Bahá’u’lláh*
And welcome to this newsletter.
It's where I (John Surico) talk each month about cities & all their discontents: streets, environment, energy, cultures, people, food, form, etc. This month, we cover:
- A historic year for pedestrian safety;
- A holy housing solution;
- An ode to Akira Toriyama;
& much, much more.
I, like so many others, learned Roman numerals from the Rocky movies. So if my math’s correct, this is the fiftieth (big 5-0) edition of Streetbeat. What a joy, folks.
Safety in numbers
A few months back, I reported on the god-awful year New York City just had for cyclists’ safety in this very newsletter. If death is our barometer, 2023 was the most dangerous year for riding a bike in New York City since 1999 (!). Thirty cyclists died on our streets last year, and 395 were seriously injured—both big jumps from the year before. Now, there are deeper points to this discussion: the majority of deaths happened on electric bikes, as greater speeds turn would-be brush-ups into deadly collisions (we see the same for cars); and if we consider deaths as a ratio of all daily cycling trips, which clock in at about 610,000 a day, it is getting safer to ride a bike (stats class FTW!).
But in a classic example of bad news bias, my own reporting shone less of a spotlight on a major silver lining to last year’s figures: 2023 was the safest year on record for pedestrians in New York City. In the course of my lifetime (est. 1991), the city has more than halved the number of lives lost to traffic violence each year. It used to happen every day; now it’s about every three days. And while there is a ways to go—it doesn’t necessarily feel safe crossing the street, and about eight people still get injured each day—it is something to consider as the rest of America regresses. What is the city getting right?
To answer that, I traveled to work sites with crews doing the everyday work of Vision Zero; spoke with Ydanis Rodriguez, the city’s transportation commissioner, and a bunch of his top planners; and heard from leading advocates about where the city could be doing more. The story, which was published in Bloomberg CityLab, was then shared by Mayor Eric Adams’ X account. (Kinda neato!) And you can read it in full here.
Budget season
I’ve referred to the ‘budget dance’ before in this newsletter. But I should probably back up to explain myself. The ‘budget dance’ is a term used to describe ceremonial barbs traded between elected officials and policymakers when it comes to settling an annual budget. It’s the drama. It’s the messy back-and-forth in the papers. It’s the stilted press conference. It’s all of that. Because a budget is a document of priorities—both literally and figuratively—and politics decide what priorities get funded. Hence the tit-for-tat.
Now, every dance depends on the process and setting. (We regularly watch the one in Washington.) For our case, it starts in January, prompted by the mayor’s announcement of his preliminary budget, which inevitably includes items that the City Council detests. That then kicks off a news cycle of who’s angry at what; rallies to either restore or expand funding for said priority; and hearings to air those frustrations in public. Again: barbs. It (ideally) ends with a ‘handshake’ between the mayor and council speaker before June 30th, who finally come to an agreement on how city government should run.
Of course, it’s often more complicated than that. This year, the mayor—who, like the president, holds the most power here—came down with huge spending cuts. The role of the state government, whose budget is due April 1st, is also important, because it impacts local spending decisions. And then there are optics: the mayor, for example, reneged on some of his cuts after public backlash.
This year’s cuts have heightened the stakes, for sure, but we’ve been here many times before. Parks funding finds itself in this pickle every year: the mayor announces cuts; the Council fights them; and, ultimately, they compromise on a small boost or a small cut. And this process has a detrimental effect on how we fund open space: it makes long-term planning almost impossible; it puts parks advocates constantly on the defense; and, by and large, it’s led to a historical disinvestment in maintenance. Cut parks enough times and that’ll leave a mark.
If parks are ever going to get out of this vicious cycle, local leaders need to get creative about sustained funding sources that don’t fall victim to political whims. In other words: it’s time to end the budget dance. My colleague Eli and I at the Center for an Urban Future spent March—which is known traditionally as ‘hearing month’—saying exactly that wherever we could. Here’s our op-ed for amNY and the testimony (text and video) delivered by yours truly at City Hall.
