From the New York Times:

Early last year, Manhattan prosecutors concluded that the New York area’s largest concrete testing company, Testwell Laboratories, had been systematically falsifying its results on many public and private construction projects.

The eventual indictment of the company and several officers left close to a dozen government agencies, as well as private developers, scrambling to evaluate how much retesting was needed to ensure the strength of concrete on existing projects, and to find alternative labs to perform that work, and testing on current and future projects.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority chose as a replacement American Standard Testing Laboratories to evaluate the concrete on the $4.3 billion Second Avenue subway project, authority officials said.

But now, according to several people briefed on the matter, American Standard is also under criminal investigation, suspected of having falsified reports and engaged in other improprieties. It is unclear whether the matters under investigation involve its $250,000 contract to test the Second Avenue subway concrete.

Let’s take a detour — a few blocks west. Central Park is beautiful — masterfully envisioned by Frederick Law Olmstead. But what of the execution of his plan? The park’s construction was overrun by the ubiquitous mass-corruption of the Tammany era. In that sense, it is founded in disgrace. New Yorkers — except for those getting “hookup” jobs — got robbed before they could get their free space.

The infrastructure commitment of the SAS is analogous to the landscaping of Central Park in that each has the capacity to be fueled with corruption. In the old days, your politician brokered you the contract, took your kickback, and passed on jobs to his constituents, in what constituted a heinous corruption. In this modern era, negligent or fraudulent contractors are able to function without the aid of corrupt politicians, by projecting a false aura of transparency by having participated in a public bidding system.

We can see that infrastructure contracts subject to the public bidding system need to be complemented with stringent third-party testing. This adds yet another layer of complexity, and cost, to the process. But if it’s not taken, we effectively take a gamble on safety.

Nobody wants that. But everybody’s broke. Is it worth it?

Glorious.

The rail-fan inside of me desperately wants to ride the SAS. I’ve always loved trains, ever since I was a kid and I would glare out the front window of a Redbird on my way to enjoy watching the Mets lose. I think a lot of planners, developers, and elected officials married to the project have some sort of sentimental attachment to NYC’s subways, and this is causing them to be stuck inside a mindset of a transit improvement model whose associated infrastructure upgrades are likely infeasible in the given day, even without considering the current financial turmoil.

But we need to get past that, and face the reality that the infrastructure commitment of a “full-length” SAS is too much of a gamble in its construction, and has a price tag that we’ll never be able to afford. Even with our best forecasts and five-year Capital Construction plans we can’t escape the reality of unpredicted financial instabilities (coupled with the perennial poor-budgeting of New York).

Streetcars, light rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), and other solutions might not be as fun to ride, or may not necessarily have the same ridership capacity as a full-fledged subway line with intra-system rail connections, but they can be implemented in little time (compared to the 90 years, and counting, of the SAS), and require little infrastructure commitment. There’s much less monetary commitment and business and/or residential displacement. Budgeting their construction, and sustaining their operations, is easier and less vulnerable to economic fluctuations, by merit of the smaller and simpler scale of their infrastructure.

I know it’s hard, but we need to let the inner cost-benefit analyst inside us overpower the nostalgic rail-fan if we’re every going to bring New York City a transit solution on Second Avenue which is an appropriate compromise of span and sustainability.

But instead of looking for analogies to define city scenes in nature terms, maybe we should redefine (perhaps, pervert) our notion of geography to encompass the physical elements of our artificial environments. And once we do that, we can look at public space in a completely different light.

Often, I find myself wondering if this massive grid in New York City is meant to last. Not so much in Manhattan, which has plenty of traffic to justify a grid and likely always will. But more so in the outer boroughs. Does Brooklyn need so many asphalt throughways? I am able to pass by a plethora of residential streets that seem to have little use for the asphalt outside their windows. There are hardly any cars going through. The streets seem to exist only to serve the purpose of parking.

Think about how much surface area of the city is consumed by streets. It might be a little too early (perhaps, 30-50 years too early) to envision a city with half as many cars. But maybe in neighborhoods that are well-serviced by public transportation — via subway lines, bus lines, and the light rail/street cars which many desperately wish the city to build — we could start phasing out streets and replacing them with greenspace. Half as many cars could comfortably allow, in terms of both traffic flow and parking space allotment, one-third fewer streets (on a conservative estimate).

