Amanda Burden, chair of the City Planning Commission, knows the lessons of Jane Jacobs (below, left): the primacy of the street, the value of blocks and complexity, the importance of public participation. She said so last night, at a panel discussion at the CUNY Graduate School assessing the legacies of Jacobs and her oft-antagonist Robert Moses.
Then, just a few minutes after proudly claiming the Jacobsian mantle, Burden discarded it for reflexive defense of the Atlantic Yards plan her boss, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, has enthusiastically endorsed.
It was a moment of mental whiplash in a wide-ranging discussion that included issues of infrastructure, mixed-income housing, and even the massive challenges facing New Orleans, but turned back to Atlantic Yards as much as anything else.
(The New York Observer covered some of the revisionism regarding Jacobs and Moses. The Architectural League has the podcast from the event, which was titled, "Jacobs vs. Moses: How Stands the Debate Today?")
Honoring Jacobs
After discussing the legacies of Jacobs and Moses, Burden declared that the formerās influence is more deeply felt, as Moses āwanted little to do with the people who had lived in the city that he created. Their voices were dispensable. Their homes were dispensable. And that is why he could not conceive of the importance of neighborhoods.ā
(Moses photo by Arnold Newman)
āJacobs, on the other hand, knew that if you neglect neighborhoods, you do so at the cityās peril,ā she said,
āThe goal of city plannersā¦ is no longer the broad brush, the bold strokes, the big plan. Although, make no mistake about it, we have an enormous need to build thousands of units of affordable housing. We must createā¦ jobs for a rapidly expanding population. We need to reclaim and revitalize our waterfront. And we must lay the foundations to support the growth that is to come and which we welcome. But it is just not acceptable or wise or even possible to undertake these challenges without espousing Jacobsā principles of city diversity, of the rich details of urban life, and to build in a way that nourishes complexity.ā
āThat is not an easy goal,ā Burden allowed, saying āWe are trying to diversify the content our toolbox.ā
āOne legacy that Jacobs left that has a daily influence on city politics, and that is the role as a fearless civic activist. She gave community activists the confidence that they can make a difference and prevail.ā
Consensus planning?
Mosesās centralized planning āis a thing of the past,ā she said. āPlanning today is noisy, combative, iterative, and reliant on community involvement. Any initiative that does not build consensus, that is not shaped by theā¦ public review process, will be an inferior plan and, deservedly, will be voted down by the City Council and I.ā (The Atlantic Yards plan, above, is outside the city's land use review process.)
Major challenges remain, citing pending efforts like the Second Avenue subway and others already in process like the rezoning of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront.
āBig cities need big projects,ā she said, saying they are a part of growth. āBut todayās big projects must have a human scale. They must be designed, from idea to construction, to fit into the city. Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacobsās standards, but they are still influenced by herā¦ It is to the great credit of the mayor that we are still building and rezoning, once again, like Moses, on an unprecedented scale, but with Jane Jacobs firmly in mind, invigorated by the belief that the process matters, and that great things can be built, with a focus on the details, on the street, for the people who live in this great city.āā
(Burden photo from NY Times)
Megaprojects and power
Richard Kahan, former president of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (now the Empire State Development Corporation) and chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, observed that the issue was the balance of power between the public sector, the private sector, and the civic sector, which he said included groups like the Municipal Art Society, the Regional Plan Association, and environmental groups.
Kahan challenged Burdenās assumptions. āWeāre trying to have a diversity of uses, but weāre still talking about megaprojects that are hardly neighborhood scale.ā He cited the World Trade Center rebuilding, Atlantic Yards, and the West Side Yards.
Kahan called them ātop-down projectsā but said āI donāt think theyāre necessarily bad. (He did allow that he didnāt like the way the World Trade Center plan had been influenced by Larry Silverstein, whoād held a lease only briefly.)
