PlaNYC 2030 Goal Analysis (2012)

Michael Transue March 7, 2012 PlaNYC Goals

In 2006, Mayor Bloomberg oversaw his administration’s publication of PlaNYC 2030 in the hopes of developing a “greener, greater New York” city in the future. The plan consists of 10 total sustainability goals with specific initiatives to assist in achieving those goals. Utilizing metrics and indicators, individuals working in the Office of LongTerm Planning and Sustainability can understand how certain implemented initiatives are impacting the sustainable potential of the city. The 10 goals of PlaNYC 2030 address the challenges of population growth, aging infrastructure and high priority environmental risks in hopes to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

To combat the exponential population growth of New York City, the initial goal of PlaNYC is to create homes for almost a million more New Yorkers while making housing and neighborhoods more affordable and sustainable. This fundamental need is appropriately addressed as one of the primary concerns of the plan. The mere construction of additional affordable residential units is not the sole suggestion of the goal, but rather responding to specific housing needs while promoting sustainable communities and lifestyles. Incorporating responsible localized planning emphasizing such strategies as transit-oriented housing developments, maintaining current New York residential densities, promoting city financed housing as well as developing residential projects in underutilized sites, allows NYC itself to become more of a large-scale sustainable entity—and this is why it should be considered a primary concern of sustainability.

To offer all residents of the city open recreation spaces, the plan suggests initiatives to ensure that all New Yorkers live within a 10-minute walk of a park. Although this goal is an important measure to address for the creation of sustainable communities, it must be understood that only healthy parks will assist in the revitalization of underserved communities. Identifying areas that can be modified into successful parks is a preliminary strategy to achieve this goal. The plan should calibrate those areas as appropriate to each neighborhood (or walking radius) for the various ranges of public park spaces are allocated by the neighborhoods’ social and physical characteristics—that is to say those spaces should be directed by the particular needs of the specific community being addressed. The maintenance of the open spaces also plays an important role as communities with less common resources will have less opportunity to ensure their parks are protected long-term.

PlaNYC’s goal to clean up all contaminated land in the New York City is a highly ambitious one. This strategy also requires careful prioritizing of more feasible brownfield redevelopment projects. Moreover, the remediation of contaminated lands will allow more development of community services such as potential park spaces. In an area with little capacity for growth, the remediation of underutilized and contaminated spaces should be a chief concern in the long-term sustainability plan of New York City.

Understanding the importance of the waterways of the NYC area, the plan suggests we improve the quality of our waterways to increase opportunities for recreation and restore natural ecosystems. This goal, like many others, requires a large amount of governmental as well as private investment to ensure these areas will thrive long-term.

With proper financial support, the waterways of the city could become more of an

attraction as community services could become prevalent. Also, the implementation of natural systems will help remediate the pollution risks of the industrial sector that typically line the coasts of New York City.

PlaNYC also strives to ensure the high quality and reliability of our water supply system.

Although this is a primary need for communities to thrive long-term, the water supplied to NYC is already of high quality. Therefore, this goal suggests a continued monitoring program to enforce the regulation and protection of the upstate surface waters that supply NYC. Moreover, the infrastructure that feeds the water supply must be monitored to ensure that our water is not being contaminated in route. New York City is fortunate to have a quality watershed system, but it is important to not have a false sense of security as an entire community, and maintain the current high level long-term.

Much of the current success of New York City as a sustainable community can be attributed to the transportation infrastructure connecting the boroughs. In light of this, the plan recognizes the importance of efficient transit operations and suggests we expand sustainable transportation choices and ensure the reliability and high quality of our transportation network. Expanding the availability of various transportation choices such as subway, bus, ferry as well as biking and walking will undoubtedly have positive ripple effects on the community. Lower amounts of vehicles on the roadways can reduce the amount of emissions, which in turn can increase the air quality of NYC communities.

Moreover, strategies to reduce the amount of vehicular non-commuter transit by modifying the freighting and trucking industries could prove even more beneficial as those machines typically are more hazardous per mile driven. Any transit system or

policy must also be properly maintained to ensure the long-term sustainable potential of New York City.

Energy independence is an issue at a global scale. Recognizing NYC as a large urban metropolis, PlaNYC suggests we reduce energy consumption and make our energy systems cleaner and more reliable. Investment in innovative energy technologies is paramount in achieving the energy goal as NYC strives to demonstrate model behavior to the world. Aggressively investigating in strategies to promote energy conservation, thus reducing consumption, is pivotal in achieving a concerted effort. Each community members and services must acknowledge the importance of implementing renewable energy sources in the future because without this acceptance, the goal is infeasible. In addition, compliance with building codes and regulations that support sustainable energy usage will contribute to more accountability of those with more abrasive impacts to the environment.

One of the most flawed goals of PlaNYC is reaching air quality levels that allow NYC to achieve the cleanest air quality of any big U.S. city. The individual strategies are extremely appropriate in reducing the contaminants in the atmosphere. These strategies include implementing regulation standards for vehicular and building emissions which greatly impact the air quality of the city today. However, to compare NYC to cities with potentially significant difference in demographic and physical attributes is not an efficient way to measure the success of sustainable initiatives. It would be more appropriate to compare the city’s annual air quality levels against a benchmarked baseline perhaps in terms of parts per million. Being ranked high does not necessarily prove a city

has increased their air quality levels because all other cities may have degraded, potentially showing NYC as the best at being the worst emitter.

PlaNYC also suggests we divert 75% of our solid waste from landfills by reducing waste, increasing recovery of materials from the waste stream, and improving the efficiency of the solid waste stream. Other than the obvious advantage of less garbage in landfills, the success of trash abatement in the city would also directly correlate to fewer trucks required on the roadways, which would directly benefit communities.

The final PlaNYC goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30% (from a benchmarked baseline) as well as increase the resilience of our communities, natural systems, and infrastructure to climate risks. As the chief catalyst of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions are a pivotal negative externality that requires responsible control and regulations. Unlike the air quality goal, this goal compares the current greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere against baseline levels benchmarked in 2005.

With a current approximate reduction of 12%, the possibility of achieving the 30% reduction mark by 2030 is highly feasible. Planning resilience strategies against climatic hardship is an extremely important method to mitigate the impacts until greenhouse gas emissions are low enough to assist in controlling extreme climate. Additionally, as with most other goals of PlaNYC, investment packages must assist in any implementation of resiliency methods.

A successful long-term planning process requires understanding the issues at hand, how those issues are created, and then setting goals with attached initiatives to combat those issues. Because PlaNYC goals are interconnected and many topics are cross-cutting in nature—an increase/decrease in one sector can directly lead to increases/decrease in other

sectors of New York City. A goal that would greatly influence other existing goals of the plan would be to incorporate green roof systems into the built environment of the city.

An incremental percentage of allowable green roof space covered by green roofs can directly affect such issues as air quality (minimizing heat island effect), storm water runoff (utilizing rainfall for irrigation), energy efficiency (cooling the building, so less mechanical systems required), as well as greenhouse gas emissions (carbon sequestration). The versatile nature of green roofs would generate more benefits to communities while having a potentially low economic burden overall. Proper incentive programs and investment strategies could make the green roof systems an extremely popular method of helping to create sustainable communities of New York City. To measure the success of the green roof program, the city could determine the percent of actual green house rooftop area compared to the total possible amount of green roof area of the entire city (this would be the 100% percent). Incorporating green roofs will only increase the feasibility of reaching many of the other 10 goals of New York City’s PlaNYC 2030.

Reference: “PlaNYC Update April 2011: A Greener, Greater New York,” The City of New York.