Obviously the logistics of deliveries, elderly care transport, and many other interests would need to be protected, and some form of a compromise would have to be reached before this could being to be implemented. Traffic would need to be rerouted, and the selection process for the conversion of streets might come down to an unavoidable arbitrariness or result from lopsided lobbying efforts. But that doesn’t make it worthless, or something which we should necessarily avoid.

Because, after all, think of the advantages. Instead of constantly finding ways to accommodate bikes on major throughways, where a fully-protected lane is too often unfeasible, we could open up our side streets to a world of safe and relaxing bike transport. With so much greenspace surrounding them, more people will decide to walk, blade, bike, and so on, to their destination. Those researching the link between the built environment and public health often point to the advantages of greenspace (or increased public space in general). If they’re right,which they almost certainly are, then with this model we could improve the health of our communities. At the same time, we could increase foot traffic in neighborhoods where businesses are struggling, or sustain it in places where small businesses are at a high risk for being overrun by a homogenizing wave of chain stores.

Perhaps this era of “pop-up parks” is having too much influence on me. But the more I look at the way we use space in this city, the more I see a sea of untapped potential. In the midst of all this waste and counter-productiveness, the beginnings of a long-term renaissance of public space could be lying in our streets — literally. And while we’ll never be able to bring New York City back to its natural state, we might echo in some ways the public space model of our city’s past, which wasn’t too divorced from it.

Let’s take a look at the contenders:

Fulton Street Transit Center

What is it?

Artist's rendering of the completed interior of the Fulton Street Transit Center.

The Fulton Street Transit Center seeks to alleviate the transfer maze that is the Broadway (A/C/E)/Nassau Street (J/M/Z)/Fulton Street (4/5)/Fulton Street (2/3) transfer hub (which is currently a mess of stairwells, ramps, and U-turns) by creating a mall-like transfer hub with clear entrances and easy transferring, akin to Boston’s South Station.

Why do we need it?

At any given point, half the people on a platform are trying to find their way to a different platform, creating dangerous crowding and pushing. Because of all the construction going on outside the station for the transit hub, most people are tempted to just enter the first station entrance they see, which doesn’t help with the overarching problem of confusion. Keep in mind that this area is also one of the hottest tourist destinations after Midtown.

What if work on the project was abandoned?

The city would have to cover up all the construction areas and re-pave the streets. There would still be overcrowding on the platforms and confusion, but some of the work has already been done that will help mitigate this: new station entrances. Couple this with the lack of a permanent construction site, and it could be sustainable (enough) until another point in tine.

East Side Access

What is it?

East Side Access refers to the plan to create a connection from the LIRR Main Trunk (Penn to Jamaica) to Grand Central Terminal instead.

Why do we need it?

Penn Station is overwhelmingly crowded. But so is Grand Central. What’s the difference? While a lot of East Side workers who need to travel home to “The Island” will save themselves one or two transfers onto already-crowded trains, I think that this project has just as much to do with surface traffic as it does with underground traffic. Too many “suits” and other workers (who can so afford it) take cabs over to Penn from their East Side/Midtown offices. With a Grand Central LIRR station, this will be in some capacity alleviated, and will help combat the rush hour traffic nightmare.

What if work on the project was abandoned?

I might be biased against prioritizing commuter-rail projects (not without good reason), but I feel like dropping this plan would have the least repercussions.

The traffic flow would stay the same. If it is deemed necessary (which it is, but whether it is decided as such is a different story), to combat pollution caused by cabs/cars, the city could attempt one of many alternatives to incentivize away from cab traffic (various subway signal upgrades improving capacity handling and flow, bus rapid transit solutions, etc.).

Flushing Line Extension

What is it?

An extension of the Flushing Line (7 train) into Manhattan’s West Side, with stops along the way down to the Jacob Javits Center.

Why do we need it?

The areas to be hit by this subway expansion are relatively under-developed (by Manhattan standards). It’s a little absurd that New York’s most important convention center has no train going to it, forcing people onto buses or into a long walk.

What if work on the project was abandoned?

It seems like this might actually be a good idea, or at least not as bad as it sounds. Until there is a comprehensive plan for the Hudson Yards, I can’t see why there should be such a strong push for this extension. In the meantime, the city could implement a free shuttle from Port Authority to Javits, or a bus rapid transit/”Select Bus Service” option.

Second Avenue Subway

What is it?

The plan being used in 2009 for the Second Avenue Subway is almost identical to the 1974 rendering. But is it realistic to undertake such a large project?

The Second Avenue Subway (SAS) is New York City’s oldest uncompleted capital transportation project, originally planned in 1920. The proposed subway line would go from 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, down Second Avenue, and through the East Village to the South Ferry area.

