Keywords

Although, at least compared to the point of origin from which urban form took shape in America, planning the American metropolis is a rather recent phenomenon dating back only to the beginning of the past century, it includes an array of institutions, agencies, and interests. In many ways, managing urban systems in the United States differs significantly from European standards. By focussing on one of the most essential settings of American urban form, on New York City, this chapter wants to highlight some general difficulties of managing large metropolises in the United States. Then, some major arenas of urban planning, once again in connection with America’s biggest city, are depicted before concluding with a closer look at the prospective opportunities for dealing with New York’s future problems in the new millennium. One should point out that due to its limited length, this chapter can only deal with a few exemplary aspects of New York’s planning agencies and procedures.

1 Managing the Metropolis: New York Peculiarities

1.1 Overlapping Administrative Competencies

In most American metropolitan areas, the sheer number of administrative units increases the necessity for coordinating planning and management services. No matter whether you consider Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, or New York, several hundreds of special-purpose districts cover entire metropolitan regions. While these entities sometimes compete with each other, their territories usually overlap, leading to additional potential conflict. Contrary to the norms in many European countries, administrative divisions may crisscross other units even at a superior level. School districts – even if they normally do not intersect state borders – do not necessarily coincide with other administrative divisions. This explains why American metropolitan areas appear as an intricate web of judicial, tax, fire, school, waste disposal, sewage, sanitation, and hospital districts. The New York City region is no exception to this, apart from the fact that metropolitan New York stretches across 24 counties in three states (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut), which makes intra-regional planning an all the more complicated and sophisticated process.

Propositions to delineate the New York urbanized area have subsequently been manifold. As inconclusive as they are, they leave no doubt that New York still constitutes the all-American city leading the United States’ urban system (Savitch 1988), even though Los Angeles is coming close to displacing New York. What has also become obvious is the city’s shrinking population and its declining share of the total population of the metropolitan area. New York was particularly affected by this demographic trend from the 1960s to the 1980s (Drennan 1991). Only in recent years, New York City is once again increasing in population.

That managing an urban leviathan like New York can be a difficult task is well illustrated by the various attempts at grasping the complete size of the metropolis. Where does New York, defined as a functional not as a political term, end? And which areas on the city’s fringes should be excluded from the management and planning processes? Answers to questions like these will be hard to obtain, and New York planning officials have decided to define their city according to the needs of the specific planning organs. This is why the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for instance, operates with an interpretation of the city quite different from that of the Regional Plan Association (RPA). According to the Port Authority, New York covers an area of 3,900 square miles in 17 counties, while the Regional Plan Association considers more than 12,700 square miles in 31 counties as the New York urban region which extends into three states (Fainstein and Harloe 1992).

1.2 Physical Shape and Consolidation

Contrary to Houston, Atlanta, or even Chicago, New York’s physical terrain is far from being homogeneous, flat, and monotonous. Shaped by Pleistocene glaciation, the Atlantic coastline in the New York area shows a complex variety of islands, peninsulas, bays, and rivers. Only one of New York City’s five boroughs is naturally part of the mainland (the Bronx); the other four boroughs form islands of their own or are part of a larger island. Branding New York as “America’s Venice” is uncommon, yet this would actually not be too far-fetched, particularly since the city was water-bound until the 1950s. Today’s city planning only rarely incorporates this aspect once characteristic for New York.

Abstaining from New York’s water-bound and maritime history appears even more unsatisfying considering the advantages the city was bestowed by the region’s physical shape from the very beginning. New York would never have managed to dominate the American urban system if topo­graphy had not provided an ideal location, especially in regard to nautical needs. “Fertile soil, rich waters, forests abounding with animals – all at the edge of a harbour vast and protected – combined to give seventeenth-century Europeans visions of a new Eden” (White 1987, xviii).