Spirit cannon
Central City is the center of the Dragon Ball universe. It is a very bulbous metropolis (a first putting those two words together): all of its buildings are round in shape—at the base or top—and hyper-densely laid out. The headquarters of Capsule Corp, an infinitely wealthy tech company started by a main character’s family that has turned everything we need (food, vehicles, homes, etc.) into small capsules, looks like a mound. In Central City, residents get around in hover-cars and pneumatic tubes. (Others just fly.) This is where most people on planet Earth live, and its smaller sub-cities all have directional names (i.e. West City). And beyond the urban sprawl lies ocean blue and green pastures.
I’ve spent most of my life enamored by the world-building of Akira Toriyama. I have episodes of Dragon Ball on VHS somewhere still. I was the kind of kid who proudly ran home from school to catch Toonami. Back in 2018, I wrote a love letter to Dragon Ball for the online zine Newest York as I embarked upon a rewatch that spanned several years. (Worth it.) I’ve got Capsule Corp patches; I basically mimic my scarf-wearing to the likes of Piccolo and Gohan; and spend probably too much time still thinking about sagas and Saiyans.
For almost forty years now, Toriyama has assembled what I believe to be one of the richest tapestries—of landscapes; planets; species; storylines; fashions; personalities; friends; enemies; and lovers—ever made. And outside of Dragon Ball GT (which isn’t considered Toriyama canon), he worked with a fairly small team to craft the most popular anime series of all time—one that has gone far beyond, in terms of sheer imagination, the bajillion dollars that studios like Disney, HBO and Amazon have thrown at Star Wars (okay, not Andor), Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, respectively. Until his untimely death this month, at 68, he was still putting out fantastic manga on a regular basis.
There are things I wish he did better: the female characters are written almost as bad as Christopher Nolan’s; among the humans, there are few people of color; a main character is a certified predator (IYKYK); and some fluff episodes are needlessly drawn out and dramatic. But that aside, I have to set aside space this month to remember Akira Toriyama as someone who wielded such outsized influence on my thinking—on how to build a world, and have fun in the process.
OSA: Popular demand
Each year’s lead-up to the Open Street season is equal doses excitement and anxiety. The warmer temperatures and spring bloom has everyone itching to be outside, but an opening date tends to shine a spotlight on the larger structural challenges that come with operating a pop-up public space on the city’s behalf. Around this time two years ago, we were having charged conversations with a handful of business owners who didn’t see the benefits—a common misconception heard. (As foot traffic grew, complaints lessened.) Last year, we were contending with SAPO, the city’s notoriously onerous office for street permits, like block parties and movie shoots. (The process has improved since Open Streets were codified into city law.) And this year, it’s the $$$.
Open Streets started an emergency pandemic response program. That means that funds were more easily deployable—given emergency powers, the city could funnel both city and federal dollars upfront to the neighborhood organizations then sprouting up to run the program. But when Open Streets became permanent, that started a long timeline of baking them into existing processes. So now, like all of the other nonprofits doing work for the city, it’s a reimbursement model; groups spend their own money first, and then get paid back at a later time.
That’s where the problems arise. We spent a fair amount of this last month telling anyone who listened that we, an all-volunteer group, have still not been paid back by the city for any of the 2023 season expenses. We wrote a letter to the Commissioner, which was covered in Streetsblog. We spoke with reporters at Curbed. And alongside other Open Street organizations in similar positions, we publicly threatened to reduce operating hours and programming. (Unfortunately, some have had to follow through on that.)
Since then, we’ve seen an enormous outpouring of support from our neighbors, who have signed letters to City Hall, donated their hard-earned dollars, or bought merchandise to lift up our cause. (Delay or not, we have monthly expenses, like rent and insurance, we have to pay.) We’re getting messages from strangers almost daily asking when we’re returning, tons of new faces signing up to be volunteers, and countless vendors and programmers signing up to be a part of our fifth season. And that overwhelming response led us to loudly proclaim: despite the city being… well, the city, we’re not going anywhere.
(And if you’re a reader who lives nearby, come to our new volunteer social!)
