Streetbeat, Vol. XV
On the New York City mayoral race, revisiting the commute, and building back better—literally.
If you’ve just floated in from your inbox, you may have noticed: we’ve got a new name (and look)!
At the start of 2021, I mentioned that changes were in store now that we had ~300 subscribers + >10 volumes. The name was one of them. To be honest, I always thought ‘Journalism & Urbanism’ was lame; too broad, too wordy, and — I don’t know — saying ‘urbanism’ can feel a bit trite these days. It didn’t really capture what I was going for with this, which was not only a monthly missive of ideas and writings on what I see happening in cities, but also, a place to spotlight solutions and spark some creativity in how we build and design them.
Journalism, yes. Urbanism, yes. But together… eh. We could do better.
So upon further review (read: a Staten Island bus trip with Ange and a certain Jimmy), I’ve decided to rename it to Streetbeat. A one-seat ride for all things urban design, planning, and infrastructure, with a focus, of course, on mobility and sustainability. I think it has a nice ring to it! And—unless someone sues me for copyright—I hope you do, too.
And finally: with outdoor dining here to stay in NY post-pandemic, I’ll now be ending each newsletter with a ‘Parklet of the Month’ that will feature an ingenious small business and their rethink of a parking spot. I’ll kick it off, but this section will be open to submissions from anywhere. So if you have a good parklet near you, please send! I want to show off where you live. (Not creepy.)
Now, without further ado… because there’s a lot to go through this month:
The streets election
I mentioned a few newsletters ago that the New York City mayoral race means a lot to me. It was my journalistic baptism by fire; my first day on the job in 2013 (then for The Wall Street Journal) was when Rep. Anthony Weiner fka Carlos Danger suddenly went from frontrunner to persona non grata. It was all downhill from there.
This time around, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Although stories of folks fleeing the city don’t match stats—and, frankly, the ‘city is dead’ dialogue is so dated to me—New York very much faces a crisis of identity and morale, as it did after 9/11 and the 1970s fiscal crisis. We’re at 2.1 million now, but when will we get back to 5.5 million daily subway riders? How will remote work reshape this city? What does a recovery look like? Where do we go from here? (Admittedly, that’s coming from someone who watched 2020 from the UK.)
What I’m interested in, of course, is transportation. The mayor wields limited power over the subway, but a ton over buses, walking, cycling, and the rising tide of micro-mobility at a time when talks of infrastructure and the climate crisis are dominating headlines. We’ve seen an Overton window, let’s say, for streets—in 2013, de Blasio’s Vision Zero approach (the goal of zero traffic-related fatalities) was considered ambitious; now it’s difficult to find a major city that hasn’t pledged to it. (If elected mayor, Weiner himself pledged to rip out the Prospect Park protected bike lane; since then, it’s expanded in length and ridership.)
Eight years has been a century in this space, and we’re seeing that in policy agendas being put forth. So where do the leading candidates stand? In my latest for Bloomberg CityLab, I find out.
Informal conversation
Readers, I’m sure, are mostly familiar with what is known as ‘formal’ transit: subway; commuter trains; light rail; buses; etc. Systems largely overseen or operated by the state. (I’d call Uber, bikeshare and e-scooters ‘quasi-formal’ for this reason.) But informal transit—systems mostly operating independent of the state—has always fascinated me. And I’ve experienced a few efforts myself: motos in Brazil; shared vans in Jamaica; tuk-tuks in India. Although unregulated (and, sometimes, even unrecognized), these systems often fill gaps in transit landscapes, both in service and demographics. They adapt to new scenarios fast, and can be where people are now.
Those benefits have taken on a whole new shine after this last year, but informal transit systems—which are way more prevalent in the Global South—didn’t fall into nearly the same safety net that formal transit did. If cities want to build a more inclusive, greener transportation network, which was needed long before the pandemic, then informal operators can play a really pivotal role.
Along with PEAK Urban, I wrote about how that can happen for TheCityFix.
Introducing… MoLab!
A quick shout-out to MoLab (short for The Mobility, Technology and Well-being Lab), which launched this month out of the Max Planck Institute in Germany. Along with co-editor Magda Rodríguez Delhi, I’ve spent the past few months helping director Biao Xiang get this initiative up and running by reading through dozens of works from researchers all over the globe. As we put out more entries, the Lab will function as a knowledge source for mobility studies—how the way we move is changing, and how, in turn, our world is transforming as a result.
Do follow along on Twitter, and submit yourself if you feel so inclined.
Rethinking the commute
When editor Amy Nordrum first approached me about writing a story for the ‘Cities’ issue of the MIT Technology Review, I was: a) obviously chuffed; and b) fixated on a concept that I still can’t shake: the rush hour post-pandemic. If remote work patterns continue—which, I think, they certainly will—then the dominant ‘hub-and-spoke’ model of flushing people in and out of a central business district loses appeal.
On one hand, that poses an existential threat to transit agencies far and wide, which have built their financial models around the commuter. But on another, this could present a generational chance to transform the mission of our transit systems for the better. (A few volumes back, I wrote all about why a centralized city is bad.) Particularly for those whose livelihoods thrive on the periphery, which are mostly low-income riders of color. Historically, cities have overlooked those voices in planning, focusing on where white-collar jobs are, instead of other key factors that became so important this last year (e.g. access to medical care; fresh food; green space). Time for that to change.