As early as the eighteenth century, travellers had recognized New York’s benefits from the settlement’s pristine position at the southern tip of an island that would later be named Manhattan, on the shores of a sizeable river connecting the Atlantic with a vast interior. In 1748, a Swedish visitor commented, “The situation of [New York] is extremely advantageous for trade: for the town stands upon a point which is formed by two bays; into one of which the river Hudson discharges itself, not far from the town; New York is therefore on three sides surrounded with water. […] The port is a good one: ships of the greatest burthen can lie in it, quite close up to the bridge: but its water is very salty, as the sea continually comes in upon it; and therefore it is never frozen, except in extraordinary cold weather. This is of great advantage to the city and its commerce; for many ships either come in or go out of the port at any time of the year” (Pollara 1997, 155). Indeed, Upper Bay in the Hudson estuary is the northernmost natural port on North America’s Atlantic coast that normally does not freeze in winter; additionally, low tides there facilitate navigation (Stern 1989; Moss 1980).

While this argument does not intend to support blatant geodeterminism, it appears obvious that physical shape helped to configure what would later become a political entity named “Greater New York”. Initial settlements that gave birth to the future boroughs were centred on specific islands and peninsulas within the tidal marshes of the Hudson and East River systems. Though shipping as the principal mode of transportation until the first decades of the twentieth century made communication between the different towns on Manhattan, Long Island, and Staten Island possible, isolation was more or less common. Remoteness and tranquillity, intensified by a jagged coastline with secretive coves and inlets, helped to promote localism and neighbourhood pride among residents. This in turn fostered local identities and affiliations which are so prominent in New York City politics until the present day and which also (threaten to) impede urban planning and regional management in many ways.

Although ideas of a “Greater New York” already came up in the late eighteenth century (Hammack 1987) and the merging of Brooklyn and Manhattan had already been proposed in 1833, 1850, 1851, and 1856 (Schoener 1998), it took the political representatives until 1898 to complete “consolidation” in the New York region. Arguing for consolidation had purely economic reasons and was driven by a rationale for planning. Efforts to manage and improve traffic coordination formed the basis for the initiative to join New York proper with Brooklyn and other cities in the region. Also, the completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 and the unification of the school system served as an impetus for fusing New York with Brooklyn (Berrol 1997). No wonder the Chamber of Commerce played a vital role in disseminating the idea of consolidation on a most comprehensive level which was intended to include all New York State areas along the mouth of the Hudson, including Staten Island and the west of Queens (Hammack 1987).

Even though the New York metropolitan region had consisted of more than 40 local governments prior to consolidation, attempts at merging New York with Brooklyn and some surrounding areas were met with remarkable resistance, particularly on the Brooklyn side of the East River. However, linking the two cities seemed inevitable, especially due to Brooklyn’s precarious financial situation which made seeking shelter in New York’s substantial budget an attractive option (Hammack 1995). Yet, opposition to consolidation was not over after the merging in 1898. Sceptical Brooklynites had founded the “League of Loyal Citizens” which had the goal of achieving a new separation from New York and even upheld the possibility of a “Greater Brooklyn” instead of a “Greater New York” (Hammack 1987). In Brooklyn, advocates were nearly on a par with opponents of the consolidation process. 64,744 votes for merging with New York opposed 64,467 votes against this (Kaplan 1979).

However narrow the triumph of the consolidation petitioners had been, consequences were significant. With a stroke of the pen, New York City nearly doubled from two million to almost three and a half million people. Consolidation not only meant that the city had grown bigger than Paris, Berlin, Tokyo, or Vienna but also could now compete with London as the most important metropolis in the world; only a few decades later, New York City had exceeded the British capital. Consolidation also stood for the improvement in planning and management processes on a basis that now encompassed most of the urbanized area, with the still notable exception of New Jersey. If it had not been so far, urban planning would now become a political necessity and was endowed with public funds. However, some parts of the city decided to conserve their own identities either on the neighbourhood or on the borough level. Still today, Queens is a matter of case: people there often refer to Manhattan as solely “New York”, while they do not want to get their neighbourhood too closely associated with “New York”. Even the way letters are addressed reflects this perception: it’s not “Queens” one finds on the letter, but “Astoria”, “Corona”, or “Jackson Heights”. Any such highly symbolic relationship with the neighbourhood has of course a somehow deleterious effect on a citywide process of urban planning and management.