Why do we need it?

When it was originally planned, it would have vitalized the slew of Second Avenue storefronts and alleviated congestion on the Lexington Avenue line, which serves the entire East Side, and always runs way above capacity. In 2009, Second Avenue is fully developed with residences as well as with both “corporate” and “mom and pop” shops – but the subway infrastructure never came to fruition to alleviate the congestion, which, naturally, only increased.

What if work on the project was abandoned?

Well, that actually already happened a slew of times throughout the SAS’s history of failure. Store owners are currently ambivalent about the SAS. Many seem to be happy with the idea of a subway line driving foot traffic to their stores, and so, are willing to deal with the current “growing pains” caused by preliminary construction along Second Avenue (mostly only slurry wall/support infrastructure work is being done at this time). But they might not all be aware that the project has spanned almost a century.

If the MTA abandoned the project and covered up all the construction sites with road, keeping Second Avenue as nothing more than another cab-heavy throughway, the results would be terrible. Of all the Capital Construction projects, this one is clearly the most vital — the traffic model as it stands now on the East Side is unsustainable.

Conclusion

If we continue with the assumption that the SAS is the most important Capital Construction project, possibly worth abandoning all other projects until its completion, we’re still faced with a problem. The scale of this project is massive, almost unheard of in such a heavily-developed area. This isn’t the 1920s or 1930s, when anyone with a couple of million dollars could throw up a subway line. Projects like this are billions of dollars, require immense environmental impact studies, and too easily falter when the funds reach a hiccup or cost-estimates skyrocket.

There has to be a better solution. That better solution comes in the form of a transportation alternative above the ground, rather than below it. I’m not a fan of the work done in the Manhattan East Side Alternatives (MESA) study. It seems to have involved quite a good deal of a priori modeling to draw the conclusion that a full subway line would have the best ridership benefits, ruling out all hybrid models.

But even if that aspect of the MESA study was valid, in terms of cost-effectiveness (short- and long-term), sustainability of the project if a funding gap were to be realized, and overall need for something to be built as soon as possible to alleviate the East Side nightmare, it seems juvenile to continue to hold a torch for the creation of the SAS. It’s time to seriously look at bus rapid transit (BRT) and light-rail solutions, not just on Second Avenue, but throughout NYC.

What’s all the ruckus about? Well, there’s a rezoning set to occur. The NYC Department of City Planning details the proposal here. A zoning overlay map for the proposal can be found there as well. The contentious aspect of the plan is the switch from R6 to R6A (60 blocks, complete or piecewise) on sidestreets, and to R7A (101 blocks, piecewise) on certain avenues.

What?

It’s actually not too complicated. Right now almost every residence in Sunset Park is R6. R6 zoning gets you exactly what you have now, a proliferation of 3-4 story buildings, or your standard brick or brownstone row-houses.

R6A gets you 5-6 story buildings. R7A gets you 6-7 story buildings. In practice, you can actually have more than this, through a multitude of zoning waivers/workarounds (zoning lot mergers, right of development transfers, etc.). This zoning, in an up-and-coming neighborhood, is very like to get you condos, or otherwise unaffordable low-density housing.

The rest of the residential areas are going from R6 to R6B. What does one letter do? R6B is as close to historic neighborhood status as Sunset Park can get. Adding that “B” helps maintain what is already there. With the existing R6, theoretically, a slew of lots could be bought up and converted into tall (13 story) apartment buildings, with optional “Quality Housing.” Agreeing to Quality Housing mandates a lower, but wider (more lot coverage) building for new developments, in order to fit the “feel” of a neighborhood. In R6B, the Quality Housing is mandatory. R6B areas, as a whole, will probably be left untouched by the hands of developers, simply because it’s not worth the effort when dealing with Quality Housing.

That sounds like good news, but it isn’t. For a decent amount of time, the current residents of Sunset Park would enjoy the characteristics of their neighborhood going mostly unmolested, except for those R6A/R7A pockets of rezoning. But who’s going to be living in those R6B houses in 10 years? 15 years? 20 years? Take a look at rent prices over the last 5 years. Take a look at the earmarks for greenspace along the waterfront. The intention for these changes is geared toward an entirely different demographic, and an entirely different community — even if the building facades hiding them stay the same. Selecting R6B for the majority (some 60%) of the zoning proposal is truly a real estate broker’s dream — Sunset Park takes another giant leap toward homogenizing with the ever-burgeoning “South” Park Slope.

