Pratt Center

In this Issue:

• A Message from Pratt Center Sustainability and Environmental Justice Director Joan Byron
• Mapping New York's Dwindling Manufacturing Land
• Promoting Public Plazas
• Downtown Brooklyn Report Supports Affordable Housing Advocacy
• Energy Matters Launches
• Seeking Policies to Support Independent Businesses
• Meet Pratt Center's Summer Interns
• Contribute

Revving up a Bus Rapid Transit Network

A Message from Pratt Center Sustainability and Environmental Justice Director Joan Byron

Amid budget chaos, proposed fare hikes and the deferral of desperately needed subway station repairs, the Metropolitan Transit Agency is talking about its biggest service expansion in generations -- and it's exactly the right solution for New York's future transit needs. "We ultimately would like to see an extensive network of 'bus rapid transit,'" MTA Executive Director Lee Sander recently told members of the State Assembly. Under Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan, the city Department of Transportation is also on board for a bus rapid transit, or BRT, revolution. Through relatively simple and inexpensive infrastructure -- road barriers, cameras, electronics that synchronize traffic signals, provision for riders to pay their fares before a bus arrives -- bus rapid transit is poised to shorten lengthy commutes for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, especially those who earn less than $35,000 a year.

Here at the Pratt Center for Community Development, we're thrilled, proud, and hopeful for the future. For more than a year, the Pratt Center has used a combination of research and advocacy to make the case for BRT in NYC. We brought former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who transformed his city with a far-reaching BRT system, to New York to share his secrets. We mapped out possible routes for a new network, and showed where the city's current transit system is failing to provide speedy commutes, especially for low-income New Yorkers. (While high-wage jobs in such fields as finance and media are concentrated in the subway-rich Manhattan core, blue-collar and service jobs are dispersed across the city.) And we helped organize COMMUTE, a citywide coalition of faith, immigration, community development, environmental justice, and other organizations intent on improving public transportation in the city's worst-served neighborhoods.

Now that we've succeeded in positioning bus rapid transit as a solution for New York's transit and traffic challenges, Pratt Center is zeroing in on how to make BRT provide maximum benefits to New York's workers, economy and environment. We've mapped out 15 routes, taking into account where low-income New Yorkers live and work, and seeking connections between areas that have been poorly linked by mass transit. Our proposed BRT routes promise to bring rapid transit to 60% of the 112,000 public housing residents who now live over half a mile from a subway line. Just one of the routes, between the Sunset Park waterfront and JFK airport, would serve more than 600,000 New Yorkers and provide speedy access to workplaces employing more than 70,000 people.

MTA and NYC DOT are now test-driving their "Select Bus Service" on the Pelham Parkway/Fordham Road route in the Bronx. Select Bus Service isn't quite BRT: the lanes aren't protected (since Albany inexplicably would not allow the city to place cameras on the new buses), and the buses themselves lack some necessary technology. But the two agencies have been resourceful, improvising an off-board fare collection device and payment system. Riders are experiencing the gains in speed and reliability that the agencies projected when the service launched in June.

We expect DOT and MTA to build toward true BRT, in a comprehensive network designed to maximize access for New Yorkers to the places where they work, study and play -- rather than primarily to the mega real estate projects that have dominated transit capital budgets in recent years, serving relatively few, high-income riders with projects that cost in the billions. As they build out New York's transit system for the future, Pratt Center will continue to be there, working to ensure BRT provides the greatest possible benefit, at low cost, to the New Yorkers who need it most.

Equitable Development Policy and Advocacy
Mapping New York's Dwindling Manufacturing Land

As part of our work to assess whether Willets Point's industrial businesses could be successfully relocated to other areas of the city (see Spring 2008 eNews), Pratt Center planners discovered that New York City's loss of manufacturing land has been more rapid and severe in recent years than anyone had previously calculated. Pratt Center GIS Specialist Justin Kray mapped the findings: Since the beginning of the Bloomberg administration, New York City has lost nearly 1,800 acres of manufacturing-zoned land. Under current plans another 1,800 will disappear, amounting to a 20 percent reduction in manufacturing land in less than a decade. Because the areas targeted for rezoning include many multi-story buildings, the total loss of built square footage is even greater -- nearly 40 percent of all the manufacturing-zoned space in New York City.