1.3 Public and Private Planning Agents

During the nineteenth century, New York practically lacked any efficient instrument for planning land use and residential building (Buck and Fainstein 1992). Many New Yorkers felt that restricting specific forms of land use as well as enforcing building codes and regulations represented an attack on their constitutional right to private property. Thus, it took considerable time to convince the local elite that “laissez-faire” in building and architecture would be harmful to the city and that even developers might be disadvantaged by a completely unrestricted urban expansion. Although the city issued public stipulations in regard to hygiene, building standards, and the location of industries as early as the mid-nineteenth century (Gilmartin 1995), the influence of private people and organizations on New York’s growth and planning processes is far from insignificant. In general, New York planning has profited from personal engagement by concerned citizens and associations alike. Yet, this combination of public and private initiatives makes the city’s planning history and practice a rather complicated one in which numerous fractions compete with each other. Unravelling the web of personal and institutional planning relations is a tricky task that goes far beyond the limits and the aims of this chapter. Thus, a more or less cursory view must suffice here.

Facing an exploding and ever disorderly city, it was primarily the Municipal Art Society (MAS), founded in 1892, that efficiently launched projects and proposals for a better, cleaner, and more beautiful New York. In supporting the construction of monuments and statues, the MAS was one of the main forces to embellish the city. Not only in a proactive but also in a prohibitive manner, the MAS engaged in a battle against billboards threatening to flood Manhattan’s public spaces, including trams and stations. “Billboards, placards, and posters sprang up wherever space could be rented” (Gilmartin 1995, 139). More often than not, the Municipal Art Society had to surrender to judicial verdicts favouring individual liberty and not the aesthetic quality of the city. “The Municipal Art Society tried to limit billboards by banning sky signs (unconstitutional), by controlling their height (which didn’t work out), by getting them taxed (which the city wouldn’t do), and by shaming advertisers (who proved to be fairly shameless)” (Gilmartin 1995, 148). Another controversy propelled by the MAS focussed on the delimitation of public space; here the MAS fought for an exact definition of the building line, between private houses and public streets, but – once again – failed in establishing a consistent solution. Still today, some privately used porches and yards remain on what is technically city property. Legally, these “grey” areas belong to the city even though they are privately occupied.

While the MAS often employed a fervent moralism when arguing for the embellishment of the city, the likewise private and non-profit Regional Plan Association (RPA), founded in 1922, emphasizes quality of life and economic competitiveness, covering 31 counties which stretch as far as New Jersey, Upstate New York, and Connecticut. With such spatial composition in mind, the RPA’s suggestions for managing urban challenges are more encompassing than the MAS’s concerns mainly for Manhattan and the city of New York. Until today, the RPA’s aims comprise a multitude of issues ranging from mass transport and the improvement of metropolitan transportation to natural preservation and control of suburban expansion (Buttenwieser 2005). The Second Regional Plan, published in 1968, focussed on inner-city revitalization and provided a blueprint for the later accomplishment of structures such as the World Trade Center, numerous new arcades and plazas in Manhattan, and the redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn and of the region’s waterfronts. The Third Regional Plan (1996) envisaged the stimulation of the region’s economy. Recently, RPA has also contributed solutions to the question of how to rebuild parts of Lower Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11.

The RPA’s First Plan in 1929 proved to be of particular significance. Not only was it one of the most expensive schemes for urban planning ever drafted in the United States (Johnson 1996), but it also legitimized the agenda of Robert Moses who as “America’s greatest builder” (Hall 1988, 229) transformed the New York metropolitan area more profoundly than any other planner before or after him. Convinced with unmatched providence, Moses gratefully picked up the ideas of the RPA in regard to parks and highways. Until World War II, the RPA’s First Plan helped Robert Moses and the acceptance of his intentions by authorities and firms (Johnson 1985).