Amy and I came together on the idea to profile Tiffany Chu, the CEO of Remix, the world’s preeminent transit planning platform. Every day, millions of us interact with decisions made on Remix, and the company—which has brought a UX spin to a previously stale process—is now helping cities reevaluate their priorities. In October, Chu wrote that this could be the age of the “neighborhood center.” And for her, it could leave behind a transit system that works better for everyone.
Here’s the story online, but catch it in print if you can.
In the media…
With the tables inexplicably turned, I was interviewed this month for The Outspoken Cyclist podcast, where host Diane Jenks and I discussed mode change during COVID, what the infrastructure bill in Washington could mean for cities, and the low-traffic neighborhoods of London, which I covered a little while back for CityLab.
Listen with a morning coffee!
Solutions corner: Fixing the broken capital process
How the City of New York builds things—or what’s known as the capital construction process—is broken. It takes 90 months (or 7.5 years) on average for the city to complete public projects like libraries and parks, from scope to ribbon-cut. That immense time suck, of course, comes at a cost, both with a higher price tag due to delay and inflation, and also, having to live without a neighborhood amenity for years. And during the pandemic recovery, where city dollars will have to stretch farther, that’s unacceptable. We can talk all about infrastructure, but if we don’t fix how we actually build it, then we all lose out. Which is the case right now for cities everywhere.
In June, I came back to Center for an Urban Future (CUF) to help figure out how the city could further improve the capital process. In 2017, CUF released ‘Slow Build,’ a wide-ranging report with startling figures, like this one: the median cost for new city-constructed buildings in the analysis was $930 per square foot, or about double the cost of new office space in New York. That led the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), which manages a slew of capital projects for the city, to release a blueprint for reform.
Three years later, we’re checking in—with more in my latest brief. Here are the seven solutions we found:
Create a Deputy Mayor for Infrastructure. ‘Silos’—or when government agencies don’t work in tandem—is a very real governing phenomenon; it’s probably, like, 45% of what your conservative cousin means when they grumble about ‘red tape.’ (And the reasons why usually lead back to politics or subpar management, to be honest.) We found that DDC was the only agency to come out with a plan to change, even though the capital process involves an ABC soup of entities that need to sign off. Until every agency joins in on this urgent effort, it is, as my dad likes to say, “destined to fail.”
The deputy mayor would oversee this all-hands-on-deck push, helping to: 2. form an interagency squad to hasten approvals, and 3. further streamline the change order process; a standard industry practice, but, for the city, it takes forever. The ‘Build Back Better’ era we’ve entered demands the position.
Bin the low-bid. Not many people outside of city politics may know this, but the state requires the city to award contracts to the lowest responsible bidder. So whatever contractor puts forward the lowest amount to build something—and has a decent enough track record—they typically get the job. It is a mandate from an era of brazen corruption, but you can imagine what goes wrong: the work that comes back is deficient in some way, causing further delays, and sometimes, termination—a lengthy legal battle that just further pillages city coffers. But that’s not the worst part: it also disincentivizes award-winning architects and designers from wanting to work with the city.
That, to me, is a huge loss. So it’s on Albany to reconsider.
PM, PM, PM. That’s insider lingo for project management. DDC needs more of it. Give PMs the power to be more proactive with unresponsive contractors or agencies. And train them with one mission in mind: to get the project done.
Let libraries do more. In certain occasions, libraries are allowed to self-manage their own projects, namely if it’s an interim branch or a project fully funded by a grant. When that does happen, they get it done in a fifth of the time and a third of the cost as the city, because they get to choose their own contractors and timelines. So give the branch systems and other cultural institutions the resources and staffing to go big!
Lay out the funds for long-term planning. So often, the scope of a project or budget changes as time goes on; some secret is unearthed underground, or additional tweaks are made through community engagement. Don’t allow that to throw everything off the rails—the city must put in the money early on to ensure continuity throughout. That way, projects can chart the unknown without worry.
The big number: $800 million saved if these reforms are made. Enough money to:
Clear nearly the entire backlog of maintenance needs across the city’s three library systems;
Pay for 150 full-time parks maintenance workers for the next decade;
Or fund more than 1,300 miles of protected bike lanes.
(And before I forget, shout-out to Commercial Observer and Politico for the coverage.)
Bright side: Greening our stations
If you can believe it, this is a bus stop in south London.
The Edible Bus Stop is a nonprofit that, amongst other projects, aims to weave green space into the nooks and crannies of public transit, creating a more pleasant rider experience, expanding urban ecosystems, and reducing our carbon footprint (which contains many more benefits itself). But the Big Smoke isn’t stopping there—another organization, Energy Garden, is bringing beehives and berries to Overground stations across London. There are now 34 citywide.
If transit agencies are desperate for riders to return post-pandemic, doing some gardening—a minor investment in the grand scheme of things—might not hurt.
Parklet of the Month
This month: Blend, in Astoria, Queens. (New York City)
Formerly: 3-4 parking spots.
Now: a streetside rainforest.
If parklets get businesses to care for street trees like this, we’d only be so lucky.
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Got a parklet you want to give a shout-out to? Submit it here.
“Cities aren’t what you think, see. If you make it past the first ordeal, I’ll tell you what cities really are and what they want.” - Grant Morrison, The Invisibles (Vol. 1)
I don’t think Earth would ever give humankind a holiday—but still, happy Earth Day to those who celebrated this month. See you in May!