Bright Side: Housing of the Holy
A recent op-ed I read said New York (nay, the country) needs an ‘all-of-the-above’ approach to its housing crisis: more construction of new buildings; more protections for those living in existing buildings; and more conversions of what was once something (offices, malls, etc.) into something else entirely (studios, developments, etc.). It would seem that an issue as crucial to our quality of life as affordable housing—quite literally the roofs over our heads—would demand as many solutions as one can fathom. And to that end, one fix has stood out.
Housing solutions find their start in land ownership, or who owns what. The public sector has free reign to build on land it owns, and we see that happening with things like transit-oriented development. It can also encourage developers to build on private land through tax breaks and zoning incentives. But what other land is there? There is another entity that sits on a whole lot of land yet isn’t entirely private. And they’re increasingly pro-housing.
The Roman Catholic Church is the largest landowner in the world. Meanwhile, the Church of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as Mormons) is the fifth-largest in the U.S. That outsized footprint is shared by synagogues, mosques, temples, and other houses of worship. Religious organizations are sitting on prime real estate in some of the most valuable places on the planet, at the same time that they’re dealing with declining numbers and shaky finances.
Faith-based housing could tie the two together. It’s an idea picking up steam by municipalities large and small: make it easier for religious organizations to build on their properties. In Atlanta, the city is banking on a tenth of all new housing coming from churches, and dozens have already signed up for projects. In Minnesota, the state is lowering barriers for faith groups to build housing for the unhoused, an application of their very values in real-time. And in New York, the mayor was recently flanked by pastors and imams in announcing a new name (and agenda) for it: ‘Yes, in God’s Backyard.’
On the Radar
The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever, by Prudence Peiffer
I’ll admit that I’m not an ardent lover of modern art. I like the occasional scene of Marina Abramović staring at people in a chair at MoMa, and have had the immense pleasure of being in a room alone with Picasso’s Guernica at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid, but otherwise, lots of abstract expressionism and pop art goes over my head. (I usually like the buildings they’re in more than the art itself.) So I entered Peiffer’s book with that baseline of knowledge—I know Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollack, sure, but otherwise I’m a modern art amateur.
I saw Peiffer at a book talk with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, who wrote Names of New York—a (fabulous) book I highlighted in these webpages a few months back. Similarly to Jelly-Schapiro, she approaches history from the lens of place: what is it about certain environments that encourage innovation, and how does that imprint live on today? Jelly-Schapiro explored place-names to that end. But Peiffer uses art, namely the remarkable swirl of creative output that happened in a brief period of time on a block called Coenties Slip in downtown Manhattan. I used to work near the Slip, so I had a vested interest in finding out more.
Peiffer is less interested in how scenes (like Warhol’s Factory further uptown, for example) come about, and more so into the unique place-making qualities of an old shipyard alleyway that drew some of the most influential artists of the time in the 1940s and 1950s to live there. (Again, I didn’t know most of them before this book, besides Robert Indiana and his famous LOVE sculpture.) The result is a story about renewal, inspiration, and the spontaneous creative combustion that we only find in cities, when people who share common dreams and interests are stacked together in close quarters.
It’s fleeting—the artists come and go, many on to Europe or the East End, but in those instances of co-working in technically illegal dockside lofts off Wall Street, something beautiful happens. And Peiffer captures it momentously.
Streetbeat Gig Board
***
The Marine Park Alliance, which oversees Brooklyn’s largest park, is looking for a new executive director. (Brooklyn, New York)
The preeminent placemaking outfit Project for Public Spaces is on the hunt for a project associate. (Remote/New York)
Cornell Tech, the Ivy League school’s New York City outpost, is hiring a program director for its Innovation Fellows Initiative. (Hybrid/New York)
New York City’s Department of Transportation has two job listings that seem like a transit nerd’s dream: curb operations assistant; and a chief of bikes and micro-mobility. (Hybrid/New York)
Meanwhile, New York City’s Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) is looking to staff up its neighborhood strategies team. (Hybrid/New York)
***