Welcome back to a humid, sweaty Streetbeat!
July has been one hell of a month. Both figuratively and literally.
Personally, I’ve been busy, which may explain the less writing I did this month. I hopped around a bunch (visited Chicago, Charleston, and Carmel), and safely spent time with close family and friends. That included an e-bike ride around Lake Michigan with my dad; a 13-hour Amtrak from NYC to Charleston; and a bike parade in my sister’s new cycling-friendly ‘burb. I also joined the 3-0 club, which we celebrated with a shared backyard boogie. The actual day itself was a tour de force of biking, parks and food across three boroughs.
But my bubble aside, the world burned. Cities in America, China, India and Germany flooded. Wildfires raged again in the West, its smoke billowing thousands of miles, transforming New York into what looked like Tatooine. A heat dome implanted itself over the PNW. And, of course, the deadly delta variant continues to pose an outsized threat to the unvaccinated, tabling the term ‘post-COVID’ and leaving those lucky enough to have the jab frustrated. The second pandemic summer, as one would expect, is going along just swimmingly.
So there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s get started:
The Mayorship
I pushed it off last month because ranked-choice results were still hazy. But now it’s official: Eric Adams, Brooklyn’s borough president and a former police officer, is the Democratic nominee for mayor and the presumptive future occupant of New York City’s Gracie Mansion. He would succeed term-limited Mayor Bill de Blasio in January.
While there’s endless ink to be spilled on Adams and his campaign, I won’t wade into the thick of it. Only points I will add are: a) his remarks on public safety after meeting POTUS were impressive from a national profile perspective (Sure my more moderate friends would agree); and b) he was one of my first subjects back in 2014 when I was an editor at the now-defunct Bklynr. That interview, which spanned new development and police reform, still sticks with me. (Even if he just vetoed new housing where a drive-thru McDonald’s currently stands.)
But since this is a newsletter on issues of urban planning and design, I figured it’s timely to do a rundown on Adams’ positions. (I covered all of the major candidates’ platforms for Bloomberg CityLab in April.)
A native of Brownsville, one of the city’s poorest communities, Adams has a deep history with Black cycling advocacy—something that NYC (and every city, fwiw) should be focusing on. And equity underlies several of his proposals. He wants to repurpose derelict parking underneath train tracks into cycle ‘highways,’ like this proposal in Berlin—although some advocates balk given his staff’s tendency to illegally park near his office. An outspoken vegan, he has pitched ideas to create safe cycling routes to schools so city kids can get exercise, and he’d like to put public dollars into Citi Bike (currently funded privately, by Lyft) so the world’s largest bike share program can spread to transit-strapped communities faster.
Adams appears supportive of expanding Open Streets to more neighborhoods, as the current program leans heavily towards whiter, wealthier ones. And when subway stations flooded this month, he came out vocally for the states/feds to speed up the congestion pricing rollout—which would hand mass transit $15 billion—even if the mayor has little power there. Borough presidents are usually stumping for better transit, so Adams won’t be learning on the job.
In many respects, an Adams administration seems destined to be a sequel to de Blasio’s; the fellow party operative even reportedly supported him behind closed doors. But in an arena like New York, it’s anyone’s guess until New Year’s Day. In the meantime, enjoy the debates with his GOP opponent: cat-lover and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
Open to ideas
Half a million New Yorkers are still out of work, and those still under- or unemployed are not only heavily concentrated in low-income communities of color, but also, highly automatable, low-wage sectors. As we know, COVID exposed the fragilities of modern-day capitalism, showing who (and what) is most vulnerable to disruption and who can get by just fine. As my dad likes to say, ‘For some people, there never was a recession.’
That’s why it’s urgent we start building a stronger, more resilient urban economy now. The ideal drives a new policy series I’m starting for Center for an Urban Future (CUF), where I’ve been a research fellow since 2017. I’m looking across the U.S.—and maybe even overseas—for smart local policies to import to the Big Apple that boost economic opportunity in a concrete way, whether it’s building community wealth or expanding skills-building pipelines into fast-growing industries. So workers in soon-to-go sectors can re-skill before the next crisis.