A Pratt Center Issue Brief, "Protecting New York's Threatened Manufacturing Space," outlines the impact of the rapid shrinkage of industrial land and makes policy recommendations to better protect the valuable manufacturing land New York still has. Among the recommendations is a moratorium on the conversion of any more manufacturing-zoned land to other uses until the city conducts comprehensive studies of New York's industrial economy and land use, and a requirement that any hotel, big box retail, or large office users obtain a special permit before they could locate in manufacturing zones.

Working with the New York Industrial Retention Network and Zoning for Jobs, the Pratt Center is using its findings on industrial space loss to press for the expansion of designated industrial zones and stronger protections against their rezoning to other uses.

Read the Pratt Center Issue Brief "Protecting New York's Threatened Manufacturing Space".

Sustainability and Environmental Justice
Promoting Public Plazas

On June 24, the Pratt Center hosted the launch of the New York City Department of Transportation's Public Plaza Program. Under the program, an initiative of the Bloomberg Administration's PlaNYC 2030, NYC DOT will work with local partners to create new open spaces in neighborhoods throughout New York City. The June event marked the release of the program's first request for proposals, under which up to eight plaza projects will be funded. Proposals are due August 19, 2008; the application and further information are available at http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/sidewalks/publicplaza.shtml.

DOT's intent in partnering with neighborhood entities is to create open spaces whose design and programming are vibrant, locally driven and culturally relevant. Plaza sponsors will identify sites and facilitate community participation in the design process; DOT will pay for design and construction. Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Assistant Commissioner Andrew Wiley-Schwartz have pledged to give top priority to neighborhoods with the greatest open space needs. The Pratt Center was among the advocates DOT consulted as it was developing the RFP; we noted that neighborhoods with open space deficits may also be those with the greatest capacity challenges. We were concerned that demonstrating the ability to maintain the plazas once they are completed could be a high hurdle for communities lacking well-resourced Business Improvement Districts or other entities able to take on plaza management.

DOT responded by bringing in the Department of Small Business Services, which will make grants of up to $50,000 per year to plaza sponsors for the initial three years of plaza operation. Sponsors will also be able to raise revenue from plaza concessions.

The Pratt Center is excited that DOT is not only taking the lead in redefining streets as public spaces, but is doing so in a way that embraces both equity and community-based planning. While DOT's goal of creating eight new plazas in this initial cycle of the program may be modest, we hope that its success will ensure that it will continue and grow in the post-Bloomberg era, so that all of New York's neighborhoods can create the kinds of public spaces that nurture a sense of identity and community.

Community Planning
Downtown Brooklyn Report Supports Affordable Housing Advocacy

In July members of FUREE (Families United for Racial and Economic Equality) held a demonstration in front of a massive vacant lot in downtown Brooklyn owned by supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis. Formerly home to a grocery store, drugstore, laundromat, and other essential businesses that nearby public housing residents long relied on, the site is slated for luxury housing development but remains vacant while the developer secures financing.

FUREE members used a new report from the Pratt Center, "Downtown Brooklyn's Detour: The Unanticipated Impacts of Redevelopment on Residents and Businesses," to highlight a number of problems that have emerged since the rezoning of downtown Brooklyn in 2004 and a subsequent boom in development. Planner Paula Crespo found that while the rezoning aimed to create new office space, most new development is residential, leading to an influx of wealthy new residents in an area previously home to people of modest incomes. Most new developments, including Catsimatidis', do not include any affordable housing. More than 100 businesses have been displaced and workers are losing their jobs. The businesses that replace them are likely to cater to new higher-income residents.

FUREE used the Pratt Center findings to demand measures to ensure longtime residents and other low-income New Yorkers can continue to live, work and shop in downtown Brooklyn. These include a commitment to affordable housing at the Catsimatidis site; a pledge to bring back retail to the site, employing local residents there; and transportation to alternative shopping sites until the stores reopen.

Read the report here.

More on Pratt Center's work in downtown Brooklyn.

Helping Communities Build
Energy Matters Launches

We hope you'll check out Energy Efficiency, Pratt Center's web resource center providing managers and owners of New York City buildings -- especially affordable housing - with information about how to make buildings more financially sustainable and environmentally friendly. This month, you'll find new information about solar power in New York City, along with extensive information about financial sources for energy efficiency improvements, events, workshops, and energy-saving tips.

