Coney Island that may very well be underwater within our lifetime and definitely within your children's lifetimes and how do we take the 30,000 people living in public housing in the Rockaways and find a place for them to live safely because we may have to think about retreating from certain communities where do we put the families how do we address those issues some people want to build a wall a barrier for 30 billion dollars maybe we need to invest 5 billion dollars in eradicating poverty we've got to look at those issues and those issues have to be looked at today because we don't have time to implement the plans over a long period of time and they have to be addressed soon and nobody's doing that in the city but how many people believe in global warming in New York City? Donald Trump is in line there he's in the upper west side everybody agrees because I was asked by the Office of Emergency Management to take folks from Washington around and from Hawaii around because they were too busy dealing with Superstorm Sandy I saw what it did in the Rockaways I saw what it did in Seahate it ripped up concrete it ripped it up and moved it 15 yards and it's amazing to see that and it's getting worse and what we're doing is we're investing in housing in areas we shouldn't allow that housing to be built so we've got to start thinking about it in ways that we haven't before and that's a generational issue that your generation of planners have to address how do we make sure there's no disconnect between our planning and development activities and the long term survival of some of our communities and I think we need to start looking at not quantitative development but to deal with the quality of the city and I think those I think you need to prepare yourself by understanding the power of zoning and that is the tool and how much you really need to see what just changing a few words can do or changing a district can do to understand that at the bottom it's money land use is money and so on Uncle Chinatown so the main issue is the city jail that's surrounding the community I'll be here before that in 1998 1989 I was part of the internship and that was the first time I was exposed to this democratic and community planning and out of that experience I was able to write a proposal to study the new town in Hong Kong by being a resident in evacuating so as a result I was able to do research I'm not a practitioner but I am in Chinatown involved in the community and someone asked me to see if I could lead conducting a research on the master plan of Chinatown in this current situation so I wanted some discussion whether someone outdated should we change this plan well I mean that's a good question in terms of it's there is there possibility of having a plan that would help resolve some of the issues of conflict among the various groups so that would stand in Chinatown so two things one the last comprehensive master plan in New York City was the 1969 master plan and city government doesn't really do master plan anymore there was as part of the Chinatown working group that whole nine year effort Pratt actually did a plan fairly contentious but it was in fact a master plan for the Chinese groups in Chinatown on the Lower East Side different ethnic groups that were part of one sort of population and so that does exist the city planning in particular turned down that plan as a zoning plan so there has been an effort a fairly recent effort that actually tried to do that but you're right there was the 1976 bicentennial plan for Chinatown done by city planning but that was the last city planning directed and in many cities now they're not calling it a comp plan or a comprehensive plan they're calling it a comp plan process so especially now that we have access to media one is able to tweak plans sort of on the go so that as communities expand or populations expand or a large number of school children come into the community and tweak the plan a whole community can see the plan and in some communities you even have plan approval online that's different than the old master plan or comp plan good situation that people are longing for some authority to step in and stop over fighting that's a little beyond the scope of this the mayor the office has taken over the plan we had plan IC that's right the plan that we're talking about is now moved to the mayor's office even the mayor doesn't seem to be able to control and I'm not talking about any particular mayor but doesn't seem to be able to control necessarily the actions of their agencies or the actions of the council members whose districts these plans are operating even if you have a negotiation beforehand and we've seen a couple of instances in the upper Manhattan area even if you cut the deal beforehand when folks come out on the streets and say no often the councilman says oh I didn't realize that this was going to be the effect so I still think an entity like city planning that's a buffer from the mayor is not the mayor's plan so the mayor can step away from that can intervene when necessary is probably the better way to go and I've got to say even though I think zoning is a tool that everybody should understand and know how to use you all are young people you're supposed to be the advocates and the fighters so if you believe that we should have planning and not just zoning it doesn't mean in the interim you can't work that zoning thing but if not you who? you've got to change the law there's no law that calls for planning can I answer the question Chinese-American China county is always a very special place and I think looking at the past when I was appointed to the planning commission it was a very weak political entity I don't know if it was still weak I just learned about the prison issue a few days ago from my other friend Steve Ballantyne which I thought was from the plan point of view is ridiculous trying to get Wicker's Island making do four jails in different but I think for Chinese-American my suggestion which may be bold maybe not be agreed by the other people is the planning process in New York it's always the vocal voice is the squeezy wheel gets the grease so I think the Chinese-American has a lot of noise and you also need to think about China being a district what has been acting the area and the other thing is doing a comprehensive China planning is very important at the time Jin and I were doing this we were using oncology resources and I think the mayor thinks I cannot have appropriate funding for that study so we had to do it with the private school thing it has never been done 20 years ago and maybe rally together some not-for-profit money to put that thing together we'll be happy to help hoping to have a high level of exchanges but I think that's what I'm doing now is also empowering the the new city but I'm doing it at a long distance so we're ending right on time I just want to thank our distinguished panelists for coming