It’s a bit different than my past research on the city’s parks, its sluggish construction process, and, soon, public libraries. But so far, the search has been inspiring. More soon on what we dig up! (And if a specific policy comes to mind, do message me.)
Victory for parks
Last year, New York, like many municipalities, cut their parks budget—by a whopping $80 million, or 14 percent. This was at a time that I’d argue (which I did, repeatedly) was the most important for green spaces in our lives. But what was even sadder is that it came right after advocates secured $44 million in new maintenance funding, the largest such increase in decades. That movement, the Play Fair coalition, was spurred by our research at CUF chronicling just how underinvested our parks system had truly become.
But now, tides are changing. In the city’s latest budget, the largest in its history ($99 billion, wow), that cut has been restored, with all of Play Fair’s demands attached. That includes $25 million for over 340 new workers, just as peak summer usage gets underway. The city is even adopting the Play Fair language in press releases.
Parks still shockingly make up less than 1 percent of the city’s budget, and there’s a long way to go in fixing up our century-old system. But hopefully we have momentum now.
Another Olympics
I hold many reporting experiences near and dear, but one that always stands out is the three months my partner Angela and I were lucky enough to live with her family in Rio de Janeiro during the 2016 Summer Olympics. Sure, we were there to see some events (if you know us, we’re huge sports fans)—but what we really cared about was the city and country at that moment.
The backdrop was bewildering: as revelers descended upon Rio, Brazil was in the throngs of an epic recession, brought on by the historic ‘Car Wash’ corruption scandal that ensnared dozens of politicians and business leaders. Its president, Dilma Rousseff, was mid-impeachment, sowing distrust that would eventually elevate authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro, who has now personally overseen a historic scorch of the Amazon and half a million deaths from COVID. (Per him: it’s “just a little cold.”) And Rio, Brazil’s second largest city, was broke.
So, no shortage of stories. We covered favela tourism, late-night rap circles on police brutality, and the tear-gassed protests outside of the Opening Ceremony. We even got to embed with an Occupy-like movement in an abandoned hall. (And, yes, we wrote about food—namely botecos, Rio’s iconic curbside bars.) But the real focus was on how a city this battered could take on such an expensive endeavor like the Olympics.
The Games right now in Tokyo, of course, are particularly unique. It is not 2020, and stadiums are empty. Japan has a comparatively wealthy populace, which also distinguished Rio from its last host, London. Tokyo itself has 9 metro lines, while Rio was just getting its fourth then. And no favelas had to be demolished to build arenas for javelin and tightrope. (Although this man’s story is super sad.)
But similar sentiments have arisen. Many residents didn’t want the Games due to fears over COVID. And given Japan’s notoriety for stagnation, Tokyo could be paying handsomely for stadiums that sat empty for over a year. The Olympics has always been this quadrennial glimpse into global politics at a magnified city scale, but these last two times… even more so. Go Team USA?!
Solutions Corner: Covid Stimulus in Action
Since March 2020, Washington has passed three major stimulus packages—the CARES Act (March 2020), the lesser-flashy Consolidated Appropriations Act (December 2020), and the American Rescue Plan, or ARP (March 2021). In total, we’re talking upwards of $4 trillion poured into the U.S. economy.
And a ton of that money is landing in cities. (The ARP, at $1.1 trillion, is just now funneling into municipalities.) Through my research at CUF, I’ve come across some really impressive ways that these funds are being used that, if successful, could provide for longer-lasting policies. I’m going to note four nice ones here:
The City Cleanup Corps (NYC). Modeled after the New-Deal-era WPA, which built parks, libraries, schools and other public buildings across America, New York City is hiring 10,000 people for street beautification. The CCC will: plant street trees; work with Open Streets; and create public art.