New York City's one million buildings are responsible for 79 percent of the city's carbon emissions, virtually all of it from energy consumption. Affordable housing is the least efficient of all: by focusing on improving their energy efficiency, we can improve environmental conditions as well as support financial stability for those New Yorkers likely to be hardest hit by sharply increasing energy costs. In partnership with Neighborhood Housing Services and NYSERDA, Energy Matters is part of the Pratt Center's ongoing efforts to give all New Yorkers the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of living in an energy efficient environment.

Equitable Development Policy and Advocacy
Generating Support for Independent Retailers

As mom-and-pop retail businesses around New York City struggle to survive in the face of extreme rents and the spread of chain stores and banks, the Pratt Center has been working with civic organizations and elected officials on strategies for preserving and sustaining independent retailers that serve the needs of neighborhood residents.

With her students from Pratt Institute's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (see Winter eNews), Pratt Center Director of Planning and Preservation Vicki Weiner has been advising the East Village Community Coalition on strategies for promoting small retailers. Students' recommendations include a ban on new "formula retail" -- essentially, chain stores -- on St. Marks Place between Avenue A and Third Avenue, and a requirement that chains seeking to locate elsewhere in the East Village obtain a permit from the city following an assessment of local need and impact. Formula retailers that do locate in the area would be required to contribute to a fund for grants to local businesses. The report also recommends tax incentives for landlords who agree to below-market leases for retail tenants.

Weiner is also advising the East 125th Street Development Task Force, which under the leadership of Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito is working with the city Economic Development Corporation to include independent local retailers in the mix of businesses within a large-scale mixed-income development in East Harlem. In Coney Island, the Center is exploring strategies to guarantee a prominent place for small businesses and vendors in whatever development takes place. And at a series of Manhattan events, some in conjunction with screenings of the documentary film "Twilight Becomes Night," Weiner has been facilitating an ongoing public discussion about solutions to New York neighborhoods' retail needs and the continued loss of institutions valued by their communities. "Communities all over the city recognize the value and importance of their local retail," Weiner said. "We're hoping the public conversation will result in some policy fixes for this widespread problem."

Meet the Pratt Center Staff: Summer Interns

In only a few months, this year's summer interns mapped plans for Bus Rapid Transit networks, researched solar power financing in New York City, modeled a vision for the decommissioned Sheridan Expressway, and more. As a university-based organization, the Pratt Center has long benefited from the energy and talents of students in all corners of our work. "I would call them junior planners, really," says Janelle Farris, Director of Operations. "We've come to really rely on students to help us do our work. The interns enable us to take on more projects, and the stronger the students are, the farther we can go."

During the school year, the Pratt Center hosts students from Pratt Institute's School of Architecture, and Pratt's Graduate Center for Planning and the Environment (GCPE). During the summer, we welcome students from all over the country. Interns play a major role in most of the Pratt Center's projects, and are given serious responsibilities from conducting community interviews to producing GIS analysis. "The interns keep us on our toes with fresh perspectives, and lots of energy and enthusiasm," says Rebecca Reich, Director of Community Real Estate. "The Helping Communities Build team couldn't function without the hard work and dedication of our intern." Michael Bogdanffy-Kriegh, Lead Architect, agrees: "Our intern, Onelia Lopez is smart and enthusiastic, and hit the ground running. It will be hard to give up half her time when she starts classes again!"

"The Pratt Center was one of the main reasons I was drawn to Pratt for graduate school, and I think a lot of students would say that," noted Michael Amabile, who spent a full year contributing to the Transportation Equity Project. "The internship program really reinforces Pratt's commitment to social justice, and to working to make this a great city for everyone who lives here." Jamie Lyn Furgang, this year's Citi Foundation intern, is a graduate student at New York University's Wagner School of Public Policy. Furgang focused on workforce development issues, and among other projects, wrote a report on how New York City public housing residents can connect to job opportunities in economic development projects. "The internship was a great opportunity for me to expand my skill set," Furgang said. She plans to pursue a career in the public sector, where she expects she'll be able to put her Pratt Center experiences to good use. "I've learned a lot about how best to assess local capacity, and how to implement a workforce development linkage program."

CONTRIBUTE

Please support the Pratt Center for Community Development's vital work to help New York City's communities plan and build their own futures. Your gift enables us to continue supporting community organizations in pursuit of their visions, and to link their efforts to opportunities to influence city and state policies. To help us, visit our secure online donation page.