Given the reliance on the private sector today, he said, āItās very unclear to me where the counterbalance is, what it is, who they are.ā He said heād been thinking about Atlantic Yards, āwhere thereās been a noisy but certainly not very broad representative opposition.ā He then cited an email heād just received from the Municipal Art Society (MAS), āwhich had taken a pass on some of the important planning decisions in the past decade. But theyāre back. Theyāre back with a coalition. Theyāre back with a web site. And I think it changes the nature of the conversation on Atlantic Yards dramatically.ā
(Kahan obviously wasn't aware of the distinction between the BrooklynSpeaks coalition organized by the MAS and the broader criticisms raised by the longer-standing Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.)
Moses in Brooklyn
Later, urban historian Samuel Zipp, who teaches at the University of California at Irvine but used to live in Fort Greene, observed, āTo the extent that weāve all become Jacobeansā¦ this hasnāt stopped big plans from going forward, big plans that do threaten to destroy neighborhoodsā¦. Here is a plan that wants to knock down buildings, a kind of version of clearance. That indicates to usā¦ that there are ways that we have not left Moses behind.ā
After the talk centered around the proposals to buy out Stuyvesant Town, and preserve some measure of affordable housing, Kahan brought up Atlantic Yards. āWhatever you think of the design, the density and the open space planning,ā he said, obviously referencing the MAS email, āit has addressed more aggressively than anything Iāve seen, I think, the question of economically integrated housing.ā
(Actually, if heād looked more closely at the BrooklynSpeaks site produced by MAS, not to mention harsher critics of the AY project, heād see criticism of the affordable housing.)
Lander's criticism
āI so wish I could embrace it,ā said Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, praising the AY plan for affordable housing and union jobs. āBut at some level, if youāve read Jane Jacobs and live nearby, itās hard to put aside those questions of traffic and density and scale and open space and urban design, which range from mediocre to awful.ā
He brought up āprocess problems,ā saying he didnāt oppose eminent domain āfor the public good,ā but āif youāre taking peopleās homes,ā it should be the job of an elected body like City Council. āThe developerās allowed to take a path in which that judgmentāthat the public good represented by the project is worth all the paināis in the hands of a set of appointed people that the folks that live nearby didnāt have any opportunity to vote for.ā
State review
Michael Sorkin, director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York, followed up, pointing out that AY and other state-run projects were ātaken out of the normal routineā for review.
Burden responded, āThey are owned by the state, and they are government by a process determined by the stateā¦ Letās face it, there is an open rail cut at the heart of Brooklyn. And thatās not good. Itās also a transportation hub, and it can handle a big project.ā
(Actually, the deputy director of the Department of City Planningās Brooklyn office said in March that he had no recollection that the city had been looking at making use of the land.)
Lander commented, āIt would be the densest census tract in the U.S.ā (Denser than the densest tract, but not a tract itself.) He said he wanted to see a traffic plan that would convince him that there wouldnāt be endless gridlock.
What about the arena?
āWhat if they did it without the arena?ā Zipp asked.
Burden responded, āBrooklyn needs an arena, not just for basketball.ā
āWhy not put it somewhere else?ā Zipp continued.
Burden responded, āIt really will be catalyticā¦ It is audacious, and it is aggressive, but you canāt leave an open railyard at the heart of Brooklyn.ā
(Some people in the audience clapped. They probably weren't members of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association, which also has its doubts about Atlantic Yards. New Yorker critic Paul Goldberger also criticized the project.)
Later, Michael Fishman, who teaches urban planning at Columbia, asked if there had been a plan to put the arena on the Atlantic Center mall site. āIf, from a planning perspective, the mall is whatās wrong with the site, maybe the arena fits there more appropriately?ā Zipp recalled that there was one. (The suggestion was dismissed by the developer early on.)
State vs. city
Lander took off on that to say that there were a lot of ways to make a project work. āThe problem is that the review process allows the developer to state the projectās goalsā¦. The other projects have less of the benefits, fewer housing, and fewer jobs. They also have fewer of the adverse impacts. You might say, āIād like to see that equation, maybe Iād like the tradeoff,āā but thatās not available under the stateās review process.
Burden again defended the absence of city review: āBecause this is a site thatās owned by the state and it operates under guidelines set by the state.ā
A questioner from the audience (me) piped up: āHow much of the site is owned by the state?ā
Burden responded: āA predominant amount.ā
Predominant, perhaps, but not even a majority. The railyardsāthe state landāwould be less than 40 percent of the 22-acre site. And unlike with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Hudson Yards in Manhattan, the city hasn't pushed for a rezoning/bidding process.