Defenders of the rezoning will ramble about the R6 to R6B change, or the Quality Housing incentives for R6A/R7A. But this is just spinning the reality to make it seem like the outcome just described isn’t in some way intended.

Zoning changes, because of their complexity and under-exposure to the public, are the most subtle yet important changes that could befall a neighborhood. But with Sunset Park, it was a chicken-and-egg scenario. For years small inroads had been made toward this plan by the eager consumer — realtors and young couples attempting to snag a joint in Brooklyn’s next “hot neighborhood” — in anticipation of higher rents to come and zoning changes to occur. Now that they are, the anticipation has been validated, and the cycle intensifies and self-perpetuates.

And now’s a perfect time for the re-zoning to be pushed through. Houses are foreclosing all over the city, and Sunset Park is in no way immune to it. Housing prices (except rents, it seems) are dropping markedly. So, unsurprisingly, sales are picking up in Sunset Park.

At least in 20 years I’ll be able to walk by and point out my “childhood home.” It should look the same, since it’s in an R6B area. But the community won’t be the same, and I probably won’t be too interested in meeting the people inside.

Advocates for New Urbanism or “active living” often identify zoning as a policy strategy to make cities more walkable. Because zoning regulates both building size and land use, changes in zoning can affect both population density and the availability of shops and restaurants within a walkable distance. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s sustainability plan, PlaNYC, advocates rezoning city neighborhoods to allow higher-density development near subway stops, allowing more New Yorkers to use public transit instead of private automobiles.

However, zoning change can be a politically complicated process. Some communities resist “upzoning” because of concern about gentrification and displacement of low-income families, or about the loss of a distinctive neighborhood character. In fact, population growth in New York City has been accompanied by a wave of “downzoning,” in which neighborhoods seek to limit new, higher-density development.

With summer high school interns Alexa Nichols and Carolyn Ruvkun, BEH is studying zoning change in New York City between 2003 and 2007, with a focus on the more extensive rezonings required to go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application process. Using ULURP applications as well as parcel-level data on zoning characteristics, this project will show whether recent zoning change has made the city more or less walkable.

But I’m not so sure they are. I’m willing to bet the answer to their million-dollar question is “more.” If they’re still using the metrics we attempted to validate in 2006, which favored greenspace, tree canopies, non-rectangular buildings, “Transparency,” “Complexity,” et al., they’ll find recent re-zonings — even large-scale ones like those in Williamsburg and Morningside Heights — to be favorable. The developments which followed those (controversial) re-zonings will mesh perfectly with their metrics (even if they lose points on “Human Scale,” the rest will more than offset this).

There are some problems with their metrics. I never quite liked them, and I don’t think I was the only one on that team (among those who actually collected the data/visited the sites) who found them unsatisfactory. They never seemed to be able to get a true grasp of the block being studied. Sometimes it felt like a block’s rating could be skewed too easily by a over-abundance of a single element (there were some terrible blocks which happened to have a lot of trees and “street furniture”).

Other times, I found issue with a coefficient being negative instead of positive. Ask yourself: how would you consider “number of people,” as positive or negative? I always preferred a moderate amount. But the extremes were those which had a real effect on the block’s rating. There was no favoring of the “middle ground” for these metrics. All the variable coefficients were weighted to favor an end (or extreme end) of a continuum, and not the middle ground, which seemed more appropriate in many cases.

Another glaring problem was that commercial diversity had no impact on ratings. Talk to anyone who works for a local BID and they’ll tell you banks/”ATM-only” storefronts don’t generate any foot-traffic or commerce — banks just buy up lots wherever they can, even if that lot won’t generate much revenue, because it helps with their branding/exposure. But banks tend to have nearly all-glass facades, and one of the metrics feeding into “Transparency” was the ratio of “glass/window area” to “facade area.” This is just a small example, but a poignant one. The homogenization of stores in New York City is sickening, and it heavily affects a block’s true “walkability.” But again, this factor has no say in a block’s rating.

I’ll back off at this point because I don’t mean to sound like I’m bashing on these guys. I liked the research they were doing. Without my time there, I never would have found interest in urban planning or statistics. But the entire time, I wished the metrics had a more intimate feel for the study areas.

We’ll see what they come up with, whenever that is. For whatever reason, it’s taken the BEH people an awfully long time to publish works.