The case of Robert Moses serves to illustrate the strong connections between public planning and private figures in the New York arena. Even though Moses acted as a public official, it was his own personality that endowed him with prominence across the nation. “Beginning in the 1920s and extending into the 1970s, his name, or fingerprints, could be found in the planning and implementation of hundreds of public works projects […]” all over the New York metropolitan region (McDonald 2005, 1210). Only in the post-World War II decades, “[…] the mood in New York City turned against Moses’s highways […]” (Schwartz 2005, 1015). Neither before nor after the era of Moses has an urban planner ever been so influential nor has the process of planning ever been so tightly connected with an individual and his or her own, sometimes colloquial expectations. Politically, Robert Moses survived eight mayors and five governors (Savitch 1988) – a fact which once again underlines his outstanding role in politics facing little opposition. Even in controversial issues like bulldozing lower-income housing projects and replacing them by highways, Moses was confronted with only minor objections. He was, in fact, on the same level as the mayor, with even more duties and competencies (Gilmartin 1995).

2 Arenas of Urban Planning: New York Experiences

2.1 Architecture

Not solely in the case of New York architecture can be interpreted as the predecessor of urban planning. First efforts to improve the physical shape of cities were launched by journalists, politicians, doctors, and most often by architects and landscape designers. The “City Beautiful” Movement is a case in point: its proponents struggled for urban ornamentation and thereby accentuated decorative elements in the city’s scenes. Urban planning came to replicate some of the architects’ aesthetic claims. Yet, with the refinement of building techniques and ever-increasing building heights, mere artistic and visual scepticism transformed into stern opposition to apparently limitless construction endeavours. New York is being honoured as the first American city to have introduced building regulations (Cullingworth 1997; Weiss 1992). Based on the recommendations by the Commission on the Heights of Buildings in 1913, America’s first zoning law came into existence in 1916 (Richman 1985).

The zoning law primarily aimed at solving conflicts between commercial and industrial property owners in Manhattan’s central business district, not at improving the situation of New York residents. Different land use categories (residential, business, and “unrestricted”) were established in order to avoid future disputes. In addition, height and volume of edifices to be constructed were regulated. The law also would thwart the darkening of complete streets by excessive buildings (Moseley 1986). Consequently, a new architectural style, “jumbles of cubic setbacks and towers”, resulted from the 1916 provision: “One simply couldn’t make sense of these shapes with the old vocabulary of columns, pedestals, and cornices. So the Zoning Resolution ushered in, quite by accident, the great experiment of Art Deco architecture” (Gilmartin 1995, 201).

New Yorkers doggedly clung to the first zoning law in the nation. As late as the 1950s, the zoning resolution of the World War I era was still practiced, though held together by about 2,500 amendments. After long public debates, this often revised regulation was followed by a new building law in 1961 (Moseley 1986). Its most important innovation turned out to be the “floor area ratio” (FAR), a kind of incentive zoning by which the city would offer developers a bonus for additional floors, if buildings reserved open or public areas for parks or plazas. However, nobody seemed to be aware that this deal would inevitably lead into unparalleled multiplication of dull and repetitive spaces which remained empty for most of the day (Willis 1995). The lack of systematic and widely accepted architectural preservation became a preoccupation of urban planning in the 1960s – even though there had been sporadic attempts at preserving New York landmarks as early as the late nineteenth century (Mason 2004). Protests against plans to demolish venerable Pennsylvania Station in the early 1960s reverberated without success, and in 1963 demolition began. Destruction was completed 2 years later.

Yet, the Penn Station incidence supported the formation of a Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1965 (Pouzoulet 2000) which gained further momentum when the Singer Building was torn down. Knocking down this skyscraper – with exception of the Twin Towers, the Singer Tower was the tallest building in New York to ever be destroyed – caused a public outcry as well. Soon, preservation received significant attention as a major field of architectural urban planning. Designations as historic landmarks for single structures and historic districts for conservation areas began to thrive. In the 1990s, 856 buildings, 79 interior designs, and 9 parks had been declared special status, while 52 neighbourhoods had been designated as historic districts (Zukin 1993; Deák 2000). That declaring buildings as landmarks could save from plans of demolition through lengthy legal battles was shown in the 1970s when Grand Central Station became the target of a new development scheme. “No More Bites Out of the Big Apple”, was the preservationists’ motto, and public opinion helped it gain momentum. Grand Central Station was rescued in 1977, following a Supreme Court judgement forbidding skyscraper to be built towering above or located in front of the station (Gilmartin 1995).

