“The Bloomberg Administration should be commended for following environmental justice community leadership on the solid waste management plan,” she said. “And it is a good thing we have a mayor talking about sustainability beyond his term. However, those are exceptions and not the rule when it comes to big trophy projects – whether stadiums, malls or jails – back-room deals are made, then proposed to the public, and when they hear something counter to their pre-determined agenda, say we don’t understand what’s in the best interest of the city.”
Then Carter cited an innovative, community-initiated process that has occurred in recent years but has seemed largely ignored by powers that be: the development of a plan by a community for major change there, a proactive effort to encourage growth and change.
“My agency and our partners have created an inspiring vision for a Bronx Eco-Industrial Park,” Carter said of the Oak Point area, part of Hunts Point at the southern tip of the Bronx. “A collection of businesses that process and use recycled materials with easy rail and barge access – incorporating jobs, citywide solid waste mitigation, fewer trucks, greenway development, and a more healthy future for Bronx residents.”
The plan, supported in part by city funding of $86,000, also called for a small 400-bed retention facility for which the community planned to provide a job training program. “But that vision is under imminent threat from a 2,000-bed jail the city wants on that site,” Carter added.
That drew a response from Doctoroff later. “There are big divisions in that community,” he said, “about jobs on the one hand and environment issues versus more jobs.”
“Not true, Dan,” Carter interrupted. “We like jobs. We also want to breathe.”
To which Doctoroff replied: “We've been very sensitive to that, trying to come up with a plan to satisfy everybody. At some point, you have to move forward.”
While the issues of the jail and the community-based eco-industrial park proposal left the audience more confused then enlightened, it did seem that a few eggs were being broken for the Oak Point omelette.
What this exchange did help underscore is that there are still residual Moses-style issues in the exercise of power today worthy of closer scrutiny, along with the re-examination of the Moses legacy. Top-down planning does not need an omnipotent czar like Moses to happen.
As Robert Caro said, referring to the “human cost of the expressways” – we “can’t separate the ends from the human costs of getting there.”
Roberta Brandes Gratz is the author of the books "The Living City: Thinking Small in a Big Way," and "Cities Back From the Edge: New Life for Downtown." She is the chairman and founder of The Center for the Living City at Purchase College, established in collaboration with urbanist Jane Jacobs, to build on her work.