As it stands now, contemporary zoning laws divvy up land into lots, and then those lots into different uses (commercial, industrial, commercial), ideally, to shield the public from unsafe living conditions. But zoning overrides and loosely-defined categories which aim to maintain the “character of the neighborhood” allow for too many loopholes. As long as the developers gain approval from the city planning commission (state overrides help as well; see: Atlantic Yards Development), considerations of a project’s benefit to a community are pushed to the back-burner.

A somewhat radical solution seems appropriate: a new zoning overlay over the existing map, providing for protection from mass-development across continuously situated lots. It is this distinction, and not the easily overridden or otherwise transgressed “type of use” restrictions, that would truly protect the interests of the community. If a planning proposal requires 400 continuous (or nearly continuous) lots to build (say, a sports arena or set of high-end housing complexes), it can find ways to buy or push out the owners, who in turn push out the tenants, often with city help. But if no lone project was allowed to build across such a large footprint, the issue would never arise.

A learned reader might object, citing “floor area ratio,” “building envelope,” or “bulk” restrictions as having the same effect. For small building projects, they are indeed sufficient. But in large-scale developments, they have often become counter-productive. As the complexity of a project increases, the metrics for these restrictions become unfeasible or otherwise contradict each other. And so, the restrictions are allowed much more flexibility. They become open to negotiation and hypothetical lot-line redrawing, zoning lot mergers, and transfers of development rights (allowing higher stacking than the floor area ratio permits), as the NYC Department of City Planning justifies, “in order to achieve a superior site plan.” And this is where we see simple waivers becoming gross transgressions: there is little control over how much leeway is afforded to achieve that superior site plan. Anyone in New York City knows the Board of Standards and Appeals will approve just about anything. So, the slew of zoning codes cited earlier (of which there are many more) only provided for a false sense of security to the community.

Brooklyn's behemoth.

Indeed, most problematic developments are those which are “behemoths”: rows of high-rise condos, coupled with sporting complexes, parking lots, et al. And our contemporary zoning codes have no teeth against them.

Ultimately, this new overlay could make the ones beneath it redundant in their attempts to “protect” the community or “maintain the community feel.” If the new overlay is adopted and the lower-level ones removed, it would simplify the overall zoning codes, and allow for more “layperson” community engagement in planning issues, which is shockingly low, save for some vociferous (and often single-issue) advocacy groups. (Changing a “R6″ to an “R6B” doesn’t elicit much resistance; currently, the intricate nature of zoning codes functions to keep anyone from caring.)

Application

Increasingly-trendy North Brooklyn has already had some damage done, but is a potential choice to sample this new zoning overlay, especially in addition to its latest rezoning, which could cause a development eruption.

Should this new overlay be applied ubiquitously? This seems counterproductive, as anything more than experimental applications in isolated areas would fail to garner any support. It seems best for the prototypical areas to be located in “high-risk” neighborhoods (ironically, inner-city neighborhoods that are economically faltering). The goal is to have a similar impact as being granted historic neighborhood status, but would be applied to neighborhoods that would have no chance of being awarded such status and are being, or at risk to be, overrun by [upper-]middle- to upper-class housing development projects.

The logistics of coming up with numbers to apply as restrictions would be challenging and admittedly have an inescapable arbitrariness, but this already seems to be the norm with contemporary zoning requirements in the present-day. The previously-cited hypothetical of 400 lots is an extreme example of a neighborhood-demolishing swipe, but perhaps four-lot restrictions, in the right areas, coupled with height restrictions, would offer a strong enough barrier.

Redirecting capital

It is clear that the actual profit for developers would be far less than what they are used to. While the current model provides for maximum profit in short amounts of time, in terms of long-term sustainability, it is fundamentally flawed. Eventually, tomorrow’s developers will not be able to profit like their predecessors. In the light of the Atlantic Yards Project’s failure to mobilize capital in a sluggish economy, we can now forcibly argue that we’ve already passed that line which separates “today” from “tomorrow.”

And so, to fill the vacuum created by the exit of the wielders of large capital, small investors and local neighborhood development corporations (which are flourishing nevertheless) would step in to provide a flow of capital to neighborhoods, proportional to their size and needs, to provide for revitalization and/or rebeautification – from the bottom up.

Further considerations

In this proposal, we see a legal protection which would have the potential to break the cycle that is destroying all too many communities. Is there a utopian, impractical, mindset at work here? It is hard to tell whether or not a revision such as this would be effective. But perhaps with another legal barrier erected to large-scale development, at the very least, it could serve as a de facto turnoff if not a de jure restriction. The results of both are equitable.