2.2 Traffic

In the automobile era, a city that is made up mainly of islands and peninsulas faces substantial traffic problems. To be aware of the resulting troubles, just consider that the most important concentration of office space in the Western Hemisphere is located on a small part of a narrow island close to the estuary of one of the major rivers in the Northeastern United States. To connect this island with the mainland other than by ship proved to be an extraordinary challenge generations of technicians have tried to overcome. In the context of New York’s coastline, it is no wonder that early stages of urban planning were primarily preoccupied with connecting the different parts of an ever-growing metropolitan area. The construction and administration of bridges and tunnels (Solis 2005), together with planning a system of mass transport, kept New York’s urban policy busy from the 1850s far into the twentieth century. Today, urban planning is dedicated primarily to the challenge of automobile traffic.

While in the immediate post-World War II years, the policy of urban transport mainly connected to the provision of fast traffic arteries for private motor vehicles, recent decades have seen a more sensitive approach, also stressing the needs of pedestrians and public transport. It is remarkable that in terms of traffic the island of Manhattan has been turned upside down in the course of the last one and a half centuries. In the formative years, from the colonial beginnings until the advent of the private car in the 1910s, the city was oriented towards and adjusted to the ocean. Many travellers noted the busy port activities that could be observed along all of Manhattan’s shores. Former South Street Seaport, located on a 2-mile stretch of the East River, is a case in point: “By the 1820s, every available space along the west side of South Street had been taken over by a bewildering parade of counting houses, warehouses, marine insurers, importers, commission merchants, jobbers, chandleries, coopers, sail makers, and taverns […]” (Burns and Sanders 1999, 47).

After 1880, South Street lost its premier naval position for New York, partly because the East River became too shallow for ocean-going vessels. Manhattan’s West Side began to proliferate itself as the main location of port facilities. As late as 1960, a fifth of all imports to and exports from the United States were handled in via New York’s ports; by 1971, this share had fallen to a mere 3 % (Pries 1998). Obviously, New York had lost the leading position in port activities, partly to New Jersey and states in the South but mainly to ports elsewhere in the world. Above all, dropping figures were most visible in the transatlantic traffic: while in 1955 700,000 passengers crossing the Atlantic from Europe were counted, in 1978 only 42,000 persons arrived by ship (Moss 1980). The decline of the ports resulted in a relentless economic downturn which culminated in the 1970s. By the end of the 1970s, only three of former 42 piers along the Hudson River in Manhattan were still used as passenger terminals, ten piers served as docks or parking lots, and 17 piers were not in use or to some extent dilapidated (Seltz-Petrash 1979).

This change in transportation mode and traffic was accompanied by transformation of planning objectives. New York’s water-bound character gradually changed, turning into a view of the city with a stronger orientation towards the mainland and with only minor attention to the past maritime activities on Hudson and East rivers. Thus, urban planning focussed mainly on developments linked to automobile and railway traffic. Also, along with the deterioration of the ports came the problem of how to revitalize the former port areas – another aspect urban planning began to be obsessed with from the 1970s onwards. The Chelsea Piers Complex, used for cargo until 1968, provides a good example. Finally, these piers were used as parking lots, garages for garbage trucks, and as warehouses for goods confiscated by US customs. The remaining piers were derelict, demolished, or closed (Pries 1998). In general, many plots of land along the shoreline were carved out of former port areas and were intended to be converted into streets, highways, or parking lots. Correspondingly, New York’s shift from a water-bound to an inland-oriented city propelled critics of an all-too-permissive use of private vehicles.

Particularly, the plans for the Westway project on Manhattan’s West Side generated ire and fury among both residents and other New Yorkers. For the city, subsidizing new highway construction through the federal highway law seemed to be more lucrative than redeveloping existing highways. “Big projects bring in big bucks” (Savitch 1988, 82). In the mid-1970s, the new Westway consisted of four lanes in each direction, making it the most expensive highway in the world. When it came out that highway entrances and exits would be cutting through residential areas, opposition to the project swelled. Local media dubbed Westway “Wasteway” (Savitch 1988). In the long run, resistance to Westway was so successful that proponents of the project had to content themselves with only a fraction of the original highway – some 6 km from 42nd Street to Battery Park (Hochstein 1982). Interestingly, it was environmental concerns that finally limited Westway plans to such a reduced length. As pre­servationists claimed, landfills necessary for the highway construction would have endangered the spawning area of a native fish species, the striped bass. Not quite accidentally, money already pro­mised for Westway by the federal government went into public transport instead (Wise et al. 1997).