Later, the discussion turned to infrastructure. āTransportation projects are very expensive,ā Burden said, adding that āleveraging that Atlantic Yards rezoning" could lead to $2 billion.ā It was a slip of the tongue, since she meant the Hudson Yards rezoning and its effect on the 7 train line. In Brooklyn, there has been no rezoning.
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It was a moment of mental whiplash in a wide-ranging discussion that included issues of infrastructure, mixed-income housing, and even the massive challenges facing New Orleans, but turned back to Atlantic Yards as much as anything else.
(The New York Observer covered some of the revisionism regarding Jacobs and Moses. The Architectural League has the podcast from the event, which was titled, "Jacobs vs. Moses: How Stands the Debate Today?")
Honoring Jacobs
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(Moses photo by Arnold Newman)
āJacobs, on the other hand, knew that if you neglect neighborhoods, you do so at the cityās peril,ā she said,
āThe goal of city plannersā¦ is no longer the broad brush, the bold strokes, the big plan. Although, make no mistake about it, we have an enormous need to build thousands of units of affordable housing. We must createā¦ jobs for a rapidly expanding population. We need to reclaim and revitalize our waterfront. And we must lay the foundations to support the growth that is to come and which we welcome. But it is just not acceptable or wise or even possible to undertake these challenges without espousing Jacobsā principles of city diversity, of the rich details of urban life, and to build in a way that nourishes complexity.ā
āThat is not an easy goal,ā Burden allowed, saying āWe are trying to diversify the content our toolbox.ā

Consensus planning?
Mosesās centralized planning āis a thing of the past,ā she said. āPlanning today is noisy, combative, iterative, and reliant on community involvement. Any initiative that does not build consensus, that is not shaped by theā¦ public review process, will be an inferior plan and, deservedly, will be voted down by the City Council and I.ā (The Atlantic Yards plan, above, is outside the city's land use review process.)
Major challenges remain, citing pending efforts like the Second Avenue subway and others already in process like the rezoning of the Greenpoint-Williamsburg waterfront.

(Burden photo from NY Times)
Megaprojects and power
Richard Kahan, former president of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (now the Empire State Development Corporation) and chairman of the Battery Park City Authority, observed that the issue was the balance of power between the public sector, the private sector, and the civic sector, which he said included groups like the Municipal Art Society, the Regional Plan Association, and environmental groups.
Kahan challenged Burdenās assumptions. āWeāre trying to have a diversity of uses, but weāre still talking about megaprojects that are hardly neighborhood scale.ā He cited the World Trade Center rebuilding, Atlantic Yards, and the West Side Yards.
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Given the reliance on the private sector today, he said, āItās very unclear to me where the counterbalance is, what it is, who they are.ā He said heād been thinking about Atlantic Yards, āwhere thereās been a noisy but certainly not very broad representative opposition.ā He then cited an email heād just received from the Municipal Art Society (MAS), āwhich had taken a pass on some of the important planning decisions in the past decade. But theyāre back. Theyāre back with a coalition. Theyāre back with a web site. And I think it changes the nature of the conversation on Atlantic Yards dramatically.ā
(Kahan obviously wasn't aware of the distinction between the BrooklynSpeaks coalition organized by the MAS and the broader criticisms raised by the longer-standing Council of Brooklyn Neighborhoods and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn.)
Moses in Brooklyn
Later, urban historian Samuel Zipp, who teaches at the University of California at Irvine but used to live in Fort Greene, observed, āTo the extent that weāve all become Jacobeansā¦ this hasnāt stopped big plans from going forward, big plans that do threaten to destroy neighborhoodsā¦. Here is a plan that wants to knock down buildings, a kind of version of clearance. That indicates to usā¦ that there are ways that we have not left Moses behind.ā
After the talk centered around the proposals to buy out Stuyvesant Town, and preserve some measure of affordable housing, Kahan brought up Atlantic Yards. āWhatever you think of the design, the density and the open space planning,ā he said, obviously referencing the MAS email, āit has addressed more aggressively than anything Iāve seen, I think, the question of economically integrated housing.ā
(Actually, if heād looked more closely at the BrooklynSpeaks site produced by MAS, not to mention harsher critics of the AY project, heād see criticism of the affordable housing.)