GradTX (Houston). The Higher Education Coordinating Board of Texas is partnering with the Greater Houston Partnership to help adult students finish college while also creating credential programs in fields that are seeing labor shortages. An estimated 4 million Texans have earned college credit but not finished their programs.
Paid Alley Clean Up (Detroit). The program pays residents to clean up overgrown alleyways, with a focus on hiring the formerly incarcerated. The city cleaned 505 alleys by the end of 2020, expanding to 2,000 this year.
Guaranteed Basic Income (Los Angeles). Cities have been experimenting with universal basic income for some time now. But L.A. will be the biggest city to try doling out monthly checks to a segment of the population. The 3-year pilot will provide $1,024 monthly to 150 residents, ages 18-24.
Bright Side: The Urban Conga + Public Play
As I noted last month, I’ve gotten quite involved in my local Open Street on 31st Avenue, in western Queens. I watched it form from afar during the height of the first wave. Then I reported on it for Bloomberg CityLab. And today, I join a great group of volunteers, and with city support, we’re making moves on operations, programming and fundraising for the new public space, which now fully closes on weekends to traffic and parking, rather than asking cars to slow down. (Here’s a shameless plug for our sites.)
It’s been a learning experience. I’ve met drivers who try to move barricades, and drivers who happily leave when it starts. I’ve met more neighbors in the last six months than the last six years. I’ve had young parents come up and say that this has been a godsend. And I’ve had a neighbor tell me it’s been the best thing to happen to the block in ages, followed by a neighbor who threatened to sue me.
You understand what attracts people to a space—and what doesn’t. Although we’ve been busy organizing DJs, bake sales, and the like, the more organic use (birthdays, card games, strangers challenging others to lawn games) have been the most fascinating to watch. Not everyone can afford summer camps or backyards. So how do we activate the tar right in front of our own homes?
That’s a long-winded intro to The Urban Conga, a design studio dedicated to incorporating play into underutilized public spaces for all ages. I recently had the chance to chat with Ryan Swanson, its founder and an architect by trade. “We see the playable city as an ecosystem,” he told me over Zoom. Part of that are his studio’s inventions, like a bench with a marimba built in, or these aluminum drums in Miami’s Little Haiti doubling as seating. Working with local groups and cities willing to experiment a bit, The Urban Conga looks to add temporary or permanent installations that bring people out — and build community, too.
Since COVID, Swanson told me business has boomed, as more see the potential in public spaces. But now, he adds, we’re at an “inflection point,” where cities must decide whether this is worth pursuing, and if so, how we move beyond pilots.
Parklet of the Month: July 2021
Winner: This streetside garden in Montréal.
FKA: 4-5 parking spots, maybe less.
Now: Greenery that retains stormwater, aids ecosystems, and captures carbon.
Been wanting to spotlight Montréal, one of my all-time fave cities, for a while. The Québec capital, led by the ambitious Valérie Plante, is undergoing a notable transformation, flipping asphalt into gardens, public seating, or people-friendly infrastructure. So it was hard to choose—another photo, again from Stephen Miller of Transit, shows an outdoor dining structure on Avenue Mont-Royal with street seating attached. Now that is innovation.
Got a parklet you want to give a shout-out to? Submit it here.
And last but not least… some job openings!
Jackson Chabot, whose name you may recognize (the May newsletter covered his office’s Office of Public Space Management proposal), sent me openings at Open Plans, the livable streets nonprofit where he works. They’re hiring for a:
And related: Manhattan’s Columbus Avenue BID needs an Open Street leader.
(I’d like to do this more! So if you know of any openings and think Streetbeat’s subscribers are a good fit, send them my way.)
Thank you for visiting! See you in August.
“For the city, his city, stood unchanging on the edge of time: the same burning dry city of his nocturnal terrors and the solitary pleasures of puberty, where flowers rusted and salt corroded, where nothing had happened for four centuries except a slow aging among withered laurels and putrefying swamps.” - Gabriel García Márquez, in ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’