3 Planning New York in the New Millennium

Architecture and traffic are but two fields of demand for coordination and regulation since urban planning became a subject for early metropolitan New York in the late nineteenth century. Of course, there are other aspects that need to be regulated and controlled in a metropolitan setting, such as social policy, public transport, urban redevelopment, environmental planning, zoning, and land use management, among others. The limitations of this chapter do not allow an all-embracing evaluation of these fields with a decisive influence on New York’s shape in the new millennium.

There are at least two aspects that will guide and probably dominate New York urban planning and management in the twenty-first century, one of which affects the whole city, while the other has more local relevance. What will be crucial to the city and the metropolitan area in general in the next couple of decades is New York’s reliance on technological equipment and public facilities. In this respect, New York does not differ from any other metropolis, yet the city is especially fragile and dependent upon technological devices. First and foremost, bridges and tunnels linking the boroughs sustain public life.

With the possible exception of San Francisco and Boston, hardly any other American city is as susceptible to damage, decay, or corrosion as New York City. As soon as one or two bridges or tunnels have to be closed, something similar to a state of emergency, at least for Manhattan, becomes the norm. One should also be aware of the fact that New York’s means of public communication and transportation were constructed at least a century ago. The first subway began service in 1904 (Hood 1992); the first bridge crossing the East River, Brooklyn Bridge, opened more than two decades earlier, in 1883; and the first freshwater lines were constructed during the 1840s (Gandy 1997; Koeppel 2000). The sewerage system was not completed until the late nineteenth century by crowds of cheap labourers, mainly of immigrant background. “Waterpower, steam-power, Irish-power” (Burns and Sanders 1999, 86) was one typical slogan. Thus, a huge portion of New York’s facilities is no less than 100 years old, and several facilities will soon be reaching the end of their life cycle, which means that there is dire need to repair many of these tracks, buildings, sewers, pipes, and cables. Certainly, this affects the whole city as it will be an important consideration for urban planning and management in the years and decades to come.

The other dominant aspect of future urban planning that might be of more relevance to the local level (even though it has of course symbolic meaning for global capitalism, too) is situated in Lower Manhattan. It is the reconstruction of the inner-city area that came to be known as “Ground Zero” after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However awful damage and destruction done to a series of skyscrapers, the twin towers of the World Trade Center among others, might have been, not to mention the tragic loss of thousands of lives, 9/11 also opens up unexpected opportunities for new urban planning and architectural design in a part of Manhattan which is among the oldest and most crowded in the city (Sorkin and Zukin 2002; Gamerith 2002). Yet, it would not be New York had the planning process for the reconstruction of “Ground Zero” proceeded smoothly and without conflict (Marcuse 2002; Ross 2002; Sorkin 2003). An ongoing debate has evolved on how the different panels deciding on the reconstruction of Lower Manhattan should be staffed. Also, the question of how a future “World Trade Center” complex should look like in architectural and functional terms has not been settled entirely. Scores of propositions have been made for numerous new plans to improve public transport in the Lower Manhattan area and to connect the former World Trade Center site with the suburban rail system, as well as to link it to the JFK Express connection for JFK airport (Paaswell 2002).

Recreating the Twin Towers area will almost certainly monopolize New York urban planning for the next couple of years; at least it will attract any international attention in regard to New York’s planning problems and processes. In view of “Ground Zero”, questions not only of architecture but also of zoning, public transport, retail, and cultural politics must be debated anew. Hardly any other city in the Western Hemisphere is confronted with an urban restoration project so colossal and oversized. With New York’s endeavours principally absorbed by the aftermath of 9/11, “normal” urban planning and management runs the risk of being severely neglected in the first decades of the new millennium. New York is more than just the new Freedom Tower (One World Trade Center) and some of its adjacent plots.