Lander's criticism
āI so wish I could embrace it,ā said Brad Lander, director of the Pratt Center for Community Development, praising the AY plan for affordable housing and union jobs. āBut at some level, if youāve read Jane Jacobs and live nearby, itās hard to put aside those questions of traffic and density and scale and open space and urban design, which range from mediocre to awful.ā
He brought up āprocess problems,ā saying he didnāt oppose eminent domain āfor the public good,ā but āif youāre taking peopleās homes,ā it should be the job of an elected body like City Council. āThe developerās allowed to take a path in which that judgmentāthat the public good represented by the project is worth all the paināis in the hands of a set of appointed people that the folks that live nearby didnāt have any opportunity to vote for.ā
State review
Michael Sorkin, director of the Graduate Urban Design Program at the City College of New York, followed up, pointing out that AY and other state-run projects were ātaken out of the normal routineā for review.
Burden responded, āThey are owned by the state, and they are government by a process determined by the stateā¦ Letās face it, there is an open rail cut at the heart of Brooklyn. And thatās not good. Itās also a transportation hub, and it can handle a big project.ā
(Actually, the deputy director of the Department of City Planningās Brooklyn office said in March that he had no recollection that the city had been looking at making use of the land.)
Lander commented, āIt would be the densest census tract in the U.S.ā (Denser than the densest tract, but not a tract itself.) He said he wanted to see a traffic plan that would convince him that there wouldnāt be endless gridlock.
What about the arena?
āWhat if they did it without the arena?ā Zipp asked.
Burden responded, āBrooklyn needs an arena, not just for basketball.ā
āWhy not put it somewhere else?ā Zipp continued.
Burden responded, āIt really will be catalyticā¦ It is audacious, and it is aggressive, but you canāt leave an open railyard at the heart of Brooklyn.ā
(Some people in the audience clapped. They probably weren't members of the New York Metro Chapter of the American Planning Association, which also has its doubts about Atlantic Yards. New Yorker critic Paul Goldberger also criticized the project.)
Later, Michael Fishman, who teaches urban planning at Columbia, asked if there had been a plan to put the arena on the Atlantic Center mall site. āIf, from a planning perspective, the mall is whatās wrong with the site, maybe the arena fits there more appropriately?ā Zipp recalled that there was one. (The suggestion was dismissed by the developer early on.)
State vs. city
Lander took off on that to say that there were a lot of ways to make a project work. āThe problem is that the review process allows the developer to state the projectās goalsā¦. The other projects have less of the benefits, fewer housing, and fewer jobs. They also have fewer of the adverse impacts. You might say, āIād like to see that equation, maybe Iād like the tradeoff,āā but thatās not available under the stateās review process.
Burden again defended the absence of city review: āBecause this is a site thatās owned by the state and it operates under guidelines set by the state.ā
A questioner from the audience (me) piped up: āHow much of the site is owned by the state?ā
Burden responded: āA predominant amount.ā
Predominant, perhaps, but not even a majority. The railyardsāthe state landāwould be less than 40 percent of the 22-acre site. And unlike with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Hudson Yards in Manhattan, the city hasn't pushed for a rezoning/bidding process.
Later, the discussion turned to infrastructure. āTransportation projects are very expensive,ā Burden said, adding that āleveraging that Atlantic Yards rezoning" could lead to $2 billion.ā It was a slip of the tongue, since she meant the Hudson Yards rezoning and its effect on the 7 train line. In Brooklyn, there has been no rezoning.
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ReplyDeleteBurden: āPlanning today is noisy, combative, iterative, and reliant on community involvement. Any initiative that does not build consensus, that is not shaped by theā¦ public review process, will be an inferior plan and, deservedly, will be voted down by the City Council and I.ā
ReplyDeletecough--Yankee Stadium--cough